I am home between travel nursing shifts, so I treated myself to a pedicure.

I settled into the massage chair, and emptied my mind if the stresses of travel, Covid, weather…etc.

I spent some time watching the nature scenes in the screen on the wall across from my chair.

The scenes were seasonal, rotating from spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Over the course of less than half an hour, a year’s worth of seasons flashed by.

I glanced to my right. A little girl had come in with her grandmother, and was getting her nails painted. She was probably 5 or 6, flipping her ponytail around exuberantly. Her shirt had a unicorn, in contrast to her camouflage leggings. I smiled as she prattled on about anything that crossed her mind. She reminded me that I, too, was once a little girl who would talk constantly- to anyone, about anything.

To my left, a woman in her 80’s. She, like me, was getting a pedicure. Her legs were pale, and spider webs of purple veins traced near the surface, where age spots dotted her calves. Her skin was paper thin, and her toe began to bleed as they clipped her nail. “I take blood thinners”, she explained.

I looked down into my lap at my own hands…fingers still long and slender as they were when I was younger. Now, though, the skin on the back of my hands is getting the tell-tale pattern of fine lines that increase as I age, no matter how much hand lotion I slather on regularly.

My hair, long and well kept, no longer has the youthful fullness and rich natural color of little miss camo unicorn.

I’m sitting between the extremes, watching the seasons flash by, and for a minute, vertigo overtakes me, causing me to close my eyes to steady myself.

Time relentlessly moves forward.

With a sigh, I close my eyes and relax in the massage chair.

I might as well enjoy the ride.