Breakfast this morning at IHop with family.  Doesn’t get much better than that.  The family part, not necessarily the IHop part.  But I digress.  Spending what little time we had left with my husband’s family before our flight was important and mom needed to get to her Sunday school class, so 8:30 a.m. it was where I indulged in french toast, bacon and the repeat of the bird story for my son and daughter-in-law who did not hear the story last night (see yesterday’s blog).  More great laughter, although I’m pretty certain the story has run its course for my father-in-law.

The last couple of days have been all about the 60th Wedding Anniversary for my in-laws and it was wonderful, but there is always this undercurrent about age.  My goodness, 60 years?  That makes them 80 and almost 80.  How much time do we have left to spend with these wonderful people?  I suppose most people think of this as the sunset of their lives, although both of them are as sharp as tacks, still way on top of things, more than they think they are.  We look at average life spans, do the math and become slightly obsessed with it, usually in depressing or negative ways.

But this weekend I met a woman named Wanda.  I saw a car pull up to the door of the church where we had the party, heard my mother-in-law say something like, “oh my goodness, Wanda is here!” and my niece say, “Oh, isn’t she just the cutest thing?”, so I had to see for myself.  This beautiful little lady, dressed to the nines in her red coat and coifed hair walked in using a cane and quick, tiny little steps into the church, hugging everyone she saw.  Meet Wanda, age 103.  By the way, my mother-in-law is her Sunday school teacher.

This bright eyed, energetic “young” woman took over the room.  She either knew everyone or knew ABOUT them and had no difficulty entering into conversation with any of us.  At one point in the conversation I heard her say something like, “oh yes, I was reading about them on my Facebook page.  You should message me sometime!”  While most people assume that our interest in technology wanes after a certain age, Wanda seemed a master of social media, at least talking about it.  Both of my nieces, ages 18 and 21 just went on and one about how cute she was and I decided right then and there I want to be her when I grow up.

It got me thinking.  There’s longevity in this family.  My in-laws are only 80.  They could have another 20 years left.  When we decide in our minds that people who are a certain age are entering the end of their lives and have no interest in current events and technologies, we’re certainly selling them short.  I know how it makes me feel when my kids decide to talk about my age or my health like I’m falling apart.  All it takes is a bunch of people to tell me how old I’m getting for me to begin feeling like it.

On the way home on the plane, Doug got my attention to look out the window.  Just like the beginning of our trip, the clouds were a solid carpet of gray beneath us and the sunset merely reversed the colors of the sunrise a couple of days before, the dark blue of the sky and gray of the clouds separated by a rainbow of reds, pinks and oranges.  A perfect bookend for the weekend, the sunset not an ending, but the beginning of something new.  A necessity in order for the new day to come.  We need to learn to savor  the sunset.