There are plenty of ways to feel old these days. The list is as “long” as I am “in the tooth.” And if you recognize that ancient idiom you too are probably no spring chicken.
When my 11-year-old granddaughter came to me with a request, I have to admit to being flattered. She wanted me to be the subject of a sixth-grade writing project that involved an extensive history of someone she knew. So of course I felt special.
Until she informed me I was her choice because “you are the oldest person I know.”
My dismay was tempered, however, when I remembered a similar literary assignment my daughter took on when she was a schoolkid some 25 years ago. She interviewed my mother, and in doing so I too learned new details I’d never taken the time to ask about.
I treasured that completed assignment far longer than any others and would bring it out from time to time because it made me feel closer to Mom, who lived a good 12 hours away. And it made me appreciate that unique connection between young and old we often don’t think much about until it is too late. When my mother died I searched high and low for that classroom essay but too many years and too many moves had passed. And that little piece of history became a lost treasure.
And so, even though ageism was the reason I was selected for my granddaughter’s assignment, I was excited to take part in it. For one thing, she and I would get a chance to connect in a special way. And who knows: Maybe some of my own history would survive the years, someday reaching even younger generations who would be intrigued by a life that existed through “one of the most dramatic technological and cultural transformations in human history.”
(By the way, I got that quote from ChatGPT, which only goes to show just how much this journalist, who once used a typewriter to peck away at prose, has seen in a lifetime.)
For a whole hour my granddaughter and I sat around the kitchen table while she peppered me with questions aimed at hitting the highs and lows of my seven decades of life. I didn’t even care that they were prepared by the teacher, only that when she asked them, I saw curiosity in her eyes.
Turns out I had a rather exciting beginning: a birth that even made the state newspapers after the National Guard from Chicago had to fly an equipment part to a tiny hospital in western Kansas because the lung machine that was keeping my premature body alive broke down in the middle of the night.
The years that followed were not nearly as newsworthy, although I could tell my granddaughter was both fascinated and horrified when I described the way we slaughtered the same chickens my siblings and I would play with as they were fattened to become Mom’s delicious fried dinners.
I recall my daughter being similarly intrigued when her grandmother described survival on a farm in the “Dirty Thirties” of the Great Depression. And it hit me as I responded to my granddaughter that she viewed my childhood equally as alien.
“You could only get one channel on your TV?” she asked, her voice even more incredulous when I told her our family of 10 got hauled around in a Chevy Impala — sans seatbelts.
For some time now I’ve noticed that, except for school projects like this, younger generations show little interest in getting to know old people. One of my most vivid childhood memories – up there with butchering chickens – was my sister and me going through the bottom dresser drawer in our parents’ bedroom, sorting through hundreds of old family pictures and marveling – at times giggling – at the ancient hairstyles and fashions our parents and grandparents wore when their faces were unlined by time.
Dozens of questions would pop into our minds. And our mother, always busy no matter what the time or day, would settle in with us — recalling, explaining, sometimes growing teary-eyed.
We would do this way-back activity on a regular basis, examining every black and white photo that offered a glimpse into an intriguing part of our own history. But I’m not sure kids do that anymore? Mine never showed that same interest in sifting through boxes of old family photos, including dozens I inherited from that bottom dresser drawer. Nor have the grandkids, who can’t seem to get enough of themselves on TikTok and who rarely even see a printed picture except in school yearbooks, under refrigerator magnets or in family room frames.
I suppose I do sound long in the tooth.
Which brings me back to my granddaughter’s school project. After hundreds of questions over four separate interviews, she made it into my present life. And when she read her work back to me, my first thought was: Is that all there is?
My second thought: Will anyone care?
Once it has served its academic purpose, who knows where this small piece of written history will end up. I’d like to think it won’t get get lost in life’s hustle and bustle and that someday down the road, this school essay will get read and reread with a growing understanding of how each of us are chapters in an ongoing narrative.
And that makes us part of something far more lasting than words on a paper.
dcrosby@tribpub.com
