Aging -- it's for real

For so many years, apparently like so many people before me, I thought that aging was something I could conquer by simple force of will.  Confront it, call it out, defeat it -- simple.  Yet here I am, at the sprightly age of 53, calling out, instead, my younger self, and telling it as it really is: Aging is for real, and you can't really contend with it on terms that you yourself decide.  And yes, I mean you.

Aging in this sense means physical diminution.  Not decay, not loss, particularly, but diminution.  I am not now as I once was.  And for years I fought against this.  Even in my highly-educated, two-Masters-degrees-thank-you-very-much mind, I somehow held on to the naive and ill-informed perspective that, regardless of what it held for others, aging for me held no terrors and no threat.  I would conquer that sucker like Ali conquered Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila.  It would take the same amount of Herculean effort and almost superhuman resolve, but I would beat aging into the ground.

And well into my 40s, I held true to my interior promise.  Name the physical activity, and I did it: running, cycling, weight-lifting, rock-climbing, basketball, softball, pickup family reunion volleyball.  And I did well.  And I had fun.

All that began to change in 2007 when I felt something snap in my left shoulder while playing the alluded-to volleyball game.  "Odd," I thought to myself.  "But not unusual.  I can work through this.  A few weeks of shoulder therapy lifts, and I'll be back to normal."

Oh, how pride goeth before the fall.   I worked through it, all right.  But the shoulder simply was not the same.  Rest, ice, compression, elevation, stretching, therapy weight lifting, nothing could alleviate the clicking, the pain, the limited use of the left shoulder. Weeks went by, and then months.  Soon enough, I had begun my journey down that road to orthopedic surgery.

(As a side note -- if I could turn back the clock and invest in anything, anything at all, 25 years ago, it would be orthopedics.  I am convinced that, as I and my active, age-denying cohort age, more and more of us will seek out the ministrations of the bone and cartilage crew.)

So where do I now find myself, five orthopedic surgeries later?  Well, for starters, look at the list in the third paragraph.  Of that list, I can now safely include two activities: cycling and weight-lifting.  The rest are gone.

How did this happen?  Was I stupid?  Did I abuse this body, fail to follow the dictates of the doctors, trainers, therapists, and coaches who advised me over the years?

No.  No, I didn't.  Not in the least.  I was always a good athlete, not a great one, but one who worked hard at what he did.  And I was never involved in "extreme" sports (whatever that means), unless you include top- and bottom-belay rock-climbing.  I have always used good equipment (shoes, bikes) and good technique (as a track athlete, a cyclist, a weightlifter).

Yeah, that's right, I got older.  Not old, not in the sense of worn-out, disposable, useless.  Just older.  And I can't do the things that I used to do, not any more. This just plain happened, and all my younger-adult blather about fighting it off by force of will turned out to be just that; blathering bluster.

On top of those losses of physical ability, my face seems to have fallen.  (See my latest profile on Facebook if you doubt this.)  Suddenly I'm not just a round-faced guy; I'm a formerly-round-faced guy whose face has started to sag like thick fresh paint on a hot summer day.  No wonder my students think I look mad all the time.  I do tell them, "This is just my face," and I'm not kidding.

I also seem to find myself being more of a curmudgeon than I ever had before.  But maybe that's best left for another post.

So it is true; you can't fight aging. You can mask it with facelifts, try to stave it off with orthopedic surgeries, even get hair implants or dye the hair you have left.  Those don't address the basic reality, which is that these physical bodies we were born with were never intended to last forever.

But that's not an entirely bad thing.  There are benefits that have come along with the loss of these physical capabilities.  I noticed a couple of years ago that I no longer need notes to teach many of the essays, short stories and poems that my students read.  My life experiences have left me with a store of material for writing that should last me to the end of my days.  I am pretty much fearless when it comes to household repair and improvement, even as I recognize more fully my limitations in this regard.

So, I'm learning to embrace my gimpy, sagging, grumpy self.  

How To Do It

How To Do It

Lift up the seat as well as the lid; don't flush twice.

Hold the plunger upright; press down forcefully.

Whisk with swift, short strokes; keep shells out.

Rest if you must; this will take some time.

