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In my earlier years, my mother would often say to me, “Someday when I am old and gray . . .” I later used the phrase with my children in what they rightly described as guilt peddling. No doubt at times my mother evoked the phrase for that purpose. Recently, however, I realized that “old and gray” had a much deeper resonance for her. Her worldview was so steeped in biblical imagery that I should have known her comment came from the Bible, and more specifically from Psalm 71:18: “Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not.”