Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.
We had the pleasure of a visit from one of my grandchildren over the Thanksgiving holiday. This young lady is quite tall, as is another of my beautiful granddaughters. They are in the 5' 9" - 5' 10" range. I've become accustomed to being called "Shorty," or something similarly diminishing. It seems that I have the aging disease of growing-shortitis. Tall grandchildren just seem to make it more obvious. My two daughters with whom I live are both taller than I, and have been since their growth stopped. It's just that now they are (?) taller - to me. Only one of my daughters is shorter than I, and now I'm not so sure anymore about that.
For most of my adult life I was 5' 4 1/2" tall. That seemed like a pretty average height for women in my age group. During my yearly physical checkups, the last few showed that I was only 5' 4", then 5' 3/2", then this year, a measly 5' 3". Before one thinks that I have osteoporosis, let me disabuse the reader of that mistaken notion. My bones are actually a lot younger than my physical age of 81 - at least they check out that way. It's a good thing, too. I seem to fall down at least once a year, sustaining plenty of bruises, but no broken bones (knock wood). Gravity also seems to be making my ears grow longer and my face is sagging lower, so that I will eventually be jowly, I fear. Oh, well. The one problem with the compacting spine is that I have lower back pain now - a real nuisance. Thank goodness for Aleve.
I was told, as a child, that I was really tall. Actually, I was taller than everyone in my classes at school, including the boys, all through elementary school until I reached eighth grade. That year, age 13, I stopped growing and the rest of the class began to catch up. By graduation a couple of the boys were taller than I. By the time I was in sixth grade I was taller than my mother and grandmother. Gramma always told me she was 5' 5" tall. I think she didn't realize that she had shrunk, as I now am. My mother was 5' 1 1/2" tall, so I knew I was taller than she. She and my grandmother had convinced me that I was tall, like my father's side of the family. My dad, as well as my step-dad, oddly enough, were both 6' 3 12" tall.
Picture it (a la Sofia on Golden Girls): "Will all the tall girls line up so that we can see who will be getting the upper lockers?" Sister Augustine, a very tall and quite robust nun, my home room teacher for sophomore year at St. Mary's Academy, was sorting us out. "Gloria Day, what are you doing standing up? Sit down please. What gave you the idea that you were tall?" As I looked around, quite unbelieving, I did see that sure enough, I was looking up at all those classmates who deserved the "tall" designation. The class razzed me about that for a long time. My mother and grandmother, and the fact of my elementary school status, had convinced me that I was tall. I even had tried to slouch to look shorter. My grandfather would come up behind me and run his thumb down my spine. He also made me walk with my hands behind my back to pull my shoulders back. My ego was assuaged somewhat; because my closest friends were still shorter than I.
It seems that girls, more often than not, grow faster than boys. My own number one daughter, a year younger than number one son, was taller than he for quite awhile. I even have a family picture where he tries to look taller by standing on his tip-toes, hoping no one would notice. Two of the boys who lived next door to me as a youngster, the younger ones, older than I but closer to my age, were shorter than I for the first of their teen years. One was to become my husband one day. He had been in the service and came home on leave, made a neighborly visit (this was before we even dated) and noticed that I was not as tall as he remembered. He even asked if I had shrunk. He had grown, even at age 20, while in the service. That was, and probably still is, a common occurrence with the fellows. His brother had also grown while in service.
The size thing really amused me and the family one Thanksgiving. My father and I had become finally acquainted during my 30s. He and my mother had been divorced since I was an infant and we had had little contact. He invited us to his cousin's house for the holiday dinner. I had never met the relatives on his side of the family other than one aunt and my grandmother when I was just a tot. I thought we had stumbled into a land of giants. My aunts, uncles and cousins were mainly tall, broad and the ladies well-endowed. I was getting a stiff neck from looking up. "Oh, she looks so much like her mother. She's about her size, too." When we climbed into the family van to head home after the festivities, the kids were almost hysterically laughing. "Wow, Mom, we're glad you took after Baba." At that point, I was also. I still think I'm more average than short. But that's just my opinion.
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