Writing Group in Muscle Shirt

This afternoon I went back to the writing group/class I've participated in on Thursday afternoons for 22 years. I'd only missed two weeks on my "health leave" but felt as if I'd spent a winter in India (as I did for my 2nd novel) and returned with tales to tell.

I found that I wanted to make a splash, a statement, on this return to the group that's a major piece of my normal life.

So, what I did: I wore a shirt that was given to me as a joke a while back by one of the other writers in the group. It's a bare-midriff muscle shirt, black, tight as a cigar band, with the Eiffel Tower and the word Paris written in purple glitter over a pink-glitter sun. Keep in mind now that I'm 56. I'd never before found occasion to wear this garment. Today was the day.

People in the group did remember the shirt, so I didn't have to explain the "joke" (until later when we met other folks for tea.) My get-up did make the statement I wanted, which was, I only now stop to think, that: I'm not dead yet, not down for the count, still a "boomer babe", and what did I need ovaries for anyway. It's a fine T-shirt that can do all that. And it has been a fine and fun day.