Our wayward second digital camera has arrived. Intact. Thanks to our New Hampshire hosts who mailed it back to us. My husband said he regretted its loss, not for the intrinsic value of the camera itself, but because he had taken photographs of me and our granddaughter and we'd never now see them. That was before we had been alerted that the camera had been found.

Now that it was once more in our possession and within it lay the photographs that my husband had taken, far fewer in number, but different than those that I had taken with my camera, I downloaded the photos to my computer. And then reviewed the photos.

Despite his artist's eye, I felt that those that I and our granddaughter had taken were superior in quality than his. But it was when I saw the photos of me, the close-up shots of my 74-year-old face, unaware that he was taking photos, looking worn and creased and lost in thought that the shock set in. They were, in a word, gruesome in the extreme.

I had no idea, really I hadn't, that I looked so aged and grey and grim. Yet there was the evidence, staring back at me. All the face-forward photos were immediately deleted by me. I felt utterly crushed.

And here I was, vain that I had aged so comparatively well; looking, I was so often told, "younger" than my years. Well, here was the proof that I looked my years, and more.

The worn and wrinkled face that I saw wasn't quite the face that I was exposed to when I looked in the mirror. My failing eyesight doubtless made light of the grim, grey wrinkles and furrowed brow. There was no escaping the reality of those photographs, however.

Except by deleting them. As though by deleting the photos, the reality of my visage might change back to what I delusionally perceived it to be; gently aged and rather becoming. Little did I realize that I was 'becoming' just what my age insisted I be.

A humbling experience, far removed from pleasant.