Aging Gracefully

There are memories around every corner where I am visiting in my hometown, Beckley, West Virginia. I drove through my old neighborhood by the outdoor swimming pool. It reminded me that when we lived here the resort owners bought a used synthetic ice rink that was sprayed with gliding fluid to mimic ice skating.

We were excited to have a new activity to pass the long, dark winter. The first time we rented ice skates and headed onto the rink to glide across the artificial ice, we were surprised with an abrupt stop. We thought maybe we got hung up on a bad spot and moved further into the rink. The results were less than optimal. We nicknamed it “ice walking.”

There were memories triggered by the changing of the autumn leaves. One was collecting colored leaves to iron between waxed paper for a school project. Another was that we would rake the leaves into huge piles, jump in them and then use them to build leaf forts.

One day when constructing our leaf fort my friend, Leslie, and I noticed beautiful pink, orange and green colored ribbons tied around trees. We removed the ribbons and collected them until our pockets were overflowing. We didn’t want to leave any on the trees because we needed every single one for decorating our fort. When we finished amassing ribbons, we dumped our pockets and began figuring out how to attach them to the fort walls.

Then we heard Mom calling us for lunch. We ran through the yard, up the back steps and into the house where she was talking to Leslie’s mother. We asked Mom to wrap our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in waxed paper so we could eat them in our fort.

Mom commented that we had been very busy. Excitedly, Leslie started telling our mothers about our discovery of the beautiful ribbons. I chimed in that someone must have tied them on the trees to match the leaves. My mother kind of smiled and said I’m glad you all enjoyed looking at them.

I said, “Oh, we didn’t just look at them, we took them off the trees to decorate our fort.”

Both of our mothers gasped. Mom said, “Oh no! Do you remember which trees you took them off of?” She didn’t realize that it wasn’t two or three ribbons, but a passel of them. By that point I understood that maybe our discovery and collection was not a good thing. Like any little eight-year-old girl who didn’t want to get into trouble, I answered, “Yes Mommy, we know which ones they were on.”

Mom explained that our neighbors hired a gardener to identify by colors which trees were to be cut down, trimmed or remain. We stuffed the ribbons in our pockets and gave them to our mothers one by one as we pointed out the trees so they could replace the ribbons. Finally, we confessed that we had no idea which trees they had been on.

If Leslie’s mother lived nearby, I would ask her to tell me her version of the story. But it did make me wonder if there was anyone else who lived nearby that I might like to visit.

I was nearby a friend’s mother’s house. She recently lost her husband. Today’s gift was a pleasant visit to say hello. It was a delightful visit just being in her presence. I am much more interested in how people age successfully because I once thought that I would never get old, I now know it is inevitable and want to learn as much as I can.

Some people age gracefully and others not-as-much. I am grateful I was able to spend time with someone who is aging gracefully and demonstrates what I want to embody when I grow older. I was expecting to give a gift of a visit and instead I was the one who received the most.

In Giving,

Robin