Do the floor first; keep bristles flat

to the surface. There is no need to hurry.

Wipe with the diaper; use one hand

to get the new one ready. Hold baby with other hand.

Loosen each lug nut a little; set parking brake.

Don't stand on the wrench unless you want to fall.

The stock should be warm but not scalding; hot stock kills

the yeast. Knead thoughtfully without sweating.

Listen all the way through her thoughts; speak evenly.

Measure your words against her face; silence can be okay.

Experience is a thorough teacher, but a cruel one.

Advice might forestall disasters of ignorance.

Footwashing

Footwashing

(Jesus) wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. – The Gospel of John 13.5-6

The lawsuit was the last thing Larry wanted,

but his lawyer said he had no choice.

Larry trusts his lawyer, knows that suing people is

just another tool, not evil. But never before

has he had to sue a fellow member of the church. His church.

The congregation that celebrated his children’s births

and stood with him and his wife as the kids grew through

adolescent prank stunts and bad first marriages.

Larry is suing Herb, an old church stalwart, and

Sunday school was strained for a few weeks afterwards.

“It’s only business,” Larry tells Herb, pouring oil on troubled waters.

Herb is a good guy, his grandfather was a bishop,

but he is new to the world of contracts, negotiations,

and fungible loyalties. He knows the Bible,

that Paul warned the Corinthians that lawsuits were a sign

of defeat, that it’s better to be cheated than to go to law.¹

Herb doesn’t want to be cheated or to cheat anyone,

let alone Larry, his friend and brother.

Larry knows the Bible, too, but says that Jesus never had to make a payroll.

He says it lightheartedly but means it, believes

that Jesus might have said some things differently if he

were here in an era of hypercompetitive business.

Soon it is Maundy Thursday, time for footwashing and communion,

and the resolution of the suit is so far in the distance that it looks like

a pinpoint on a Northern Plains highway. Herb ends up seated

next to Larry on children’s Sunday school room chairs,

cradling his feet in the room where half the men

are seated with shoes and socks off and pants rolled up, the other half

kneeling with not a little difficulty to wash their brothers’ feet.

Once Larry has rinsed Herb’s feet, they embrace and, since they

are each of a certain age, don’t even hesitate to exchange a holy kiss,

as Paul directs so often. Both weep. The lawsuit won’t stop,

for more than brotherhood rides along with these crying barefoot men.

Yet something bigger is here, cloaked in a strange little ceremony.

What the lawsuit can’t bring, reconciliation in pain, forgiveness

in the middle of brokenness, happens now.

¹1 Corinthians 6.1-6

"Who died and left you in charge?"

Another memory of mom, Patricia Frances McMichael Yeakey Stiver.  

 

“Who Died and Left You in Charge?”

“Who died and left you in charge?”

was an impolitic way my mother had

of establishing her interlocutor’s

status relative to her own, and it was

never delivered in a motherly voice,

not even close, but with needles of

exact diction that poked in the most

hurtful way – for her, because she said it

out of hurt, a sense of being perpetually

wronged by the life she had been given,

and it did hurt her, not us, her kids,

at whom she aimed it most often. 

24 February 2013

Throwing rocks at the train

I promise that I'll stop mining this vein pretty soon, honest I will, but there's just a lot more there.  I wrote this in part as an assignment for my advanced poetry class online.  

Throwing rocks at the train

Grandpa McMichael is a railroad cop who goes to train wrecks,

gives dollar bills and cigars to hoboes, and makes sure people

don’t steal stuff from boxcars.

He’s taught me that throwing rocks at trains is wrong.

You could damage cars being carried from Detroit, hit a brakeman

standing in a boxcar, or kill a bum just trying to get away to a new life. 

But today, I am alone on my way home from school.  (I spend

a lot of time alone since my dad left home last year.) 

I guess I’m easily tempted, because when I think no one’s looking,

I chuck a chunk of railway rock at a boxcar. 

I can’t believe how loud it is, but

the only witness is the railroad crossing bell.

When I get home, though, Mom simply says,

“The principal called after he saw you throw a rock at the train. 

Your grandfather is on his way over.”

And I know I’m about to die.

Soon, Grandpa is climbing out of his car, still in uniform,

with that huge .38 revolver on his hip.

