The Beauty Of Wrinkles

As a small child, who knew nothing of the evils of aging and wrinkles because no one told us they were ugly or bad. We went to our grandparents' farm in summer to stay as long as we wished, all the cousins together, boys and girls, because no one told us we couldn't or shouldn't. We were welcomed naturally. We all slept in one big bed under one huge feather quilt. The farm was just there in all of its wondrous freedoms and delights. No one told us, while there, where we should go or what we should do. We were not warned of dangers. We figured out the dangers of deep water under the waterfall and how to avoid going to the orchard when the bears were in the apple trees. We could hear the bears in the blackberry bushes that we both shared. No one talked at us. We knew naturally what to do and what not to do.  It was a hobby farm which supplied food for my beloved grandparents, now retired to BC from their grain farm in Saskatchewan,  and one that, in a relaxed sort of way, did everything a farm should do and be, but with no apparent time stresses or hard rules. There was a hay barn that had cows on one side and horses on the other. They didn't seem to like to be together apparently. We took turns shoveling out the dung laughing the whole time and learning the smells of each animal that provided farm food. We saw Gramma's vegetable garden and no one told us not to eat peas off the vine or tomatoes or pull up carrots to munch as fresh as they could be. No one explained anything on the farm, it was simply there to see and watch and participate in, as we pleased. We could collect warm eggs from under the hens, dump slops for the pigs, and watch Gramma milk the cows before the sun came up or in the evening when we got to carry the lantern and watch her squirt milk from the cows to the barn cats no one ever fed or worried about. We saw how butchering took place and we were shown animal organs and learned their colours. It didn't seem cruel or disgusting. No one "taught" us, we simply looked and learned lessons we didn't know until years later. In the evening, the coal oil lamps were lit and we sat at the long oilcloth covered farm table and played rummy with Grampa who nearly always won but we didn't mind. Before bedtime, Gramma made bowls of her rye bread torn into warm milk with brown sugar. Sometimes, at night,  we crawled into their bed with them and were welcomed to cuddle up against their flannelette nightgowns. There was only love and trust and warmth and freedom and all the joys of childhood on the farm. Sometimes we would brush our red-headed Gramma's hair and look at her wrinkles with wonder and ask her why we didn't have them. We loved the wrinkles because we loved our grandparents who never said a bad or angry word to us. We respected their love and trusted it. "Why don't we get these?" we asked about their wrinkles and all they would say is that one day we would have some, don't worry. Wrinkles were beautiful and we envied them. We wanted them, too. Running our little hands over their wrinkled hands, we learned about beauty and that it was inside our grandparents who loved us all and seemed to have endless time to be with us but never to talk at us. Their language "from the old country" was not the same as ours but that didn't matter at all. It wasn't about words. It was about love.