Seventy And Starting Now

Seventy, and a kitchen you do not know.

You have lived in that house for most of your adult life. You know where everything is. You could find the good scissors in the dark.

And you have never had to make a meal in it, because for forty six years somebody else did, and it was not a decision anybody made, it was simply the shape the marriage took in the first year and then it stayed.

Now it is quiet at six in the evening, and you make tea, and you have something with the tea, and that is dinner more nights than you would say out loud.

Your daughter asks what you have been eating. You say something reassuring. She half believes it.

And the thought of starting now, at seventy, with a body that is slower and hands that are not what they were, arrives with a particular weight on it: what would be the point.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

Nobody in this article thinks a woman of seventy should already know how to do this.

There is no age at which not knowing becomes shameful. There is no window that closed. And nobody here is going to say it is never too late in a bright voice, because that sentence is usually said by somebody who has not sat in a quiet kitchen at six in the evening.

Hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works

There is a prayer in the Psalms written by somebody old, and it does not ask to be excused.

O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation. (Psalm 71:17, King James Version)

Now also when I am old and grayheaded.

The man is not winding down. He is asking for something further, and the word until is doing the work: until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation. There is something still ahead of him and he intends to reach it.

You are somebody with an until still in front of you, and being old and grayheaded has never once meant there was nothing further ahead. Psalm 71:17 has an old man asking for more rather than for release, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman sitting in a quiet kitchen at six.

And notice the first half of the verse, because it is the reason he can ask.

Thou hast taught me from my youth. He is not claiming to have arrived knowing. He is describing a lifetime of being taught, which means the teaching was happening the whole way through, and there is no suggestion anywhere that it has now finished.

The one who taught him at twenty is the one he is speaking to at seventy, and he does not seem to think the arrangement has changed.

You have been taught your whole life by somebody who has not stopped, and reaching seventy has never once ended anybody's lessons. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who thinks the learning years are behind her, and Psalm 71:17 puts the teaching from youth and the asking in old age in the same breath.

What would be the point is the real question

Here is the practical half, and it is not about technique. The question underneath this is not can I. It is what would be the point, and that question deserves a straight answer rather than encouragement.

Here is the answer. The point is that you eat something warm, sitting down, this evening. That is the whole of it. It is not to become a cook, it is not to impress your daughter, and it is certainly not to make up for lost time, because there is no lost time to make up.

A woman of seventy eating something she made, at her own table, is not a step toward anything. It is the thing itself.

And there is a second answer underneath the first, and it is about the six o'clock quiet. Tea and something with the tea is not a meal, and your body knows it, and more importantly the evening knows it. Cooking takes twenty minutes and fills a room with a smell and gives the hour a shape. That is not advice about your body. That is what a kitchen does to a house that has gone quiet.

You have been asking what the point is, and the point is this evening, and a meal made by somebody at seventy has never once needed to lead anywhere to be worth making. Psalm 71:17 keeps an old man asking for the next thing rather than accounting for the last, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman in a house that goes quiet at six.

And one thing about the hands, since it is real.

If your hands are slower, the answer is to go slower. Not to do less. A pan does not mind how long anything takes, and nobody is timing this, and the only thing that changes when a seventy year old cooks instead of a thirty year old is the pace.

You have as much time as the evening has, and slower hands have never once been the same thing as hands that cannot. The Spirit of God is the one standing beside somebody taking her time at a counter, and Psalm 71:17 has a grayheaded man asking to be kept for what is still ahead.

What tonight is

So here is the assignment. Cook one thing tonight, however simple, and eat it sitting down at the table.

Tonight. One thing. Keep it genuinely small: eggs with something in them. Rice with an egg on it. Something in a pan that ends up on toast. Do not go out and get anything, and use what is already in that kitchen, which after a life of shopping is a great deal.

It may not be good. That is expected, and it is information about a first attempt rather than information about you, and nobody is coming to look.

You are making one evening warm rather than starting a project, and a first meal at seventy has never once owed anybody a good result. Psalm 71:17 asks for the strength to be shown in what is still ahead, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stove with somebody going slowly.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. Eat it sitting down, at the table, on a plate, with the chair pulled in. Not in the armchair, not with the television, and not standing in the kitchen. The table is the point of this. Tea in an armchair is what six o'clock has been, and this evening is going to be something else.

You are sitting at your own table rather than getting through an hour, and a table laid for one has never once been a lesser table. The Spirit of God is the one at that table with a plate and a chair pulled in, and Psalm 71:17 has an old man expecting to show God's strength to a whole generation.