I
think it likely that people who have not been here will be interested
to know what it is like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh
from care-free and frivolous 69, and was disappointed.
There
is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill you and
make your eye glitter and your tongue cry out. “Oh, but it is
wonderful, perfectly wonderful!” Yes, it is disappointing. You say,
“Is this it? - this? After all this talk and fuss of a thousand
generations of travelers who have crossed this frontier and looked about
them and told what they saw and felt? Why, it looks just like 69.”
And
that is true. Also it is natural; for you have not come by the fast
express, you have been lagging and dragging across the world’s
continents behind oxen; when that is your pace one country melts into
the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the change: 70
looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67 - and so on, back,
and back, to the beginning. If you climb to a summit and look back -
ah, then you see!
Down that
far-reaching perspective you can make out each country and climate that
you crossed, all the way down up from the hot equator to the ice-summit
where you are perched. You can make out where Infancy merged into
Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; Youth into indefinite
Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into definite Manhood; definite
Manhood with aggressive ambitions into sobered and heedful Husbandhood
and Fatherhood; these into troubled and foreboding Age, with graying
hair; this into Old Age, white-headed, the temple empty, the idols
broken, the worshippers in their graves, nothing left but You, a
remnant, a tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that
was so ingeniously dreamed that
it seemed real all the time; nothing left but You, centre of a snowy
desolation, perched on the ice-summit, gazing out over the stages of
that long trek and asking Yourself “would you do it again if you had the
chance?” (December 1905) Mark Twain
**********************************************
He
had pottered about most of the afternoon, and so had she. At their age
winter seemed to last longer every year. Behind them now; they were in
early spring. And it was quite wonderful. They were now able to go
out of doors without hauling on heavy overcoats and boots. Same for
their little dogs. Figuring what was needful for themselves was no less
so for those very small creatures sharing their lives.
He had,
earlier in the day, read aloud to her a short, succinct and somewhat
bitter observation about growing older and becoming ensconced in old
age, by none other than Mark Twain. They’d both laughed, not
uproariously, but knowingly.
Still, they were doing pretty well
for a pair of old codgers married 55 years with no end in sight of their
partnership nor their love for one another. Thankful for their good
health, and the immense enjoyment of their lives. And they had ample to
be thankful for.
In the afternoon he had hauled out from the
basement where it was stored over-winter that huge brown canopy - now
faded by two summers’ exposure, into a softer shade of brown -- to fit it
over the metal infrastructure that comprised the form of the canopy
shielding them from direct sun exposure, on their backyard deck.
While
he was busy doing that, refusing all offers of help from her, she was
out at the front of the house, hauling out lilies that were crowding
into other beloved perennials. Something she should have done last
fall, but was too busy with other garden chores, to attend to that one.
It
was a warm day, unseasonably warm for early spring. There was a robin
singing from the top of the ash tree across the street, and its trill
was loud and sweetly brilliant, thrilling her to her very core. It was
her husband who took their older dog downstairs early in the morning to
let it out to the backyard while she slept in a little longer. With the
younger, smaller one right beside her, directly under the covers. And
her husband always whispered to her, when he got back into bed, how
liltingly beautiful the trill of the cardinal was in the backyard at
that early morning hour. Or the song sparrow, or the chirping of
chickadees, which she always seemed to miss.
She felt guilty, she
always did, that he was the one to go out so early; get up out of their
warm and comfortable bed, to meet an obligation their 17-year-old dog
required. The consequences of not doing so were unpleasant, but even
when that occurred her husband, refusing to scold their little dog, did a
good-natured clean-up.
She felt guilty because she really got a
better night’s sleep than he ever did. He was up repeatedly, thanks to
his bladder being pressed by his oversized prostate. He did a half-hour
of therapy -- kegel it was, to strengthen the bladder muscles -- every
day -- sitting, counting the number of muscle-tensing exercises he
performed, until he finally reached into a figure that satisfied him.
When he’d first started doing this, years earlier, there had been an
improvement, and they’d anticipated ongoing improvements, but they’d
been tardy in unfolding. The initial improvement remained, but the
promise of other, greater improvements simply did not materialize. He
was grateful for the relief that did occur, and remained wedded to the
exercise protocol to ensure that at the very least, that minimal relief
remained.
He always said since he had to get up at six anyway to
relieve himself, it was no additional bother to go downstairs with the
little dog and take her outside. He would go out with her in case the
raccoon was around. Even though he put bungees on the composters the
resident raccoons never seemed to give up hope. They had disagreed
about that, about tying down the composter tops to dissuade the raccoons
from their night-time raids, because before tying down the tops they’d
come around regularly and never left a mess. She didn’t begrudge them
whatever they could use from their kitchen waste. But her husband
reasoned that they were a threat to their little dogs, particularly
their ten-year-old toy poodle, because it was stupidly aggressive and
wouldn’t hesitate to attack any other animal impinging on his territory.
