I spent the summer before my senior year in high school at my grandparents’ retirement home in California. It was a very quiet summer with lots of reading, talking, and puzzles. My grandmother and I, in the era before dishwashers, had the nightly ritual of cleaning up after the evening meal. Her hands would be deep in one side of the the suds-filled sink scrubbing the plates and utensils, and I would wait for her to rinse them off in the clear water in the other half of the sink. Then I would carefully dry everything and put it away. I was surprised, even then, how little I minded this nightly chore, but it was a comfortable, cozy time in my grandmother’s kitchen with the sun slowly setting outside which we could just see through the orange tree in the front yard.
We would chat in a desultory manner about the day or whatever might be on our minds. I do not remember how this particular conversation got started, but I can still recall her saying at some point with some fervor as she rinsed off a pan, “I wouldn’t be 17 again for all the tea in China.” My teenage self was shocked to the core. I looked at my petite, gray-haired grandmother and could not believe she would not want to be young again. I was comfortable spending a quiet summer with this retired couple, but I had plans and things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go. Was she really content with her stage in life? In the hubris of youth I could not really believe it.
Now I am older than she was at the time she spoke those fateful words. And I find that I too would not want to be 17 again for all the Starbucks in Seattle. What I could not see at that age, even in a beloved grandmother, was all the living that had made her who she was. From my older perspective I can now see that in that quiet summer I was introduced to a life well-lived and complete, a gift I did not fully appreciate at the time.
Yes, being 17 would mean no wrinkles and no aches and pains, indeed all that youth brings to the table. But it would also mean learning again all the hard won knowledge gained after decades of facing life’s challenges. No, the tea in China can stay where it is.