A typical evening for my husband and I would include his reading a book or watch TV while I sit next to him and bead. We were becoming our grandparents which is not a bad thing. Comfortable and predictable. A couple of months ago my husband came home apologizing for bringing home a dusty old broken pipe he found at an antique store after complaining that we have too much stuff. I recognized it as an old peace pipe. We agreed it was pretty cool and set it on the shelf with our other interesting objects. Last week I was sitting in my shop when a man came in asking if I could teach him a certain beading technique. Somehow we began discussing Native American art. I decided to show him pictures of the pipe to see if he could tell me anything about it. He stated that in his religion the pipe would be laid to rest since it is broken. His statement got us curious so we got as many books as we could on Native American culture and peace pipes and began to study with great enthusiasm. Instead of just sitting as we usually do we felt energized and excited with the world of information that was opening up to us. At one point my husband looked at me and said"WOW! I feel just like Axl" our 6 month old grandson who views everything as new and exciting because it is to him. That is when I realized that learning makes me feel young again, to be able to learn something new that fills us with wonder just like when we were kids and the world was new to us.
