I was in my bedroom chair,
trying to do the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle, which was far
tougher than the Sunday one. The suns out, said my wife
Sally. You should go for a walk. I grunted something. I read
that being outdoors is good for you, especially if youre a senior,
she continued. Sally was always reading something about what would be good for
us old geezers. As far as I knew, there was nothing about reversing the process
of old age.
Both Sally and myself were
octogenarians, not so unusual in our Northern California retirement community
as its population continued to age. I was five years older and getting
uncomfortably closer to 90, which I now perceived to be really old. Somewhere
there might be some people whod aged gracefully, still felt fine, still
played golf, ran in marathons, ate and drank whatever they wanted, didnt
take any pills. I didnt know anyone like that. Id escaped heart
trouble, diabetes, cancer and, as far as I knew, dementia. Still I had a
considerable number of ageing ills. After years of tennis playing, I had
arthritis in all my joints, especially my knees. My nose ran in the morning and
sometimes for the rest of the day. I had daily coughing and sneezing fits. If I
sat in a straight-backed chair for more than an hour my back hurt. When
wed first moved to the retirement community Id noticed residents
walking about bent over and shuffling. Now I sometimes thought of thought
of these ageing ills as stones in a pack on my back that made me stoop and was
a constant reminder that I was old.
Im going to the
store, said Sally. What are you going to do now?
I should write a
story, I said, but I dont really feel like it.
After retiring Id somehow become a freelance writer for our local paper,
the Sacramento Bee, then had gone on to write stories for online magazines. I
still contributed a couple of stories to online magazines every month but
lately I had a hard time getting ideas and when I did I didnt have the
energy to actually write. That pack of aging ills was always on my mind
as well as on my back.
Another bad thing that came
with aging that you were always getting bad news, friends and acquaintances
falling, getting some horrible illness, passing away. My main concern right now
was my cousin Ben, six months older than myself, whod called about a
month before to tell me hed had a stroke. He didnt have to tell me
the stroke had affected his speech as I could hardly understand him, but I did
understand he wasnt doing very well. Hed told me
not to call, hed call me. Since then Id e-mailed him a few times
but with no response. I checked my e-mail every morning but nothing from him.
I guess Ill take a walk down to the pound, I said.
Maybe itll do me some good..
I put down the unfinished
puzzle and got my walking stick as I preferred to call it, not a cane, and set
out. The pond was on the golf course that was the center of our retirement
community. It was about a twenty minute walk from our house. It made for
a nice destination and sometimes Id see some wildlife there, like an
egret or a heron, as well the Canadian geese whod found a home on our
golf course. As I walked, my head down as Id given up trying to walk in
an erect posture, I reflected that walking used to be a pleasure, but now, like
many other things, it had become a chore. So had getting dressed, bending over
to pick up things and standing up from a chair. I reached the point where I
could see the pond but couldnt see any wildlife except for a foursome of
golfers in the distance. But when I reached the vantage point where I could see
the whole pond I saw two egrets on the rocks nearest me. They must have become
aware of me also because they both took flight and soared away over the pond,
then landed on the far side. For a moment, as I watched them soar, I felt as if
my spirits were soaring with them, as if the pack of aging ills weighing me
down had temporarily fallen away.
I stood in my vantage point for
a while, hoping the egrets would again take off but, as egrets do, they stayed
motionless. The golfing foursome reached the green and I watched a few minutes
as they tried to get their putts in the hole, then I walked back to the
house. Sally was gone, to the store, shed said. The
house was quiet. I saw there was one message on the answering machine. I put it
on and heard my cousin Bens voice, a little slurred, but understandable,
unlike the month before, and, just as my spirits had soared when watching the
egrets, they did so now. For some reason, I felt that I might even be able to
write a story later.