When I’m Seventy-Six

One of my favorite chapters in All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is the one titled “Old Ladies’ Resistance Club”. These women were so much more the than the Red Hat Society.

“Seventy-six years old,” she whispers (Madame Manec), “and I can still feel like this? Like a little girl with stars in my eyes?”  

With a birthday in my very near future and a husband who just hit 60, I have thought a little about age this week. Some say it’s just a number. You’re as young as you feel and all that. I think Madame Manec felt like a girl with stars in her eyes because she had a purpose, a renewed reason to keep going.

I hope that when I’m seventy-six I will still have a purpose; a reason to joyfully greet the day.

Thoughts From A Man Called Ove

…nowadays people are all thirty-one and wear too tight trousers and no longer drink normal coffee. From A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Even though Ove was a curmudgeon, I have to say I fully get where he was coming from here. There are a few schools I go in to substitute where all the teachers look like they are 31 and, though they don’t wear too tight trousers, they do have faultless hair and snow white teeth and perfectly polished nails. I don’t know what they drink, but I’m guessing some kind of soy milk concoction. But, that’s okay.

Sometimes being around younger adults makes me feel young. Other days it makes me feel my age. Often I can’t relate when it comes to what many of them value. Like when a young couple expecting their second child feels like they need more than a three bedroom house. Or when the conversation turns to the latest iphone and when they are going to get theirs. Or The Walking Dead. I.Just. Don’t.Get.It.

As I sat writing this it dawned on me that perhaps it isn’t always age that really makes the difference. It’s often money and culture and upbringing that puts the wider gap between me and some younger people I encounter. So, instead of being jealous of their snow white teeth or judging them for their too tight trousers, I should accept these things for what they are. And try to know them for who they are on the inside.

After all, I don’t always drink normal coffee. When I don’t, it’s likely to be because a mocha was calling my name.