Fifty Is Nifty

When I started this blog (nearly a year and a half and 500 plus posts ago) I was very careful about what I posted. I decided I would use no last names, no addresses, no contemporary photos of Chuck, our family or me. I was happy writing, taking photographs and learning. I used to describe Pink Granite as being off in a quiet little corner of the internet. Then something surprising happened: folks started dropping by, reading, leaving comments. These weren’t just the family and friends I had announced my blog to via e-mail. These visitors were strangers from multiple continents. Strangers who over the course of more than 500 posts, reciprocal visits to their blogs, a lot of laughter and interesting reading, became “friends”. Or, as Veronica over at Purple Ronnie puts it: “Friends Inside The Computer”!

I didn’t expect that to happen. I didn’t expect that Chuck and I would speak of the folks I “met” through this blog as often as we do. I didn’t expect to feel connected to “strangers”, who didn’t feel at all like strangers. I didn’t expect to feel safer and happier in my everyday world because of all the kind, thoughtful, well intentioned, warm and funny folks I was visiting back and forth with through blogs. As time went on, I realized that of the blogs I visited regularly, I had a pretty good idea of what most of the authors looked like. Last month, I added my voice to Pink Granite. All technological frustrations aside, that was a big deal for me. The fact that I was still invisible, seemed, well, a little uneven, a little lopsided. I talked it over with Chuck - no surprise - and he, uninhibited, Pollyanna of a soul that he is, was all for it!

So here I am. That’s me, Lee, Pink Granite. Chuck took that photograph of me at the end of February. We had been snowshoeing out back and up the hill behind the neighbor’s house. It was crisp and cold and sunny. I felt very happy in that moment. At that moment I was just about 49 and three quarters years old. Today I am fifty. I feel very happy in this moment too!


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