Memory is like a backpack you packed for a long trip and you are unpacking it years later after spending months on the trail. – Ugh! that smells bad. I thought that shirt was green. Are those my sox?

Digging around in my bag of experience to recall what younger me thought and felt when in my twenties or thirties. He was not thinking much about elderly people. They weren’t on his cultural radar unless they were relatives. Even then they didn’t warrant much thought. He didn’t feel their identity within him. They were not current. Regardless of what knowledge or skills they might have had,  it was dated and no longer relevant. They were place markers.

Now when the roles are reversed and I am “elderly” the rub of that kind of discrimination chafes painfully. Admittedly I am getting a dose of my own medicine (as my grandmother used to say). Cleverly, I now see the errors of my youth. I would like to connect to travelers who are walking this trail behind me. Some close behind. Some further back.

You may carry a day pack and I a steamer trunk and still have a lot to offer each other. Jus’ sayin’.