May 4, 2008 28 and just a baby yet :)

This whole "elderly" concept has been mulling around in the back of my mind for years now. But reading Mrs. Hughes blog about being "elderly" has very much solidified what has been around into a solid reasoning. I was looking at the responses to

http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2008/04/are-you-elderly.html

And I was happy to see bloggers responding to her post who were in their 70s and 80s. I also saw quite a few bloggers in their 60s, and I said outloud to G "They're only in their 60s! Who would ever think of them as elderly anyway?" But the fact is that for many young people not only is 60 elderly- so is 50! I just saw an ad today called "Elderly Travel- age targeted travel for the 50+". Ok, 50 is just not even old- not in our time, or in our country at the very least.

I think my viewpoint on the whole age thing is different for 2 reasons:

1. I grew up having a great-grandmother. When I was young, she was already over 80. She passed away last year at the age of 92. Because my family has short spaces between generations (my grandma got married at 15 and had her first child, my mom, at 18- my mom had me (I'm the oldest) when she was 20). My grandmother is only 38 years older than me. At 92, my great-grandmother was old, but still taking walks, laughing at jokes, and having a meaningful life despite some memory loss and reduced mobility. When I think of old though, I think over 90. :)

2. We were blessed to have the opportunity to join an elder Sunday school class before we even got engaged. Can I just say that I really heard an audible voice on this one- it sounds strange, but it's true. It was Sunday school month at CCBC and since we weren't in a class yet we decided to go to one that morning. A woman we knew invited us to come along to hers, which met in the building next door, and I even had my hand on the door when I heard that still small voice say "Why don't you go to the class at the bottom of the stairs?" At first, I was surprised, because I knew that they were all considerably older than us, but that small voice persisted, so I turned to G and said "I think we need to go to class at the bottom of the stairs." I'll never forget the very surprised faces when we opened the door and asked if we could join their class! :) But they were so welcoming to us, they made us part of their class family, and over the past 5 years shared their lives with us, their experiences, and their wisdom, and as we got to know them I saw just how much we all had in common. And through them we came to understand what growing older is REALLY like, what older people are really like, and those stereotypes that our culture promotes simply vanished.

Can I just share one of my favorite stories with you all? One year near my birthday, our good friend Claude (who is a WWII veteran who has lived in a wheelchair probably longer than I've been alive, due to a bus accident) wished me happy birthday, and he asked how old I was. I think I was turning 25- maybe 26. He just laughed so hard- his eyes lit up, and he said "Well I have SOCKS older than you!" We both just laughed and laughed so hard! Whenever I put on socks I think of Claude's socks. :D

What's the point of this blog? Well, just to say that 60 isn't old. :) And to say that at 28, when I start feeling sorry for myself about something, I think of my elder friends, and my great-grandma, and I remind myself that I'm really just a baby yet. :)