I have always considered myself to be a listener. I love to hear the stories of others, and how and where they grew up. I make a mind-video of the person. I think of the times when they were little in New York or Alabama, and if we are near the same age, I know that we were little together, but far apart. Our era makes us one, like a marriage of people who were all born into the same world at the same time. I simply love to give someone my full attention and have them return the favor. It is called listening.

Whenever we visited the South and my grandparents each year, I noticed from an early age, how eager the other children were to get away from the adults when it was to their advantage. For instance, teens wanted to slip away to talk about their latest heart throb or if they were not related in some way, even begin a Summer romance, and the younger children, bellies filled with my grandmothers gargantuan meals of corn bread, collard and turnip greens, ham and fried chicken, followed by an assortment of desserts and milk so cold that it gave you brain freeze, would begin that wild running that children do at the final hours between daylight and bedtime.

Zenobia, the old soul as they called me, simply loved to sit and listen to the familiar hum of adult voices as they told and re-told stories that I imagined must have traveled with them from Africa to America and the American tales were simply word plays that were part of their cultural experiences and I loved hearing the blend of Southern voice and Northern voice, stirring in the hot night air, moving in between the sounds of crickets and unknown terrors in the black and endless woods.

There was just two of us. My brother and myself as siblings. I could tell early on that he did not care for old stories, and was far more interested in joining the runners who escaped the arms of mothers and fathers and grandparents to fight for first place among those who did not care for stories, and I remember thinking sadly, how much they were missing.

Just yesterday, so many light years away from those balmy Mississippi nights that ended too soon and landed us back into the sirened nights of Chicago, I was sitting in my Minnesota apartment thinking about how much people do not listen in general, then it hit me that people mostly never listen to anyone who is over the age of fifty.

It is true that young people have latched onto an abbreviated form of communication that keeps their heads tilted continually into their various electronic devices, but I was never really aware that there are times when I actually try too hard to be heard and the results are painful. I feel insecure and invisible as I try to create conversation with my adult children, grandchildren and sometimes with absolute strangers. I want desperately to be heard.

Among my peers and in my family, I am known as the keeper of history, the one who remembers the stories and when I am asked, on the rare occasion to tell another one, I am often rudely interrupted by someone young who not only finishes the story, but adds or takes away from it, much to the pleasure of the rest of the crowd and I feel cheated, until I think,."perhaps it is better remembered in error than not at all" but it gets my goat, because as the keeper, I want the kept thing, to be kept intact, if that makes any sense.

When I try to make small talk, I am so eager to speak that I find myself saying ( just this morning) to my twenty year old grandson, who was hurrying off to church, that my Sunday paper had not shown up and I had just called the distibution office for the Star Tribune to see what happened. My grandson who had been absorbed in someone else's abbreviated conversation on facebook, looked at me as if he had just seen me for the first time, though I raised him from infancy, and mumbled, "Oh". I could have kicked myself. "You desperate woman" I scolded myself, and thought about the fact that I had told a cashier that the coin purse that I was digging a five dollar bill from was a gift from a friend who had gone on a cruise to Belize and purchased the purse for me in Cozumel. The cashier gave me a blank look and repeated the purchase price to me, with an thin look in the direction of the person behind me, that said, "These old people are gumming up the works".

I do not know what I expect from others. I cannot turn back time and get everyone as interested and curious about facts as I have always been. I told my youngest son some fact or another about male snakes in the desert the other day, and I could see that he was sizing me up for a straight jacket. The very fact that I watch programs about nature and marvel at seeing deer outside my door, or that I would still subscribe to the Sunday Star Tribune, throws me into a league of people whom I have always respected, even when I was not a part of the club that says I am old and therefore obsolete.

Someone in this country has rendered the thoughts of older people as out of touch, out of time and out of our minds. If we talk about big bands, the hula hoop and Chubby Checker, someone younger goes, "Who, what and where"?  If we mention something new then we are looked upon as weird and not acting our age. If we mention romance, everyone in the room gets quiet, and if we mention old romance, then everyone looks sympathetic and turns away, still embarressed.

I have been to many funerals and I know there are more to come. The faces of the ones who did not listen, are sometimes spouses, most times adult children, are set in stone-pain. The thought that the nuisance older person is gone forever, and along with them, the stories, has finally become reality. "If I could call him/her just once more" is the hue and cry and that is usually followed by "I would listen more" If there was another chance to listen about the aches and pains and fears and tears and joy of life well lived, there would be more listeners.

I am an invisible woman. I have a few friends. I spend time here in AARP. I love people. I love life. I would love to know someone up close and personal, so we could wear each other thin, with our collected stories. Just now, someone will read this journal, and scroll quickly to get to the end. "Get to the point" will be spoken or thought, but if you think about it. I just did.