When I retired from the Aurora City Schools (January 1997), I began keeping a journal. I'd done so off and on before then (more off than on, unfortunately), but I became kind of obsessive about it back in 1997. I've hardly missed a day since.
Yesterday, when our son and his family came up for a socially distanced supper on the front porch to celebrate Joyce's birthday, I found I was not able to do a lot. I sliced some bread I'd baked on Sunday; I carried a few things to and fro; I put some things in the dishwasher; I laughed and talked with everyone. But most of the physical tasks went to the young-uns.
Son Steve and older grandson, Logan, cleaned out the birdhouse recently occupied by the chickadees that instinct (theirs) had evicted; they also set up one of their gifts for Joyce--a little portable herb garden that now stands right outside a back door. Melissa and the kids and Steve and Joyce did most of the "heavy lifting"--setting up, cleaning up.
And why not I? My persistent dizziness becomes worse later in the day, and the last thing I need is another fall. (The last one spilled a large Diet Coke all over our light-toned carpet up in the bedroom.)
As I watched everyone hurrying around last night--carrying, lifting, cleaning, etc.--I recalled quite wistfully those things I was once able to do--and not all that long ago. (Not counting, of course, those tasks that required skill).
So, this morning I decided to look at my journal entry for July 21, 2015--a mere five years ago (for those of you who are arithmetically challenged)--and see what I did. Below is a list:
- I got up at 6:30 a.m.
- I walked over to Open Door Coffee Company here in Hudson, where I sat at "my" table and worked for a couple of hours.
- I read 100 pp of the book I would be reviewing that week for Kirkus Reviews.
- I edited a book review I was working on for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word, by Matthew
Battles, appeared in the paper on August 2.)
- Back home, I wrote and uploaded a blog post about frustrations in my life and how I've dealt with them (link to it).
- After lunch with Joyce, I biked down to Starbucks (about a mile away), where I wrote a doggerel, read some Elmore Leonard stories, continued editing the PD review.
- I biked home, then drove out to a local health club (Life Center Plus), where all "my" machines were occupied by Evil Ones, so I walked very brisk laps (for me) for half an hour, for some of that time carrying hand weights, doing curls as I walked.
- I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a roasted chicken for supper.
- After supper, Joyce drove to Oberlin for a memorial service for a friend.
- I started a blog for the following day and read from several books (I didn't list what they were--and I ain't gonna go paging through all our books to check the dates to see when I read what!).
- I watched some of a trashy movie (ain't sayin').
- I worked on a (clumsy) poem about my dad and the moonwalk in 1969. (See below.) (Until I found it and read it again just now, I had no memory that it dealt, in ways, with the same topic as this blog post!)
- Joyce got home a little after 10; we talked a while, then sank into sleep.
I am stunned by how much I could do just five years ago--all the work, the exercise. Now I do still work on my writing a couple of hours a day; I still read several hours. But my exercise is limited to walking over to the coffee shop twice a day and riding the exercise bike we have here in the house. I can't stay up on a "real" bike anymore, so I gave it to a former student. I'm in bed by 6 p.m.--where I read and stream and talk with Joyce.
I lie down for an hour in the late morning, an hour in the late afternoon. I don't always sleep, but lying down helps me recover my balance for a while.
I bake sourdough bread once a week; I do most of the cooking (though nothing too complicated). I unload the dishwasher every morning. Some other things.
But I have to be very careful now--no quick movements, no accelerating on my coffee-shop walks. (I've learned these things the hard way--and I do mean "hard way"--falls on the sidewalk are no fun.)
Decline, I know, is just a part of living a long-ish life, and I have to be grateful, I know, that even into my early 70s I was able to do a lot of physical activity--still had a lot of energy. And I remain profoundly grateful for all that I can do. It's just that every now and then (like at a family gathering) I am frustrated and more than a little depressed about my inability, especially at the end of the day, to do much but sit and watch the young-uns.
No--only a "small step" for me these days--no more chances for a "giant leap."
**
Dad and the Moonwalk
July, in 1969,
Two men walked on the moon. We saw
The fuzzy images, a sign
Of distance, filling all with awe.
And out in Iowa, my dad—
Born just half a century
Before—sat in the chair he had,
His TV chair, where he could see
The history unfolding on
The moon. The rural world he'd known
In boyhood Oregon was gone.
The intervening years had flown,
And now he sat—his special chair—
And watched the launch, the orbit of
The moon. The lander in the air,
Just lightly hovering above,
Insectile in its form and act,
Descending to a golden leaf—
Impossible, but still a fact.
It settles (to our great relief).
Two moon men are at last at rest
Upon this extra-terrestrial crust.
They've passed so far each lethal test,
Are poised upon the lunar dust.
A wait. And then an astronaut
Descends the ladder to the moon.
He utters words, and we are caught
By what will be a famous tune—
The words of Armstrong—“giant leap”
And all of that will long endure.
The soundtrack will forever keep
Alive the moonwalk’s pure allure.
My father was a veteran—
And so saluted those brave two,
Who, asked to go, asked only, “When?”
Then roared away into the blue.
But Dad, I know, had other thoughts—
The changes in his life, of course—
The wonders that this life allots:
To get to school he rode a horse.
His family owned a Model-T.
Depression years. A World War.
A teacher’s life—near penury.
A wife, one son—and then two more.
The future brought some darkness to
The life that he had long enjoyed.
His body could no longer do
His bidding. Soon, he knew, the Void.
He died in 1999,
The moonwalk thirty years before,
The days he saw the glowing line
Between the past and evermore.
I see him stand erect and tall.
Our anthem he begins to sing,
And when the final phrases fall,
He sits to ponder everything.
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