I THINK I LOST MY FACE

I'm back in New York visiting family and friends and I have been meeting people whom I haven't seen in at least 10 or 20 years. ALL of these old friends and aquatintences have looked at me with totally blank stares when I have approached them with open arms calling out their names. Their looks have reflected the thoughts of alarm bells going off when a mental patient in a straight jacket comes running toward you screaming, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!".  Not one of these folks has recognized me and even when I say my name there is the three second hesitation before the name registers and slides into the proper slot that can equate to the face that they are staring at.
It's like they can't quite believe that the old Cathie Lawlor that they knew, oh so long ago, could possibly have turned into this person who is now standing before them. And from the looks on their faces I take it this is NOT a good thing.

I realize we all age. That is to be expected. We get heavier, our hair turns grey, our face gets wrinkles, our skin sags, we get shorter, we begin to wear glasses, we get a double,triple, quadruple chin that droops to our chest and our chest droops to our waist.  Our butt drops to our caves and our caves droop to our ankles. After all this shifting its a wonder we can recognize ourselves. But when I look in the mirror it's still me that I see so how come I look so different to all these folks?

Is it the color of the hair?  My hair was always blonde. Now it's grey. Is grey so different from blonde? It's still in the same color family of non dark, ash shade.  It's not like I went from red or black to white. So that can't be the big difference. I always used to wear sunglasses so the fact that I wear regular glasses can't be that different so that can't be what the big difference. I weigh about the same as I did when I left here all those years ago so that can't be it?  How come no one recognizes me ???

I guess it just must be that in all these years that I have been gone everyone here in New York has been getting older and their eyesight has been getting worse so when I came back they just don't see as well and I look so different to them. That's just got to be the answer! I can't imagine any other explanation for it.