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Henry Hooper, born 1954

Suddenly Seventy: First in a Series

It seems like it was just the other day that I wrote the first Witness Post labeled as Suddenly Sixty. Turn around and a decade has passed. Ten years of teaching high schoolers and here you go. Days zipping along.

Tracy and I celebrate 40 years of marriage this month (May) this year (2024) and that time frame also seems immensely compressed. We have been rewatching some videos we took of our daughters in their childhood. What a throw back those are: birthday parties, holiday gatherings, summer vacations, school concerts, and all of the day-by-day elements of raising three remarkable women! We have the most video evidence and stories of the first years of life from our younges childt, because that is when we bought our first camcorder. Before that time it was all still photos. What a richer experience those live action videos make!

We converted all of those videos on to a flash drive, which we duplicated and gave one to each of our girls. What a great gift to give to our children as they review their lives and put together the mental and visual images of who they were, who they are, and who they want to become. Life has lots of twists and turns, so having a way to look behind, makes the journal all that more memorable and enjoyable. At least from the vantage point of 70 years.

Hooper clan in Devon, PA, fall of 1955

It seems like “just the other day,” when I was speaking with my grandmother, Mildred Anderson Hooper, when she exclamed out loud, “OH, to be SEVENTY again!” Since she was approaching 90 at the time, I can now appreciate her comment profoundly. Yet here I am, looking forward to my seventies and not anticipating those years as being better than the last decade. It is hard to gain perspective at the beginning or even in the middle of life events.

My brothers talk about this time in our lives as moving throught the stages of the GO-GO years, followed by the SLOW-GO years and ending with the NO-GO years. How will our decades progress (or regress) as we get further down the line?

We shall see …