Which isn’t all that surprising. I mean who pays any attention to old ladies, except
to complain about them on the road?
Well, now that I’m 60 minus 41 days,
I think that should change. Better yet, it should change retroactively because
I never really paid much attention to the old when I was young.
I’m thinking of my own grandmother. Grandma
was a short timid woman, who walked in small mincing steps, a little unsteadily
and never very far. She adored her grandchildren, but she never got down on the
floor with us or threw a ball or played make believe. She always dressed in
heels and hose, not that any adults knew from sneakers back then.
Although Grandma was born here, her
hold on the country seemed tenuous at best. She worried about nearly
everything, especially whether a miscreant du jour was Jewish. Thank god she
didn’t live to hear the name Madoff. Her
quiet voice would always get lost around a big holiday table, and while she’d
smile at our jokes and antics, we were never quite convinced she understood. A
woman born around the turn of the last century, Grandma was unprepared for the
1960s. And we were too busy embracing our own lives to try to bring her up to
date.
Styles change, and old today is much
more active and robust. Yesterday, for instance, I took a walk with my
sister. Marcy is now a grandmother
herself and, in case you don’t already know, she’s just a couple of years older
than me, not that she looks a day over 60 minus 41 days. We walked a few miles at a very brisk pace
that would have left our grandmother in our dust.
Still some things don’t change. Obviously,
there’s always going to be a sizeable age gap between children and their
grandparents. And I don’t think Grandma chose not to bridge that gap. She just didn’t know how, and we didn’t try
hard enough to help her.
So I just hope that someday (god
willing, and no pressure intended) my grandchildren will try a little harder
with me.
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