There's beauty in sundowns and old age

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

JUPITER, Fla. - At a friend's condo, ten stories above the ground, we are transported from winter to summer.

The condo is all glass and balcony, the indoors like the outdoors only with comfortable furniture. Our bedroom faces east. The kitchen faces west. For the four days we are here, we wake up early every morning to watch the sun rise and hurry back each evening to see it set.

Back home, day runs into night, the sky going from ink to navy to pale blue. Then night seeps into day. Sometimes a sunrise will splatter pinks and blues into the mix and sometimes the sun will set in a blaze of orange and we'll notice and say, "Look." But mostly, the sun rises and the sun sets and we, because of latitude and tall buildings and our own preoccupations, don't even look up.

Here, with the Atlantic on the east and the Intracoastal Waterway on the west and no buildings or trees or obligations to get in the way, the sun does its one-man show and we take our front-row seats. It enters left. It exits right.

There is a lesson here. There is always a lesson in nature but we've built on and paved over so much of it that nature has a hard time getting through to us.

First a question: Is the sun setting any less of a miracle than the sun rising? Is it less impressive and inspiring as it creeps out of sight than when it crawls into the sky? Of course not. Rising or setting, the sun is the sun.

The lesson? That beginning or ending, a life is still a life - impressive and inspiring.

That's not what our culture says, though. Our culture treats anything having to do with old age as a disease and old people as if they have lost something. Our culture tells us that age is something to be "treated," and that with the right "treatment" we can escape its grip.

But no matter how much we walk and jog, or nip and tuck, we will all grow old. If we live long enough, we will get wrinkles and our hair will get thin and we will grow frail and lose some eyesight and some hearing and be unsteady on our feet and have trouble remembering.

This is part of life. It's natural.

Think about this: An infant doesn't remember and nobody scolds him and says he should. A 4-month-old can't walk and no one says, "What a shame." A 10-year-old can't drive to town and no one expects her to. We anticipate dependency in the young and make allowances for it. We don't see it as an aberration. It is what it is. "I'm sorry I'm slow," the old say. "I'm sorry I can't get there by myself." "I'm sorry to bother you." Children never have to say they're sorry.

People get old. They fail. They need help. It's the sun setting. It's the way the world works and railing against it and pretending that this won't happen to us or to the people we love, then acting dumbfounded when it does, is ridiculous. All the wailing and fist-shaking can't stop the sun from going down and if we lament every time it does, imagine all the beauty we miss.

And there is beauty in old age. We just don't see it because we live in a youth-obsessed society that places more value on smooth skin than on heart and experience and wisdom. But it's there. Tall buildings don't obscure it and neither does latitude. It's attitude that gets in the way. Society's.

Society teaches us one thing while life teaches us another.