I guess it’s inevitable. You get old. And stuff you used to take in stride slowly gets more difficult, sometimes almost to a cartoonish level. So you put it off or write it off. The classic example is dropping something onto the floor, gazing at it sadly, and asking yourself how badly you want whatever it is. I spilled a box of raspberries onto the kitchen floor a couple of years ago. They scattered everywhere, but they really couldn’t stay where they were. I could worry them together, sort of, with a broom, but I was going to have to get down there to pick them up and put them back into the box. This is a problem – the getting up, that is. Even that old joke is no longer funny around here.
So I came up with the idea of a test. I’d get down there and do a practice run, to see if I could get back up. If I could, I’d do it again for real. But just as I was about to lower myself down for the test, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the brightest idea I’d had all week. So I just picked them up and, with the help of the island, got back up. The thought of trying out a cognitive test – the kind the president is fond of boasting that he’s “aced” – crept in one side of my mind and then out the other.
That’s pretty much the way things have been going around here: sort of a slow, moldy deterioration. The mailbox door pops open in the wind, and passing cars spray road crud onto the mail and the newspaper. I really should replace that mailbox; it’s over twenty years old. Yeah, I really should. One of the ceramic door pulls on my dresser has come off and needs to be glued on. I put the knob on top of the dresser to remind me. Bea spots it and brings with her an assortment of Super Glue for the job. I set a tiny tube of the glue next to the knob to really remind me.
Things that routinely need to be done do get done. Car registrations and insurance cards need to be kept up to date. Groceries, haircuts, laundry, property tax, and electric bill all get taken care of. But on the fringes things get scruffy. And inside this old body, the scruffiness gets adapted to. It’s like a song that was popular when I was a kid: “This Old House.” The senior citizen living there isn’t fixing the roof, the broken window, or the floor because “he’s a-gettin’ ready to meet the saints.” It’s not quite that dire around here, but it is sort of a metaphor.
Into the middle of this, a sudden irruption. My son and his wife, who live in Arkansas (hereinafter “the kids”), during one of our twice-weekly FaceTime chats, announced they were flying up here to perform an intervention. Elizabeth, who’s a beautifully organized list-maker, had a page-long bunch of items needing attention. Most of them weren’t surprises – I knew they ought to be done – but I couldn’t do them. So I braced myself for a sudden surge in energy around the place, and made sure there were fresh sheets on the guest room bed.
They arrived late at night, but were up and at ‘em well before I was. The backyard and garage were littered with lumber, construction equipment, and tools from an attempt to replace a carport that collapsed last winter. Then suddenly it wasn’t. Everything was packed away. The roadster, which gets state inspection and an oil change every October, was stashed away for the winter, its gas tank topped (to avoid condensation), a trickle charger hooked up to its battery, rodent repellent giving off noxious fumes in every compartment, and a lined, fitted tarp hiding her beauty till probably April.
A spiffy new mailbox was slid down over the post that held the old one. Fresh reflective strips were stuck onto the sides, along with new address numbers. New phenomena – mouse turds – were vacuumed and wiped from a couple of kitchen drawers. A pair of new mouse traps did their thing within a few hours.
My printer, which maddeningly had quit again, got fixed. Elizabeth is a complete master of all things computer. She discovered that the cord between it and the printer had become unplugged. Doh! Doesn’t matter how basic it was. At least I’m back in business, which is a really big deal.
The kids left in the night Sunday to catch an early flight out of Burlington. I could track their progress home on my phone (another marvel of the age). But there’ll never be any device to express how grateful I am for all the differences around here.