So
that little routine was his and his alone, up out of bed as soon as he
heard the female dog leap off the loveseat in their bedroom where she
slept the night. Tie on his cuddly white dressing gown, tromp
downstairs after her, out the sliding glass doors into the back garden.
While she remained blissfully in bed, to sleep another two hours. It
wasn’t fair, but it was their ritual and although they lived with it,
she remained uneasy at her too-easy capitulation to his reasoning.
By
early afternoon that day, after he had finished cleaning out the garden
shed and re-assembling everything neatly back into it, placing the
snow-thrower right at the very back where it wouldn’t be noticed again
until the snow began flying, and she had finished her little bit of
gardening, they wondered at no telephone calls. And it occurred to him
to pick up the receiver and listen. No dial tone.
She’d done it
again. Picked up the telephone sitting directly beside her upstairs
desk-top computer, and not replacing it properly in its cradle. So the
telephone was effectively out of commission all day. They’d been on
tenterhooks, waiting to hear the results of their daughter’s job
interview. Even if she’d dialled their cellphone it would never be
heard. The cellphone was tucked securely into his shoulder bag, hung in
the cupboard next to the door leading to the garage. It was only used
when he was out of the house, checking back to let her know where he
was, when he’d arrive home from his errands.
And sure enough, the
upstairs telephone hadn’t been properly secured. He said nothing, but
she felt the fool. Again. It happened so regularly. Their
granddaughter would sometimes text-message her and next time she’d
retrieve her email she’d read “Grandma! You forgot to hang up the
telephone again!”
Damn! She cursed her lack of attention. If
their daughter called, tried to contact them, leave a message, she
couldn’t. He had finished his work. Had gone down to the basement
store room to pluck a pair of long cushions out of there, and take them
upstairs to make the glider plump and comfortable for her. “There”, he
said, “just sit there, get yourself in the mood to relax”. He’d even
brought the newspapers out for her, and the mobile telephone, now in
working order. She set it beside her, under her skirt, and beside her on
the other side, he sat their apricot poodle, a lazy little dog that
wanted nothing but to cuddle and to sleep.
Then he sat himself
across from her, and discommoded at the temporary absence of his
mini-laptop, was fiddling with a short-wave radio. The laptop was used
for nothing but listening to radio stations, anyway. Like National
Public Radio. He valued the debates, the in-depth news coverage, the
flow of the conversations. She preferred her newspapers. And the
laptop? In for repairs. It had taken a serious dive. Actually thrust
itself out of her husband’s hands as he was conveying it from the dining
room to the breakfast room. And arced straight across from the kitchen
onto the porcelain tile floor of the breakfast room.
This was a
lovely floor, in black-and-white squares, very classical, and it was
pleasant being able to see it through the glass top of their
breakfast-room table. But this was most definitely not a surface that
dealt kindly with suicide-prone baby-computers. What had been whole
became pitiably fractured. Her husband had been stricken. As much as
their little dogs were animated companions, his laptop was an inanimate
companion, one that informed and pleased him mightily.
He swore,
(she thought swiftly, now there’s an end to all that incessant noise;
good riddance). He picked up the pieces, and examined them. Actually,
the computer did not completely shatter; there was merely the separation
of a few pieces, one of which was the long metal hinge covering the
vital conductors between screen and hard drive; the other the sliding
door covering the battery. And, after putting it all back together,
slowly, carefully, hopefully, it worked! “Isn’t that fortunate” she
said dryly to her husband. He grinned back at her, triumphantly.
But
in the days that followed it became clear that the little computer was
feeling a trifle queasy, not quite up to itself. One of the hiccoughs
was that it was no longer keen on following orders. As in ‘shut-down’.
It would display the message that it was ‘downloading updates’, but
that was merely a ruse. It was downloading nothing, just taking him for
a fool. In it went for critical care, and he was bereft of its
presence, he even thought of teaching it a lesson by acquiring a second
one. Prudence prevailed.
So now, fiddling with the short-wave
radio he zeroed in on the weather, and then went to the local news. One
of the news items was of a very local accident. The area, an hour’s
drive from where they lived, was almost where their daughter’s house was
located. A fatality. She felt her face grow heavy, and her chest
pinch. So well did he know her that he looked sharply up from the radio
and regarded her. Quietly, he said, that wouldn’t be her. Don’t you
start worrying now, over nothing.
When she worried and got tense
and upset her body went into lock-down. She would develop a rash, and
break out in dreadful, suppurating sores. Her gut would refuse to
process the food she ate. She would feel ill, and there would be a
shut-down of her alimentary canal. He dreaded that; she put up with it.
