Just before the filming started for Grains of Sand, I was helping my daughter move from our home to college. After lugging all her belongings up the stairs to her dorm room, we sat, resting together for a moment. She mentioned casually, “When I’m done with life like you are, I want to live in a house like you do.”
“Done?!” I was shocked. Then I remembered my twenty-year old perspective on middle-aged women with frizzy, graying hair whose kids were leaving home. I thought they were ‘so old’. There was little distinction in my mind between someone of 50 and someone of 75. They had all crossed the line of no-return.
But when I began to reflect upon my perspective on my mother and Barbara I realized I was doing the same thing: they didn’t see themselves the way I saw them. 80 year olds? Sure they’re older but they’re not done. I caught myself in the assumption that someone who is turning 80 is looking back on her life. Whereas she actually is living her life.
Grains of Sand is a reflection on learning to see my mother’s and Barbara’s trajectories in the context of their own lives – as people experiencing the joys and troubles of entering their ninth decade but not defined by their age.