I’m ready to go to jail, to be stood

against a wall and shot, but instead

he sits down on the whitewashed rock and stands me,

wobbly on my shaking legs, in front of him,

so he can talk to me.

He doesn’t put handcuffs on me. 

He doesn’t even yell, but I do cry,

maybe out of relief that I’m not going to jail,

but beyond that, I don’t know and won’t

until later when I realize that Grandpa

was being a dad to me. 

20 January 2013

We're Changing Our Name to Serve You Better

Greetings and welcome from your friends at

(Rev)eresence. You may not recognize us,

what with our new logo and carefully-

crafted letterhead -- copyrighted down to the

font -- but we want to be your church/

community-based faith organization/source

for fair trade coffee. Our name, (Rev)eresence,

reflects who we are and wish to be. The name

combines the words "reverence," "essence," and

"effervescence," all of which we like --

to an extent. So, we want to share our faith

with you -- our "reverence" -- but not to the point

of having very beliefs strong enough to

offend anybody. That is our "essence," the

inoffensive center of who we think, in all modesty

and insecurity, that we are. And so, we add

just a bit of "effervescence" to keep our design-

agency-aided name, to keep us young, hip,

and full of carbonated gas. The parentheses

shows you that we don't take our

theology so seriously, and we hope you won't,

either. So we invite you to join us in our

inchoate but very friendly wandering across the

cosmos, created by God (if it doesn't offend you

to use that name) and accompanied by

Jesus (whom you may call "Yeshua" or "Joshua,"

depending on your preference) by the power

(very gentle) of the Motivating Force -- which

some elder folk call the Holy Spirit.

Coffee and conversation at 9:00 (or so).

Transition to worship at 10:15 -ish.

Drumming on Sunday nights at 8:00.

On the morning of the day that I die

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will lie awake in bed for a bit,
holding my wife and adoring every snore
and twitch that arises from her good deep sleep.

On the morning of the day that I die,
I will find that, against all odds and
vagaries of illness and accident, I managed
to outlive the goldfish who resided in the bathroom tank.

By noon of the day that I die,
I will have held all my children close to me,
from in my arms to in my lap to by my side
to eye to eye, tall as I, my children no longer mine.

At lunch on the day that I die,
I will enjoy some pad Thai, and not because
it rhymes, but for its slippery saltiness
and heat, O the heat, of the sauce.

Sometime on the day that I die,
I will exercise for the sheer joy of it and not
think once, not once, I say, of its cardiovascular
benefit, nor of the calories that I am burning.

And at close of day when I die,
I will shower, slowly just this once,
and touch every scar I can reach, and recall
every easy and every bitter victory that this body wrought.

At the end of the day that I die,
I will sit in the most memory-cluttered
part of my home, and I will decide
to freely let it all go, to not fight the loss.

I will lift up my eyes on the day that I die
to my God, and I will indeed say, "It is well,"
and I will surrender to the ages,
and I will leave this. I will fly.

19 December 2011

Jared Johnson, ISS

The secretary has sent an email asking

for assignments for Jared Johnson, who is serving

two days of in-school suspension for crimes

that I can only guess at,

confidentiality being what it is.

I am to put down on paper all

that will transpire in two fifty minute periods

of class time, our shamefully short study of Paradise Lost,

“The Fall of Satan,” to be specific --

the sneaky little details to be teased out of

Milton’s mad iambic, the dark fire and despairing anger

of petulant Satan cursing God for his own

condemnation, all that I want Jared

to learn. And I wonder

if Jared Johnson already knows quite a bit

about despairing anger as he sits alone

in the ISS room, asking the secretaries

for permission to use the bathroom,

to go to lunch, for more to do.

Will Jared repent of his sins or like Satan

plot new ways of inflicting himself on the world?

I will have him read the section of the poem

we will discuss in class, take notes on it,

write at least five questions that matter,

but what Jared sees will not

be our collected vision in room 306. Maybe

it will be better. Maybe he will see the irony

of being in a small hell and reading about an angel of light

who curses not his own rebellion

but the just God who chains him in a darkness visible.

Jared, is it better to rule in ISS than to serve in room 306?