My grandmother passed away at this time last year and for some reason I've been keenly feeling her absence right now. I was tearing up the other day as I was driving down the road and as I frantically searched for a tissue to wipe my eyes, I remembered how my Grandma used to keep a tissue tucked in the front of her bra. That was enough to make me smile.
In the intervening years it has never crossed my mind to keep a supply of tissue in my bra, just in case, like my grandmother did. I no longer have to contemplate doing that because I now have a wonderful beau who is the gallant and old-fashioned type who always carries a clean handkerchief that he silently passes to me. He doesn't even bat an eye when I discreetly blow my nose in it and hand it back to him. THAT, my friends, is the definition of chivalry...
(Thanks to Beth for her blog entry that got me thinking about this)
I never believed I would get old. I bought into the whole '60's youth oriented culture and the Baby Boom idea that our generation had it all figured out, unlike those old folks that came before us. I always felt that age was a state of mind and because of that, I could be perpetually young. Now here I am on the other side of 40 and I'm finding out that I was mostly right.
I rationalize how much I like revisiting the past, however. Just because I reminisce I don't consider that to be an old behavior. Look at VH1. They are looking back in nostalgia at the '90's for crying out loud, and not the 1890's either. Is life coming at us so fast now that history becomes history that much sooner?
I have a friend who calls me up so we can watch the same TV programs via phone together (don't ask me why we don't just get in the car and go to each other's house, that would take all the fun out of it). He called me up last night and said "Quick. Turn on the History Channel." I was just in time to watch another amazing episode of "Modern Marvels". We marveled as we watched a farmer harvest his walnut crop from 2 months ago with this cool machine that shakes the tree trunks until the nuts fall off. You hear those footsteps? That's history sneaking up on you.
I think I stay young because I still find great pleasure in doing much of the fun things that I loved doing as a youth like bike riding, camping, and reading. Lots and lots of reading. And mainly what I call trashy novels. I love a good trashy novel. The trashier the better. I like being able to share my favorites with other people who like reading trashy novels too. Unfortunately, that usually relegates me to people my own age, as I find that today's young people haven't really discovered the joys of pulp fiction.
One of my 2006 goals is to write the great American (trashy) novel. My mind is cluttered with enough garbage that I'm sure I could do it. Wish me luck.
