Getting older

I was walking this morning (in keeping with my 'I'm gonna be grateful when I feel well resolution).  Trying to get/keep my 50-something body at least moving if not in tiptop shape.  Sailing along at what I felt was a good heart-pumping clip, I heard a steady shuff, shuff and the click of a dog's toenails on the path.  A 70-something woman with her dog passed me. Jogging. 
She even had the breath to say good morning.  Sigh.

Which brings up the subject of old-age mentors, especially women.

One is my friend Theo.  I miss our lunches together, she always had something new to show or tell me.  She's in her late 70's (I think) and still travels the US and the world.  She's not rich but manages to get to where she needs to go, she volunteers at a food bank, attends church, keeps in touch with her 11 (count 'em, eleven) children and myriads of grandchildren and great granchildren and I think there's a great, great in there somewhere.  She's weaves, knits, paints, sews. 

When I get older I want to be like her.  Traveling and doing and enjoying life. 

Another is my Aunt Carrie Dale.  She's in her 80's and tends a HUGE garden (butter beans, sweet potatoes, peas), makes butter, helps kill the hogs, cooks on a wood stove in the summertime (she says because she likes it), sews, attends church and helps her kids when they need it.  She recently came to visit and my cousin, she and I went to the Grand Canyon.  It was a long trip and she did as well or better than my cousin and I.

When I get older I want to be like her.  Have a purpose and be productive and grateful for what I have.

My mother is another influence.  Although she didn't get to be old, she loved to travel, loved her children and grandchild, her nephews and nieces, and loved to read.  She enjoyed being with her best friend Francine.  Family and friends were the most important things to her. 

Everytime she left for somewhere she would tell me that she was spending my inheritance.  I didn't mind....I wish she was still spending it. 

When I get older I want to be like her.  Kind, self-assured, with people to love and people that love me.

So... with the older woman today-I have another mentor. 

When I get older I want to be like her.  Still moving and with enough breath to say good morning to people I meet on the trail.