The Face you Deserve

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.” These words were apparently George Orwell's last written, and he died before turning fifty. 
     Luckily I haven't kicked the bucket yet, and as is quite the norm in our culture, I decided to celebrate 50 years of life on planet Earth (this time around:-)
     Tell you the truth, it wasn't I who decided to celebrate, it was a dear, old (friend of old, not old friend) friend who suggested the party (she would).
     "We must get together," she ordered me and a third old (but not old that way) friend. We three had met in thunder, lightning and in rain, er, in high school in another galaxy far, far away. 
     It was like 1979. Pierre Trudeau handed the reigns over to Joe Clark for nine months while he went to Tibet (or something) and stood on his head, the Habs won the cup, the Oilers joined the NHL, Roberto Luongo was born, John Diefenbaker and Mary Pickford died, and the three of us turned 16: OMG. My dad gave me a '63 Chevy Impala to cruise around in and I promptly spent all my earthly savings (which I have not replenished until this day.)                                

That's the car, but I lived directly across the lake from Toronto, and I cut my driving teeth on the rural roads of the Niagara Peninsula, midst peach orchards and cherry trees. Nowadays it's all grapes, but then the Mennonites wouldn't sell their fruit to wine makers. I guess the policies on that have softened... 

     And speaking of wine, that's what we three friends did in a lovely garden in the Okanagan. But not excessively; just as accompaniment to food, which we collected at the Kelowna Farmers' Market and then promptly chopped, cook, and ate.    

 We didn't sky dive or base jump or even bungee jump.

     Instead we macerated basil and black pepper with sugar and mixed that in with the peaches and berries.

We chopped vegetables exhaustively.

 And ate food of every colour in the spectrum.

 Why did we gravitate to each other in 1979? Why did we remain friends, when we lost touch with so many others? What do we have in common now, what do we not?

While the potatoes roasted, we set the table, then spent the rest of the evening talking and listening...

 ... and looking at each other, at the faces we rightly, according to Orwell, now deserve.

Do we look good for fifty? Or do we just look good?