Old People

I have a confession to make: I love old people.

It’s funny how my definition of “old” has changed over the years. When I was a young kid, 30 seemed ancient. As a teen, forty was old.  In my 20’s, “old” was anyone 10 years older than my parents.  The older I get, the older “oId” gets. I think I finally admitted that my parents were old when my dad turned 90.

Danielle teases me that most of my church friends are a good 20 years older than me. That may be true, but I don’t consider them to be old people. I do still love them, though. To me, they are like sisters. Maybe it’s because I am the youngest of eight and there is almost a 20 year difference between my oldest sister and me. Even as a teen I seemed to relate more to adults than to other teens. I suppose it’s because most of my siblings were already adults by the time I was a teenager. I’d like to think it’s just that I was mature, but I’m sure there are a few people who would disagree with me on that.

When I was a kid, I realized that my parents were the age of many of my friends’ grandparents. After all, my mom was 42 when I was born and my dad was almost 49. It bothered me some that Mother and Daddy were so much older than my friends’ parents. The older I became, the more I saw the benefits of having older parents. My parents had perfected their parenting by the time I came along. My dad used to tell the story of how when my oldest sister, Kathy, was a newborn she cried a lot. Fearing something was terribly wrong with her, they took her to the doctor and were told, “She’s hungry…feed her more!” By the time I showed up, they knew what my cries meant. They’d also been through every stage of child rearing 7 times, so nothing I did shook them. Then again, maybe that’s because I was so mature. Or not.

Having older parents did make me worry about losing them though. (There is sure to be another blog entry about that somewhere down the road.) I was certain that I’d lose my parents before any of my friends would lose their much younger parents. Little did I know that Daddy would live to 91 and Mother would live to 87.

So who are these old people I love? Most of them I don’t even know. I see them in grocery stores and sitting on benches and nearly everywhere I go. They might be using a walker or cane or wheelchair. Sometimes they are holding the arm of their adult child or their spouse.  Their hair is gray or white or gone. They are bent and walk slowly. Their faces and hands are wrinkled. And they are beautiful to me. I look at them and see that they have lived.  Even though I don’t know them, I want to ask them about their lives. I know they have stories to tell, stories of their childhoods, of friendships and loves, of heartbreak and loss. They have lived long enough to realize what is truly important in life. Their stories would surely reflect that. That is beauty…pure and simple.