This is a photo of one of the twelve "Me, When I'm Old" self portraits the teacher and I chose to submit to the "Aging With Attitude" Art Exhibit to be held at the University of Michigan in March. CLICK HERE to read about it. For the past month our Grade 5 students have been hard at work on this project, and as an elder and a weekly volunteer in the art classes, I have been their "in house" model for how an old person looks. Not only did I help introduce this project by talking with them about how it feels to be old--both the advantages and disadvantages--but I brought in large prints of my "Facing up To My Face At 65" self portraits which we posted on the bulletin board for the kids to use as reference when I wasn't there. It became quite common for me to hear the teacher say to a student, "You don't have enough wrinkles on your drawing yet. Go see Ms. Patricia and she'll show you where they belong." I'd then take off my glasses and carefully point out the lines running beside my nose down to my mouth, the dried creek bed of wrinkles on my cheeks and chin, the crows feet radiating out from my eyes, the worry lines across my forehead, the bags under my eyes, and the frown lines on the bridge of my nose. After awhile I lost any self consciousness I might have had about my very wrinkled face. It was yet another stage in my journey towards self-acceptance of aging that began last August with "Facing Up To My Face At 65" and is continuing today as I explore the subject of older women's bodies in my recent series of photographs called "Winter Nudes."

The hardest part of this entire "Me, When I'm Old" project with the kids was choosing only twelve of their drawings to submit to the "Aging With Attitude" exhibit. They did such a fine job we could easily have submitted twice that number. And even though I'd intended to submit my own self portraits to the adult juried portion of the exhibit, I got so caught up with the students' work that I missed my deadline. No problem. I want it to be their shining moment, not mine. I'm so proud of them I could burst!