Their son, who lived halfway across the country, occasionally would
send his mother books with titles like “Women Who Worry”, and “How To
Deal With Stress”. She would dutifully read partially through each of
these self-help books, then have a conversation with herself about how
idiotically presumptuous people were to write such witless, useless
tomes. The books would be shelved, she would thank her son, and go back
to worrying.
Her husband tried to engage her mind, wanted to
talk about their imminent vacation, but she felt capable of nothing but
nodding her head in agreement with whatever he said. Suddenly, the
piercing call of the telephone. They both jumped, and she looked
frantically for the telephone; not on the little table before them,
while he rushed into the house to grab it off its cradle. She was
puzzled; the sound was so clear, so near, and when he came back with a
disgruntled look on his face reminding her that it was in her direct
possession, she remembered she’d placed it beside her, covered by the
fabric of her skirt.
She was, quite frankly, amazed at her
inability to react, to understand fully what was happening, instead of
being thrown into the panic of blank confusion. The telephone rang,
clearly enough, loudly enough so that it registered that it was there,
right there, not inside the house, but there, beside her, where she had
secured it in just the very event that it would eventually ring, and she
would respond to the ring. Instead, she had been confused, blanked
out, couldn’t recall she had a mere half-hour earlier placed the
telephone beside her, secured it so she could simply pick it up and
respond. What was wrong with her?
“Hello?” she said, holding the
telephone close to her left ear, hoping she wouldn’t have to confront,
this time, a situation where, as so often happened increasingly, she
could barely hear the words on the other end. Her faculties, clearly,
were on the fade-end of usefulness.
“Me”, came her grandchild’s voice. “What’s going on?”
“Just home from school?” she asked the girl. “Had a snack yet? Got much homework?”
The
usual. She was speaking in a clear, calm voice, nothing betraying the
disquietude she felt. Fearful that the girl’s mother, a single parent
with huge responsibilities would be unable to find another contract
quite as quickly as she hoped to, fearful that the child was at home,
alone, while her mother was still out somewhere, fearful that it was her
daughter who’d been involved in an accident nearby her home, fearful
that she herself was beginning to sink into a morass of old-age
inclemency, where she could no longer depend on herself to react
appropriately even to minor, day-to-day situations.
She would be
going out this evening, after dinner, to do the canvass for her street.
Something she’d done for more years than she could even recall, unless
she really put her seemingly overworked mind to it. She still did that
three to four times a year, for various health charities, collecting
donations from their neighbours, writing out the receipts for tax-deduction
purposes.
It was fine, she got through the process, even though
it was one she detested. Going to peoples’ houses, knocking on their
doors, appealing to their better natures to donate a few dollars for
charity. Mostly, their neighbours responded well, and she was grateful
for that. Not so grateful for the sense of dislocation that would
occasionally overcome her; unable to even remember the house number
while writing out the receipt, attempting a feeble stab at humour to
cover her confusion.
And feeling overwhelmed, sometimes, not
knowing quite why she would feel like that, but she would suddenly feel
weak, tired, chest tight, and one of her neighbours would bring her
inside, tell her to sit still for a few minutes. These episodes she
kept to herself, unwilling to share them with her husband. Because,
really, there was nothing at all wrong with her. She had plenty of
energy and stamina, more than capable of brisk walking for lengthy
distances, cleaning their large house, working in the garden. All
things she took pleasure in. Just that, occasionally, going up the
risers at a good clip she would suddenly feel a loss of strength at the
top of the stairs, and have to lean against the wall for a few minutes
until the spell passed.
That need not necessarily happen this
evening. Just a by-product of aging, obviously. The weather is
gorgeous and there’s no reason not to get out there and finish up the
canvass. Her neighbours are, after all, anxious to off-load their
excess earnings in a good cause. And anxious too, come to think of it,
to exchange neighbourly and neighbourhood information occasionally
called gossip, with her. She hasn’t much to gossip about, but she is a
good listener. And people like that.
Not long afterward, she did
speak with her daughter. The interview went well. But the company
isn’t really doing the kind of things she does; she’s a little higher on
the professional scale. They wouldn’t be prepared to pay her what she
knows she should be earning. She wouldn’t be working out of the house,
from her home office as much, working there. She wouldn’t have the
autonomy she now enjoys. And she has her doubts that she’ll be offered
the job.
Later, on the late-night local news, when she returned
from canvassing her street, they both listened to the details of the
accident which she hadn’t mentioned to her daughter. It was, evidently,
caused by a woman who hadn’t obeyed a stop sign. Went right
through. Hit head on with a transport vehicle. Not much of a power
contest with the Volkswagen Jetta that the woman was driving. One
death, the only occupant of the Jetta, the driver. And the driver? A
long-time area resident, a 93 year-old woman.
How’s that for living your age?
