"You better watch how you ask that question!" Like some ol' crotchety lady, I warned the uber-young, perky, slightly self-conscious co-ed who registered me at the alumni registration table. It'd been 10 years since I'd ventured back to the sleepy East Tennessee holler of my alma mater. And there stood an eager co-ed handing me a take-home recruitment card "for any nieces, nephews, church members, sons or daughters or grandchildren."
Grandchildren? Hmmph! In reality, I am old enough to brag about a grandchild, but I'm still getting used to my only child's arrival at the threshold of adolescent cockiness. Later, I lunched on very bad food under a festive-colored tent beside two other graduates from the class of 1982. Each bounced doe-eyed grandchild on their laps. Their diapered presence reminded me, yes, I am old enough to have grandchildren. One of my dear, ol' college running buddies, also present–and a newly minted hospital chaplain, (so proud of her,)–jokingly reminded us all that those two had married while the rest of us were still filling out our college applications.
Several among the sparse gathering of my classmates seemed intent on bemoaning "we are old!" To which I bellowed: "I am not old!" (They turned and looked at me amusedly.) And I repeated my proclamation during our class picture. I conjecture our attendance numbers were sparse because more than a few of us were attending homecomings at our son and daughter's respective colleges. And there were alumni amongst us who had offspring at our alma mater. Sweet. We are old enough to have college-age children in addition to grandchildren.
If you've been reading here a while, you "should" know I'm no hide-my-age freak. It's not 2013 yet, and I'm already spitting out the numerals 5-3 when asked my age. I've always sucked at math and my brain just goes on numerical auto-pilot every year when the calendar flips a new digit even though my birthday is not until June. Seems as the years escalate, I begin getting a jump on my numbers earlier and earlier. The night before the reunion as I tried to sort some sense of the potpourri of cosmetics that had badly survived my recent move, I had my semi-annual OMG surprise aging reminder look into the mirror. That night I noticed new etchings on my face. A new crop had set up vertical camp above my upper lip.
Oh. Well.
So, I embrace the numbers of this social boogeyman called aging. But, I will not embrace the thinking that aging means catapulting downhill. I left campus mid afternoon and returned to the rental cabin in Abington, Va., which I'd rented for an extended fall break. That night, I snuggled next to my companion whose age is two decades plus my senior but is in so many ways younger than myself. One of the greatest lessons I have learned from our heart-to-heart relationship is that like all of life, age only has the meaning of that which one assigns to it.
So. I'm not assigning old to my digits. Nor bad. Nor ailing. Nor declining…fill in the blank. I say, bring it on! It's more of life in which to drink, bathe and grow. Now that. Is. Delicious.
"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?" ~ Poet, Mary Oliver
This "The Journey with Grace" post is a part of a reunion series started last week here ~ "A Reunion: Meeting Over Commonality, Not Differences; A Local & a National Tale"
