Wisdom of the Ages - Part 1 When I’m 64

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, 

Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”

Last weekend I crawled up into our attic in which we have managed to store 27 years of our life, to find an Easter basket for Pop and Sam.  Unfortunately, in addition to our boxes of memories, decorations, books, baby clothes and assorted paraphernalia I found rat droppings and was consumed with the smell of animal pee.  Our attic had been breached and it looked like a family of rats had found their home.  I backed out of the attic with the realization that we could no longer put off this job.  The next day I spent two hours hunched over, dragging boxes to the opening where I unceremoniously passed them down to Pop and Sam, all the while praying that I wouldn’t come across anything alive.  It was not  pretty.  

We managed to move about 80 boxes of various sizes to the side yard along with quite an eclectic collection of furniture and various pieces of unidentified something or other – who knows.  We spent the next two days going through it all and sorting – toss, Goodwill, keep, can’t decide, who cares.  When you go through 27 years of stuff there is quite an array of emotions that come out.  I found myself alternately wistful, sad, melancholy, happy, forgiving, letting go . . . and more than anything else, I found myself feeling extremely blessed that I have been able to experience such a colorful and interesting life.  And finally, I felt old.  Only someone old could have this many memories of a life well lived.  What an incredible therapy session those two days were.  

I got rid of the cradle, the crib, the high chair and tossed momentos of anything that I could no longer remember happening.  I gave away books that I no longer had an interest in and our many walls of bookcases could no longer hold.  I kept a couple of boxes of childrens’ clothes because they reminded me of a special day or moment, pulled out and hung up my wedding dress to remind me of the best decision I ever made.  I found a pile of letters my first serious boyfriend had written to me that I had tied with a red ribbon.  I put those in the keep pile.  All of your Halloween costumes which Grandma had sewn went into a big trunk to await the grandchildren.  Deep in a box toward the end of our day, I found letters – lots and lots of letters from my Mom, my Aunt, my sisters, Colleen, my best friend from college and there were a pile of letters from another good friend, Peggy. 

That’s the pile I pulled out and tonight I started reading them.  Mostly they are from 1979 to 1982 when Peggy and I  were both at the beginning of our adult lives and loves.  I had forgotten so much.  What a joy it was to reread her words.  How I loved seeing one of her letters in my mailbox during those years.  She was one of the few people I ever knew who, when I read her letters, felt like she was sitting across the table from me.  

Some of them were about some pretty heavy topics and others were off the top of her head ramblings but I loved them all then and got equal enjoyment reading them these past few days.  It’s an interesting experience to read letters such as these 30 years later, looking back with a whole different perspective.  As always, when I have a glimpse of what I was like back then, my worries, my issues, I want to tell my past self  “kick back, shake it off, all is well, don’t sweat it.” 

I am 64.   And I love life. I think of all that I have been through over the years with Pop and our family.   The good was wonderful and the bad taught me so much about my life and love and relationships and priorities.  I feel wise and enjoy the way I am living my life but it has been a long road.  The best thing about being 64 is knowing you have learned something from those 64 years.  I see my 20 and 30 and 40 year old self in the younger nurses I work with and I remember being like that and I can see how far I have come.   It's good to know that I'm not so pig headed that I can't change.  Because I am, in fact, as you know, quite pig headed.  I have acquired a lot of wisdom.  At every decade, because I know so much more than I did the previous decade, I think I know it all.  And then I enter the next decade and realize how little I knew.  Today I wonder, what is it that I haven’t figured out?  What will I learn in the next decade?  I want to know now.  I want to get ahead of the game.