I think I was born with an old soul because I often connect on a deeper level with folks twice my age than I do with my own peers. My mom passed some of these geriatric genes down to me. She was a lover and an appreciator of anything that had a layer of dust on it and historical relevance including homes, antique furniture, past lives, archaological digs, ghosts - you get the point - she liked things that creaked and groaned. And on a cold winter day, I would often find her sitting in our family home's window seat wrapped in a throw knitting while re-reading one of her favorite Victorian novels like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. She liked to escape the modern world, losing herself in these novels, and perhaps romanticizing about being swept away from her hum drum life in Vermont by a Mr. Darby. I think my mom would have been happier living out her life in Victorian England than in the 50's and 60's as a California girl and later as a grown woman raising kids in the 80's and 90's. As much as my mom loved to learn about the past from books, I'm more apt to have one on one conversations with the elderly. The thing is I don't see these folks as old. I see past the wrinkles and hunched over backs and find the giggling little girl or spirited boy still glowing strongly within. Most of us never stop being kids; it's just our exterior that starts breaking down. One of my favorite things to do as a young girl was to sit next to my grandfather in his winged-back chair and listen to stories of what it was like to be a kid growing up in NYC before there were cars, refrigerators, and paved streets. He'd get animated talking about hot summer days in the city chasing trucks delivering blocks of ice to people's homes and catching the ice chips as they fell off the back or playing stick ball in the dusty streets. But it's not just the stories of how different things were "back then". Some of the conversations that have moved me the most have been with much older women and how their life experiences are timeless and hence, not much different than my own. I was very close to my ex-husband's grandmother, Nan. She was probably some 50 years older than myself when I knew her and yet I felt like a giddy schoolgirl when we chatted. She shared everything from marital secrets with me that brought her to tears as well as what life was life in Austria before WWII took that all away from her and her husband. We were friends and I miss her terribly. And I have such joyous memories of my own grandmother, Gannie, taking my sister and me on nature walks and identifying every little thing we found on the ground and high up in the trees. Or swimming at the Dartmouth pool and laughing so loudly in the showers later that our voices echoed off the walls. She was spunky and full of life. I wish more people would look at our elders not as decrepit, aging people but as young people trapped inside a crumbling body. We have so much to learn from them and I can't wait to have more moments where I'm moved by my talks with these wise people.