I, a Dowager with Flaming Red Hair

She looks like an eruption of Kilauea, this dowager with her flames of red hair. "May I tell you something?" she asks politely, then leans forward and whispers: "This is not my hair's natural color."

No one is surprised. Red hair or not, the woman looks her age.

She's Lady Kitty, a zany, delightful character in a Somerset Maugham play. She may also be one of my subpersonalities, or at least I think so.

Because I have my own zany moments when I'm like her, wanting to pass as younger. Like a Jew changing his name to pass as a gentile, or a black lightening her skin to look more white, or a gay guy butching up to appear straight. We so want to resemble the cultural idols--young, gentile, white, straight--we fail to notice our own richness, our own inimitable joy.

Remember the guy who traveled land and sea in search of a treasure, only to find it was in his own home all along, right under his own hearth?

So, dude, why give in to those stupid idols that distract you from your own joy? Why not celebrate the fullness that comes wrapped with your wrinkles, the glories of your ethnic and spiritual heritage, the sensuous color of your skin, the utter fabulous-ness of being gay. Why not savor--and live--every dimension of who you are, as you are, right here, right now?

Why wait another second to unearth the treasure under your own hearth?
This is what I say to myself today, the day before my 57th birthday.