Thrive!

I love old ladies.

Take my friend Claudene for instance. She recently had another hip sergery.  Not a whimper or a whine — just surgery and then nothing but tough.

I asked her, “Why don’t you whine?”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” she replies.

There you go.

She recovered so fast after her surgery that I didn’t get out to see her at the hospital like I did for her first hip surgery. She didn’t have a word of complaint or criticism about that.  I like old people who are easy on you, who have learned to keep their mouths shut a lot.

Take my friend Louise.

She had a stroke awhile back. Tough go of it. She couldn’t talk for some time after the stroke which must have been hard for her because she is world class talker.  She is a super talker — funny, dry, wry and fly.

Indeed, Louise is one of the smartest, coolest conversationalists  I know —  liberal, fiesty, free of spirit, spunky even sassy. I like those kind of women; they keep it  real, and fun.

Louise doesn’t spar like she used to, but that twinkle is still in her eyes and I know those flip comments are still running through her head.

Of course not all old ladies are like these two; there are some cranky, negative, narrow-mined octogenarians.

But the ones I know are mostly calm — they don’t carry weapons — and they seem to be at peace with themselves and others.

What is it? What is the good the years can do to us?

I think it is this: we are better when we are old enough that we have nothing much left to prove — but we still wear a little lipstick. I think we are better when  we don’t care so much what others think — except when we watch the news at night and humph a little.  I believe we are better when we have seen and done pretty much everything — short of stuff that would have put us in prison — and when we know we didn’t do anthing perfectly and so we don’t expect anyone else to either.

What I like is the well-seasoned wisdom that isn’t interested in telling other people what to do but more into just enjoying people as they are.

Some of the old ladies I know, Claudene and Louise are among them, meet together for Bible study and fun. They talk, and they learn, and they take care of each other a bit, and laugh a lot. They are led by one of my very gracious friends, Glee, a real lover of people, another one who knows how to  speak only positive things, a wise woman among wise women.

I don’t know a more fun bunch of people than this group.

Well-seasoned ladies, who have been through it, who don’t whine much, who have outlived their more fragile men —  well most of them — and who know how to shut up a lot and how to talk a lot and how to eat heartily — and stay off a bathroom scale mostly — and  poke fun a lot with out being critical or mean — I love them!