AT 69, I SOLD MY HOUSE AND TRAVELED THE WORLD ALONE

until I forgot I'd ever been anything

but the woman who provides.

At sixty-nine, I did one selfish thing.

I sold the house my children wanted,

and I flew to the far side of the world,

and they called me selfish and blocked my number.

Then a kind man invited me for coffee,

and above his fireplace

hung a painting of a willow over a pond—

a painting I'd made at nineteen,

signed in my maiden name,

the last trace of the girl I was

before I disappeared into everyone else.

He'd loved it for forty years.

He'd treasured the truest part of me

while my own family

never noticed I had one.

I didn't just find a painting that afternoon.

I found her—

the girl who painted,

the self I'd given away,

waiting on a stranger's wall

for me to be brave enough,

selfish enough,

to finally come back for her.

I live under that willow tree now.

I paint every day.

I fell in love at sixty-nine.

And I learned the thing

I'd spent fifty years forgetting:

that it is never too late

to go halfway around the world