Devotional
Love Knows No Age
by Wendy Mathewson
Dancing the Bunny Hop
at a Mardi Gras Party
Nana opened the beautifully carved trunk, inlaid with diamond-shaped
mother of pearl, and pulled out the dress, wrapped in tissue
paper. "I wore this to your Uncle Brad's wedding in 1976,"
she said.
It did not look like any mother-of-the-groom dress I had ever
seen. As the paper slipped off the wrinkle-resistant, synthetic
fabric, I saw a spectrum of colors in a large, bold, paisley
pattern. Orange, yellow, red and green shapes splashed over a
deep blue background. The dress was sleeveless-with a matching
sheer jacket and long sophisticated scarf for flinging around
one's neck.
"What do you think?" she asked me.
"Well, I don't know . . ." I said, trying to imagine
myself reading a psalm at my friends' wedding in Glasgow, Scotland,
wearing this loud outfit which seemed to say, "Hooray! Where's
the party?"
I had doubts about my decision to wear that dress, especially
as I looked out from the lectern and saw everyone else in the
church conservatively dressed in black wool.
A few weeks after I returned from the wedding, my mother told
me that Nana wanted the dress back. "Why?"
I asked. My mom supposed Nana wanted the dress back for sentimental
reasons.
Nana had been doing a lot of traveling with my Great Uncle
Grant, her brother-in-law-their deceased spouses were brother
and sister. They careened all over the country in his Lincoln
Continental, visiting family and friends. After their visit to
see me at seminary in Chicago, I told my mother I suspected that
there was something going on between them. "No!" she
said incredulously. "You've heard Nana say she doesn't want
to take care of any old man. They're just friends-traveling companions.
After all, they're both in their 80's."
"And guess what she's wearing at her wedding!" my
mom demanded on the phone a couple of months later. She didn't
wait for me to guess. "That paisley dress you took to Glasgow!"
We, the family, found out about the wedding-and the new status
of their relationship-a few days before the ceremony.
"Just like teenagers" was the general feeling. Cuddling,
flirting, stealing glances, whispering terms of endearment: Nana
and Uncle Grant were in love. Nana glowed. You could see that
she felt beautiful and valuable. Nana used to hate having her
picture taken, clucking derisively when we told her how pretty
she looked. Now Uncle Grant takes hundreds (maybe thousands)
of pictures of her (and everything else) and she sends them to
us in the mail.
"You know," Nana told me recently, "babies
don't survive without human touch. Everybody needs some hugs."
Like the good Presbyterian she is, Nana has always been very
open with me about sexuality, love, her body-nothing is taboo.
We laughed together about her wedding night with Uncle Grant.
She told me that if you stay interested in life and curious about
things, then your sexuality in your old age will be like it was
when you were younger: exciting and wonderful.
Of course, Nana wore that dress at her wedding. It was her
statement: "I am fully human, a beloved woman, and my life
is exciting and wonderful." I hope that in the course of
my life, I have plenty of occasions to borrow Nana's dress again.
God who sees us, thank you for the gifts of our humanity-for
the ways your love is reflected in our whole selves. Help us
to sense the beauty and value that you see in each of us, and
grant us healthy ways to experience the wonderful excitement
of being fully human, created in your image.
Wendy Mathewson is a student at McCormick Theological Seminary
and spent part of this year as a PC(USA) Young Adult Volunteer
at Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
When mission volunteers were evacuated from Jerusalem, she continued
her service to the church by joining the Middle East Office in
the Worldwide Ministries Division, PC(USA).
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