How To Live A Hundred Years

We sit in her bedroom, she in a rocking chair and I in a small antique one. My two youngest children climb all over her bed and explore the pile of stuffed animals and dolls under her window. The room is close with the accumulation of years: photographs in sepia tone and color people the walls and lean on every surface, signaling an ample life.

I shift in my chair, look busy with my pen and paper, make small talk with her daughter Peggy. I don’t know how to begin, don’t know how to interview a woman who embodies a full century of personal and national and international history. She lived the very years I’ve only read about, the ones that have always fascinated me, the ones whose culture and literature I’ve studied and taught in classes--presuming that a handful of articles, a few novels, poems and short stories lend me the authority to speak at all. Here, I am silent.

It’s her laughter that breaks the ice, has chipped away at it since I stepped in the front door. She seems always to be enjoying herself. “What’s your secret?” I ask her towards the end of our interview. “I don’t know,” she laughs that laugh, “I enjoyed living.”  She says it in the past tense, but she is very much present in this moment we share together. And she seems still to enjoy this living.

Aletta (Letty) Johanna Rus Kuipers was born on March 8, 1914 in Holland, Michigan. Her father was a minister, her mother a seamstress. As a child, she moved a lot. “In those days, you changed churches every five years or so,” she recalls. “That way they [ministers] could use the same sermons,” she offers a hearty chuckle. I can tell it’s not the first time she’s told this joke, but it makes me laugh just the same.We chat for a good half hour, I asking questions and jotting notes while Letty dances us down her personal Memory Lane.  Small feet accompanied by curious eyes occasionally interrupt the dance. Before long, my daughter comes into the room to deliver a message that it is time for coffee and cookies. I collect my notes and pen, shuffling them into some semblance of order. But before we go, I want to ask her one more question. “What’s your advice for the rest of us? Moms like me still raising their children or anyone really who hasn’t seen all the years you have. What can you tell us?”

“We believed in Jesus,” she replies without hesitation, “and it was important in our lives.”

“You’ve seen so much history, lived through difficult times, what is the one thing that meant the most to you in those times?”

“That I could pray to God,” answers Letty. She talks about World War II then, how her little brother Marvin went to fight in the war and never returned. “He was twenty-four or twenty-five,” she remembers.

“That must have been a very difficult tine for your family,” I pause, look up from my notes.

“It was,” she answers and the pain is still there on her face. Then she smiles, “But now we have all the ‘Marvins,’” she’s laughing again. “Every family had a Marvin!”

I laugh with her. It's impossible not to.

Our time is drawing to a close; the children are getting noisier by the minute in the next room and Letty seems to be getting a bit tired. We make our way towards the smell of freshly-brewed coffee that travels up the stairs. Letty stops by her bedroom door to show me a photograph of her mother with her “sewing club,” a business the group of eight or so women shared together to earn money for their families. “That’s my mother third from the right,” Letty points to a dark-haired woman with fine features. “The most beautiful one.”

I am struck by her admiration but also by the simple pleasure she takes in looking at this photograph—her mother as a young woman in a high collared shirt waist and dark skirt, poised and proud. Letty remembers her this way, at this age. She recalls her beauty. And I am reminded of what thick cords is the bond woven between mother and child. We stop several more times before arriving at the dining room table, to admire her daughter Emma’s paintings and to see photographs of her four children.

At tea, my son works hard to charm Letty, who sits at the head of the table. She laughs at his silly antics, his sloppy manners. My daughter sits at the other head, pouring milk from a small pitcher into her china tea cup, reaching for one more cookie. We talk about Letty’s years in Weston and about her father-in-law, who penned one of the first hymns of the 1934 Psalter Hymnal, “By the Sea of Crystal. At Peggy’s prompting, we bundle up after our snack and go for a walk around the pond at their condo complex. It’s sunny and brisk, one of those sharp New England spring days that looks like it should be warmer than it actually is. K and Letty hold hands as we walk around the pond, both pressing into the wind, entirely content with one other. What a gift this has been. Watching my son place his hand in hers and peer into her lined face, inquisitive and comfortable. Watching my daughter feel grown up at her table, trusted to drink from the fine china. And hearing Letty’s stories of a long life lived well, well living, anchored by faith and buoyed by joy.

"Attend to the good in something — and we act towards the best in everything," writes Ann Voskamp in today's blog post. She's asking us whether we're glass half empty, or glass half full people. She knows her answer: the glass isn't half empty or half full, "it's right full." It's a dare to optimism no matter what our circumstances:
"Believe just this moment that everything is being transfigured for His glory. Every step towards something beautiful already accomplishes something beautiful. Beauty and joy are found in every overcoming along the way....Only those who believe in the beautiful — can collaborate in the miraculous."

I wonder what Letty would think of that. Just now I think she would like these words that say what her laughter shares. That say what her years illustrate. "I hope you'll come back again," says Peggy as we make ready to leave, and Letty smiles her approval. I hadn't expected to stay all morning, but I'm glad we did. "We will," I promise. "We will."