Chapter 48அதிகாரம் 48 மூப்பு Aging

She never felt one petal fall from the garland: old age is the wilting time.

In Tamil, the word for garland also means evening.

Children call their mother’s walk a limp; their mother’s walk is their own walk.

When one hair turns grey, people look closely at it; when a hundred have turned grey, they do not look at the head.

The anvil the smith has struck again and again is a face that tells without a word.

Old age is not a root rotted past use; it is the ground that bears the seed being planted.

See the grip of his walking stick, worn down: it bears witness that he leaned on it every day.

They pluck out the first grey hair but not the hundred: knowledge is knowing that what grows old is themselves.

Sure that his legs would never give out, he set his prints in stone. On the day his legs gave out, look at the prints.

The prints still lie in the stone, but the legs that made them can no longer carry him to them.

They let go of the tree that gave them something to lean on, saying it needs something to lean on.

The fold in the fourth finger that finishes the net: the hand of a grandmother who knows the sea.

Years of tying off the last knots of a net press a lasting fold into the finger.