Grandma and Grandpa in love

My church asked me to teach their sex education curriculum. It was difficult to find that fine line between telling too much and telling too little. My fellow teachers and I laughed with each other over the fiction we were creating that we knew enough about sex to tell others about it. We learned a lot too.

If I had had a class like this when I was a teenager, where I learned not only the sexual nitty gritty, but discussed the ethical and practical issues of dating, my life would have unfolded much better than it did, but that is another story.

One of the beautifully rendered illustrations showed a picture of an older couple lying in bed. The woman’s long white hair was down, her head on the man’s shoulder. The man lying on his back smiling, his arm around the woman’s shoulder.

“Yech!” said one kid.

“Why do you say ‘Yech’?” I asked.

“That’s, like, my grandmother.” His expression showed disbelief.

“And?”

“Well, that’s disgusting.”

“Why would you deny your grandparents the comfort of sex?”

The thought had never occurred to him.

“They have lost a lot by their age, and a lot of fears have been introduced into their lives; fears of death, and illness, and the death or illness of people they love. They might need the comfort of sex and affection even more than young people do.”

I wish I could perfectly describe the way the young man’s face softened into understanding. He smiled. “Yeah. That’s right.”

Our exchange not only affected the way he saw his grandparents today, but when he becomes their age, he will remember that the sweet comfort of affection and sex is available to him.

The fiction we create that older people don’t have sex has not one good reason to recommend it.