SACK OF KITTENS

by: Dottie Pond Rothschild

Paige had been at it for two hours. Honestly, Olivia wasn't merely numbingly restless,

annoyed at the colossal waste of her time, but friggin hungry as well. What could possibly take

so long?She must curl each strand of her long, luxurious hair separately and then apply layer after layer of make-up to accumulated perfection, then clothes and shoes. Olivia marveled at the intricate decision process this took depending on who was most likely to be in the room they were about to walk into. At some point Olivia attempted to be indoctrinated into this female ritualistic process- but could only stretch out hair and make-up to twenty minutes, maybe a half hour with much effort. Eventually she just brought along her book, it seemed like a better use of her time. Approaching the three hour mark, they would finally make their way to breakfast, just under the wire of the 2p.m. cutoff on Sundays for hash browns on the grill.

They walked down Broadway, heads turned, conversation bubbled, Paige rivaled the sun in her brightness and Olivia got to stand in the castoff splendor. With no place to go and no time to be there, those wasted Sunday mornings were worth the wait.

Only now did Olivia realize that there was a wisdom of beauty that Paige tried to impart on her, and she, with the freshness of youth, had intellectually squandered. Paige had faded like a timeless watercolor, while Olivia tumbled into middle age like a sack of kittens falling out the back of a pickup. Why hadn't she lifted her nose out of the book to learn how to perfectly tweeze her eyebrows or choose the most flattering hairstyle for her face shape?

As it turns out, a concentration on beauty trumps intellect- and as Olivia looks in the mirror, glimpses her retiring youth, looks in the mirror, watches her husband leave her, looks in the mirror, and finds that after they ran out of things too say, she should have spent more time looking at herself, looks in the mirror, then shatters it with her fist.

Looking at it intellectually, Olivia has analyzed and concluded that she has lost, if you can lose at life. Paige looks in the mirror, almost three hours have passed, and she is still looking in the mirror.