Gettin' Old

The other day Tony was sitting in the living room with our oldest grandchild.  This was a rare experience, as he hardly ever stops moving, and Tony was thinking about how to capitalise on the moment.

Maybe a little “Man to Man” talk he thought.   The Wise One versus the Young Accolade. But Grandson, who as a new 16 yr old,  feels pretty confident, and spoke up first.

“Gigi”, he asked (This is not the French Gigi but the Japanese endearment for ‘grandpa’),

“What’s it feel like to be old?”

Tony sure didn’t see that one coming. Granted, he mused to himself, the question comes up often, but usually in the middle of the night, and not with anyone else present in the room.

After a moment of reflection, Tony felt like he had something to say. 

“Well, I miss the physical part of me. I’m in this recliner because it takes too much effort to go outside and play basketball with you ………. I’d like to, but it hurts.”

While he pondered that, he thought suddenly, “Oh no! I don’t want him to start dreading old age. So he continued,

“But you know, the pain can be managed, and a lot of it you get used to. In fact, before you brought it up, I wasn’t even thinking about it.”

He started to apologize but Tony was on a roll.

“Actually, there’s a lot of things I feel that just wouldn’t be possible if I was as young as you. Like the fact that I can look at you and your folks and feel so proud that I start popping my buttons.

Grandson smiled while Tony continued,

“I have history, and that doesn’t come without experience. You’ve got a great life ahead of you, and I’m excited to see your own history taking shape. So all in all, I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything.”

As I watched Tony telling me the story, I knew he had been down this road before, probably alone. All through the Bible we are given lots of examples of men doing the same thing … reflecting on the passage of time. Men are born, they learn, and if they’re blessed,  they grow old, have experiences and teach them to the next generation.

One verse that comes to mind is this one:

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  (Psalms 90:2). 

A friend reminded me the other day that I had quoted someone who said,

“Let’s don’t think about how many days we’ve lived, but how many we have left!”

Easter’s coming up. Lots of new experiences right around the corner. Let’s take a breath and enjoy Getting Old. There are perks, like young folks who don’t have a clue and  (if they’re lucky) can only look to you for answers.

Have a good week,

Marsha


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let It Go

 Hello Again,   I usually don’t like to quote from Facebook, much less recommend it, but today I’m going to do both.   I posted the following on my own FB site and was surprised at the comments that came back. It seems the message here really hits the nail on the head. What do you think? "A Harvard Study of 724 couples Who Made It Past 30 Years Revealed Something Surprising: “It wasn’t love, s*x, or kids that kept them together. It was the ability to tolerate the same things in each other – over and over again. The couples who divorced thought, “This habit drives me crazy, but I can fix it.’ The ones who stayed? ‘This is who they are. They’re not changing.’ Long marriages rarely resolve every conflict. That’s a myth.  Couples who lasted 30+ years didn’t dig into every hurt feeling. They learned to let go. Not suppress – release. ‘You forgot again,’ ‘You said the wrong thing again’ – short-term couples turn that into a fight. Long-term couples let it slide. ...
Read more

Good News and Salt Licks

 G’day Fellow Travellers, I think many of you might be on Facebook and so noticed the picture I took out the back of our house the other day… seven of the most majestic English-originated Red Deer you ever saw.   It’s a bit of a mystery how they got there, since they are not native to Australia and DEFINITELY not welcome among the country’s flora and fauna. It’s believed they were introduced some time back by a wealthy entrepreneur with plans to start up a new industry. Nobody is saying for sure, but the only thing that can be said is that the deer love it here! I know that the many of you living in Texas and those parts look at deer and think either “menace” or “venison” and perhaps both in the same sentence.  Fortunately for these folks here, although they’re listed as ‘feral’, as they are, everyone treats them like family pets.  Yes, they eat our flowers, but according to the layout of the floodplain we live on, they really can’t get into the traffic, so we a...
Read more

Those Pesky Chimeras

 So some people collect stamps; I like to collect words. No one’s ever accused me of being ‘smart’ but sometimes I like to be a “smart aleck” and throw out a word in casual conversation that not many of my cohorts will immediately understand. It’s fun to watch their reactions, like, “Oh! You mean THAT fogdog!” or else, “I think I knew that …” Today’s word is “Chimera”. If you already know what that means, there went my fun for today. You can skip ahead to the application. “Chimera” is a noun that describes something wished for but is either illusory or impossible to achieve. Lately I’ve been painfully aware of two chimeras in my life. One comes to mind when I’m looking back; the other when I’m looking ahead.   Not that I’m counting, but I believe I’ve spent about 80% of my adult life on a diet, on that never-ending search for the perfect body. Now time is teaming up with my best intentions, bringing me one more step toward accepting this as the chimera it is. I’m bracing ...
Read more