Longevity

I have always been fascinated with oddities, prodigies, myths, frauds and other like subjects. When I was a kid I use to study the Guinness Book of World Records until the binding cracked, and it's pages became heavily thumbed and dogeared. Eventually the book would become almost unreadable. But there was always the next years edition. Some of my favorite topics in the book were human oddities; the world's tallest man, the the heaviest man, etc..etc... However, the one that I was always the most curious with was the oldest living person. When I was 8 years old back when America was celebrating it's Bicentennial I went on vacation with my family to Well's Beach in Maine. My family had been renting the same cottage on the beach for decades from a family that we had gotten to know. However, it had been a few years since we had been up there, and being only 8 I had no recollection of having been there before. This year we went with my grandparents. We arrived late at night and I recall walking up some stairs to the front door of a large cottage near to the smaller one that we would be staying in. There was a dim light on the porch and we knocked. When the door opened I was amazed to see one of the oldest people that I had ever set my eyes on. She was the matriarch of the family, nearly 100 years old flanked by her two eldery sons, who, at the time were probably as old as my grandparents who were both nearing 70. She was so old that her wizened face appeared to made of peanut shells. Her hair was a wispy white. It struck me funny at first at how small she was, shrunken and stooped by age I was able to look at her straight in the eyes without looking up. She held herself in a very dignified manner but when she noticed my twin brother and me with our thick wavy red hair she could not resist reaching out with her attenuated and bony hands and run the hair through her fingers. "My, how big they are getting"  I can remember her saying. Of course, I had no recollection of her. It is funny how elderly people have different perceptions of the younger generations. I can remember when I was about 32 my great-aunt (who was around 95 at the time) taking my mother aside and telling her (while pointing to me) "He is getting so tall" Did she still believe that I was growing up at age 32? Perhaps out...but hardly up!

     History tells us of people that have supposedly lived to extreme ages. The Old Testament patriarchs were suppose to have lived for hundreds of years led by Methuselah who was said to be 969 years old when he passed. Of course, this is absurd. The human body without some sort of futureistic scientific interference is not made to last more than about 5 score. The chance of a person reaching 100 is rare, reaching 110 extremely rare, and 120 almost non existent. According to the Guinness Book the oldest documented person was a French woman named Jeanne Calment who lived to the age of 122. She died in 1997. Currently, it appears that the oldest person in the world is a woman living in Georgia U.S.A. who was born in 1896. There are, however, undocumented cases of people living to age 130 and beyond.

     It has been years since I have been to Well's Beach. My grandparents are long dead, as is the old matriarch of Wells, who if she were still alive would probably be blowing out 130 candles or more. Yet the memory of this woman remains with me, even if my only recollection of her is of her running her hands through my hair smiling behind an aged but kindly face. I often wonder how much history I had contacted that night back in 1976. When she was a young girl of 8, with a smooth face, full of hope, beauty, and youth, an eternity away from the peanut shell she would become, the ocean was still in the majestic age of sail which was at that time nearing it's end. Yankee Clippers ruled the sea, sails flapping in the breeze, while their tall masts on the horizon reached for the infinite and beyond. There were no automobiles, and people were living without electricity. One thing, however, remains the same, and that is the surf. At night one can still go out on the beach and look out across the dark expanse of ocean and imagine the times of old while the waves and the wind continue to perform their repetitious but melodious sound... as they have for eons. On this Mother's Day, the matriarch lives in them.