"They Don't Look Real to Me, But..."

"Raise your glass to the hard working people

Let's drink to the uncounted heads

Let's think of the wavering millions

Who need leaders but get gamblers instead...

Let's drink to the hard-working people....

they don't look real to me...but they look so much in pain!" 

--The Rolling Stones

All day this song has been going through my head.  All day I've pushed it down until I could look up the lyrics on the Internet, since I don't have a TV and will have to wait for Obama's press conference about the Economic Stimulus Package.  

I am praying for my country.  What else can I do?  I would like to be one of the hard-working people and so would  my husband.  We are the graying heads, the people who no longer look real, I guess because you don't see very many people our age on TV.  You sure see the old faces in the unemployment offices. Faces like Jim's and mine, a little wrinkly, a little weary, and a lot anxious. 

This is why Social Security was invented, because no one should grow old in poverty.  We all grow too soon old and too late smart, I remember reading in a fortune cookie.  Oh, that I had stuffed all my money under the mattress and never listened to my financial advisers last year. Oh, that I had become a registered nurse, rather than a writer and artist!  

Oh, if only I were younger and could know that I'd still have many working years to ride out this storm!  As it is, I must be happy and strong right now, because, whether or not the leaders will preserve them for me, these are my golden years.  I am real, whether or not I look real to Washington, D.C.  I am praying for my country and for my children's future.