The woman at the boulangerie calls me, Madame.
In France, I’ve watched the women in the market carry their years like velvet fabric—softened by time, more beautiful for having been used and loved and washed in the light.
My hands look like older women’s now.
Gabriel, my grandson, traced the veins on the back of my hand yesterday. “Like a map, Vavie,” he said. And he’s right. They are a map. Every line, every sun spot, every place where the skin has grown thin and honest—a map of where I’ve been. The brocantes I’ve wandered through. The bread I’ve kneaded. The babies I’ve held. The life I’ve touched and been touched by.
I find myself caring less about things that once consumed me. Whether my hair is perfectly coiffed. Whether the house is spotless before guests arrive. Whether I’m wearing the right thing. There’s a freedom in becoming madame that nobody tells you about when you’re young and fresh and worried.
The other day, I wore my nightgown until noon. I was writing, and the words were coming, and the light through the shutters was that particular golden that only happens in October. Was I worried what the delivery person might think if he came to my door?
Aging isn’t losing yourself. It’s finding yourself. All the parts you hid or doubted or apologized for—they get to come home. I keep telling myself this- it is natural, it is living, it is giving an example of aging gracefully.
I think of the antiques I collect. How it’s more precious because it’s old, because someone’s hands have created it, because it survived. We don’t throw it away because it’s delicate or worn. I treasure it more.
Yesterday, I caught my reflection in an old mirror I bought – I saw my grandmother, my mother… I saw all the women who made me, and all the ones I’m making. A chain of love stretching backward and forward.
And I thought: This is what becoming madame means.
Not disappearing. Arriving.
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