There's a new photograph accompanying this column, one five years older and 20 pounds lighter than my previous incarnation. Oh yes, and a little grayer, too.

But age is a funny thing. Although I am older than when I first started writing a biweekly column in January 2002, I actually feel younger, less burdened by life's responsibilities. (If some readers remember me writing before that, you are right. I occasionally wrote columns for the Eagle when I was the Focus editor from 1995 to 2001.)

But as for looking older but feeling younger, well, several things play into that. First, when I began writing a regular column, I had two teenage children living under my roof and another son in college. That meant more cooking and cleaning, more hauling kids around, more supervising teenage activities, bigger bills to pay, just a lot more of taking care of others.

Whew! Sometimes the thought of all that responsibility is overwhelming.

Today, my youngest child is still a teenager but she's graduating from high school this spring and is counting the days until she leaves for college. My middle child is on the cusp of graduating from college, a stone's throw from financial independence, or at least that's how I like to think of it. And the oldest is now gainfully employed and living on his own.

Besides having fewer children to look after, I have shed the weight gained while taking care of them. Making three square meals a day for 25 years led to a lot of snacking and eating other people's leftovers. (I am of the "starving children of the world" generation, so, for years, I dutifully polished off whatever my children left on their plates.) And with all that plate-cleaning came ever-increasing poundage, one a year through 25 years of child-rearing, most of which I have lost, although not without a great deal of effort.

For the past four years, I have carried a points-finder in my purse, a kind of old-fashioned slide rule used for calculating the number of points in a piece of pizza or a hamburger patty. You move the cardboard slide to line up nutritional information like dietary fiber, calories and grams of fat in a particular food, and thus determine the number of "winning points" you are about to ingest.

Since I began counting points, I have learned to drink wine instead of beer (more points) and top my burgers with mustard (fewer points), and not eat foods I don't like, just because they're there (so ends my good standing with the Clean-Plate Club.)

I've also added exercise to my routine, swimming on my lunch hour and occasionally walking with my husband on the weekends, which has helped in the reincarnation of a healthier less-stressed out me.

So here I am, five years older, 20 pounds lighter, and with a future that I hope includes more personal freedom and opportunities, especially now that my children seem to be moving on to lives of their own.

I'm just hoping that the light I see at the end of the tunnel isn't the same light that those who are breathing their last breath see.

The older-looking, younger-feeling Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living in Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.