CHILDREN UNDER 12 AND ADULTS OVER 60

My wife and I spent a few days in the Allegheny Mountains about two hours from us. (I know, calling them “mountains” to our friends in Spokane would give them a hardy chuckle. Having lived there, I know what a real mountain looks like.) It was good to just get away, really relax, take some long walks, breathe in the fresh “mountain” air. We could have stayed longer but our walking trail around the golf course was interrupted by the sound of gun shots from deer hunters in the nearby woods. But it was enough.

On one of our walks we trekked around Little Flipper Lake, a place set aside for fishing for, as the sign read, “Children under 12 and adults over 60.” Fifteen years ago when I was 60 I probably would have taken that as sort of a slap in the face. I wasn’t decrepit, slow of foot, needed help in any way. And even though my body is slower to heal, when sitting too long causes me to groan when I stand up, when I am slower of foot because of three hip surgeries, I now take that sign as a compliment.

I am not too old to play. And, in fact, maybe that is what part of aging is to be about: playing, especially playing with children under 12, being a grandparent to your own grandchildren if they don’t live too far away and being a stand-in grandparent to those whose grandparents are too far away or who have none. I know one of the privileges I missed growing up was not having a grandparent to play with me.

I survived, of course, because I had great parenting. But grandparents, real or substitute, are special. Ask any grandchild. Our youngest, Carter, thinks I hung the moon. But then, the feeling is mutual. Being with children under 12 keeps us young. They also open our eyes to realities we have often shut them to as we grow older. For Carter, who is three, the world is wonderful. Everything is interesting and he can’t get enough of it.

Even more so, everyone is equal. Carter’s daycare class is filled with kids of all races and mixed races. He doesn’t see color. He sees someone just like him: a kid to get to know, to play with, to learn with and learn from and even to do some teaching himself. The only way Carter will think he is or they are different is if his parents tell him so, and they will not, that is for certain.

We were all that way once. We did not recognize differences or, if we did, we didn’t think they mattered very much. We knew our parent’s car was different from the car our friend’s parents drove, but a car was a car. Differences didn’t matter. They still don’t even though, sadly, we, as a nation and world, seem to think and act as if they do, much to our sadness and loss, a very real loss.

That sign at Little Flipper Lake made me smile. It also made me thankful that no matter how old we get, no matter how much our steps slow or our muscles weaken, we have a real and important place in this world. We always have even though we sometime lose that place. And, lest we forget, so do children under 12. They have so much to re-teach us, lessons we have forgotten, lessons this world needs to re-learn and put back into practice. Thanks, Carter, for your continual reminder.