Age

I spent this past weekend back in the Motherland, Arkansas, visting family and celebrating the pending nuptials of my brother and his fiancee with a small bridal shower.  The day before the shower I slept in a bit, curled up in the same room I occupied during my Hurricane Katrina semester, when I spent hours sitting on the floor of that bedroom wondering what was underwater. I stared at the ceiling for awhile that morning, the same way I did over five years ago, curious what my former self would think of Rachel Now.

After a deliciously humid run (I miss that sticky heat), my mom and I headed over to the assisted living facility where my Mamaw and Onis (my stepgrandad, alternate grandfather, pinch hitter gramps...I love him dearly, but he's not my Papaw) now live.  We sat on a couch and watched them do their quasi-aerobics (head turns and arm waving) and then returned to their room and chatted with them and their physical therapist as they continued their exercises.

The hills around my Mamaw's home provided a rougher run than I'm used to, and my quads were singing while I nestled in their overly warm room on a couch I've taken naps on since childhood.  As I watched Onis concentrate to maintain his balance while the therapist pushed him lightly from side to side, the ache in my thighs made a firm underline (not quite an exclamation point) beneath the image of progressing age.

Onis is 100. He struggles to maintain his energy. Headaches and stomach pains often leave him quiet and frustrated. He doesn't hear well but hates to be spoken to in a loud voice, so conversations are a delicate balance of louder-than-normal talking and repitition. But he smiles easily, he has a solid, endearing laugh, and he loves my Mamaw well. To be 100 and still be able to recognize and cherish so many family members, still eat a helping of fried chicken, still mutter his prayers with the same reverence of ten prior decades...it's a beautiful thing.

I watched him and my Mamaw, with my mother laughing and telling stories beside them, and recognized how quickly it all seems to move sometimes. Marriages, babies, graduations fall in line like dominoes, each child and grandchild checking off various social boxes, stumbling over proverbial hurdles, celebrating serendipity and love, as they march down the path God crafted for them.  And most of those milestones are easily shared, easily savored.  The physical ones are trickier.  Individual pains, difficulties, just become internal and I don't know that any family could handle the anxieties of all its members, the multiple heartaches and daydreams of growing up and aging.

I ran a mere seven miles that morning, burdened by heat I was unaccustomed to, and felt rather disappointed in myself that I did not push myself over more hills.  And a couple hours later I watched my Mamaw practice walking.  Walking. 

I take for granted the ease with which I can force my body to accomplish what I set before it.  More importantly, I take for granted the length of time set before me and those I love. I lived with my Mamaw and Onis for five months while my former home dug itself out from under Katrina.  And I took for granted the ease with which they could sit at the dinner table with me, watch Law and Order with me, play games, and give me hugs before bed.  I took for granted every "I love you," because despite having lost two grandfathers so far, there is some piece of my heart that feels grandparents are eternal.  Stones.  Diamonds.  Unshakable forces that cannot be brought down by bad lungs, bad knees, multiple decades.

I know that I took them for granted less this weekend.  Loved my Mamaw in her purple outfit, her purple silk scarf, her perfect lipstick and rouge, her smile watching her future granddaughter-in-law open boxes of napkins and rolling pins and gravy boats.  Loved Onis as he sauntered slowly down the hall, as he valiantly let Mamaw talk him into exercise class, as he smiled at stories of Scotland and told the same stories of Harrison, Arkansas we'd all heard a million times.

It makes me sad to think that they are old, that one day my parents will be old, that I will be old. But it also humbles me to know that God gave them all to me, that I should be born into such a family of which I am so unworthy, that He would surround me with love and stories and strong, beautiful, Godly women and men who cherish their children so well.  The genes of my parents gave me tough, sturdy knees, capable of climbing humidity-laced hills on a morning run.  But beyond flesh, I am simply grateful to have a family that, itself, is sturdy. Strong.