Instinctively she stroked the baby's furry little head, cold now against her fevered hand.

"It's the heat. It never leaves me; the baby always feels like ice to my hot touch--that's not new. That's how it's been for days now." She whispered this to herself not wanting the Almighty to hear. If He knew the child lived... well, He mustn't be allowed to find out. She heard Sarah Jane's little girl song as she crooned to her rag doll--somewhere south of the house. The slant of the afternoon sun broke into blades of light as it struck the far end of her pallet on the floor in front of the stove.

"I will rise," she told her body as though commanding a belligerent child. "We will stand up now and put the baby in the cradle and make the noonday meal. We can do this--you and I," she ordered her wobbly limbs.

I'm a one-woman art show. The body is a perfect canvas for exhibiting personal experiences, transformations and ideals. Most "professionals" just don't really understand the process of self-reclamation. I'm sure it's different for everyone, that's what makes it so personal. They only "get it" intellectually; I get it experientially as well.

It was on my birthday when I first discovered that I was at a special place in my life. Some close friends of mine fretted about their passage into middle age, pointing to numerous new gray hairs as proof of their distress. Others welcomed the age by taking elaborate pilgrimages, searching for deeper meaning in their lives or for solitude so that they could reach deep within their respective consciousnesses to find great truths. But, there are times in our lives when great truths are revealed in simple moments.