99 questions to ask your grandparents #64

64. Who were the oldest people you knew growing up? What did you learn from them?

Mind! When I was smaller and people were taller I thought everyone over twenty years old was quite old. At ten years I thought my grandparents were ancient when in fact they were in their 50s or their 60s. I remember an aunt had on her bulletin board a birthday card with a little old lady in a rocking chair on the cover with the words “You are thirty”.

I have a vague memory of meeting my maternal great-grandmother who was in a wheelchair at the time. She fascinated me people could live that long. She may have been only in her 80s. My father would take me and Brother #2 to see his great-aunt Marion, who was the wife of his grandfather’s brother. Goodness knows how old she was. As she lived independently in her home she couldn’t have been too decrepit.

I can’t say I really learned anything from them. They didn’t sit me down to tell me how to get to where they were. Even if they had I probably wouldn’t have listened, being a child and therefore what they said didn’t apply to me.

Now that I am in my sixties (keep you voice down) I don’t feel old nor anything like the ersatz-ancients from my youth. I wonder of old people today ‘aren’t as old’ as previous generations. I wonder if my nephew, who is ten years old and well under four feet, thinks me as ancient as I saw my elders at his age. He certainly doesn’t ask me for advice and I doubt he would listen if I tried.

I should try to respond to the question. I learned how to relate to others at home and in public. That money and fancy things aren’t important. Try to be a good person. Tale care of others, especially the oldsters in the family. Go to funerals and write sympathy cards; what you say doesn’t matter, what is important is you showed up.

In the end what oldsters say to youngsters doesn’t really matter. What you model is what counts. As James Levine say in ‘Into the woods’:

Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
Co learn what to be
Careful before you say “Listen to me”
Children will listen.

That’s all I got to say on the subject.