Accepting Age

Aging isn’t easy for women.  It might not be easy for men either, but I can only feel confident speaking for my own gender. Shaina Noll is of my gender, and she can speak for me anytime.  She has an incredible voice, incredible power, and a body that would need some serious air brushing to pass as a super model’s. The picture on her album is NOT a glamour shot. It shows wrinkles and laugh lines, some sadness and some happiness.  She looks like someone who could be a friend of mine, or yours -- someone you might meet shopping at K-Mart or Sears. 

Her songs don’t fit into any “categories” like new age, rockabilly, jazz, or anything else I can think of, but her choice of songs makes it easier to enjoy life.  The hardest part of aging is to accept the inevitable changes life.  “Sometimes It’s Easy” is a paean to the changes that come with time, and a paean to the experiences that inform those changes. The downside of aging (wrinkles, chipped teeth) came from the joy. Joy created laugh lines and standing up to sandy winds that chipped teeth and made me cry.  I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the laughs or miss the wind. 

The title of the song is what first attracted me. Of course life is not easy, life is supposed to be about how you met challenges and how the challenges became your life, but “being with you” (a line from the song), being with the ones you love, does make it all worthwhile.  I cannot hear this song without smiling.  She helps me enjoy aging, and that is worth more than the cost of all her albums combined.