There was a time when there was nothing my Dad couldn't build or couldn't fix. When he was twelve years old--eighty-one years ago!--he used work on his uncle's car for the opportunity to drive it around town. For all I know, even at twelve, he was trying to woo the fairer sex with a ride in his jalopy. When he was in the Army during World War II, and stationed in the Philippines, he built a washing machine for his platoon. He used a metal barrel, a jeep... and his own personal smarts. I don't know if there was even such a thing as a washing machine back in the 40's, but my Dad had one, the one he built. I have a picture of it. He's standing next to it with a big smile on his face, proud as all get out. Years later, after he was married and I was old enough to pay attention, I remember seeing him take apart the vacuum cleaner. He took it apart, piece by piece, and laid those pieces on a tarp in the order he removed them. That way, he knew in what order what was attached to what. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, as the song goes.
But when you get older, things begin to fail. Your vision. Your hearing. Your, um, tallywacker. (Ahem, so I'm told.) Your thinking process, which used to be crystal clear, starts to become muddled and, like your vision, blurry.
I remember watching a documentary by Desmond Morris called The Human Animal. Desmond Morris is a zoologist who studies humans as if they're animals. One of his observations was how, when we're young, we can almost defy gravity. We run and jump and practically fly through the air. but when we get old, that same gravity which we used to ignore, grabs us hard and drags us down. Walking is an effort. Getting up from the couch impossible. When you're a kid you can fly off the couch like a bullet fired from a gun. Zero to sixty in less than a fraction of a second. When you're old, you develop a fondness for the phrase, "Help me up." I'm not saying my dad can't get off the couch on his own. He can. Eventually. It takes some grunting and groaning and rocking back and forth, but he does it.
(For the record, I don't try to help my Dad up from the couch until he asks for help. "What?" he'll practically yell, "you don't think I can get off the couch on my own?" A few seconds after that, he'll forget that he just yelled at me, hold out a hand, and say, "Help me up.")
My Dad will be walking from the kitchen to the great room, and if my grandson is running around around him, my Dad will stop for dear life. He gets nervous when his great-grandson is around. All that running and jumping can only mean one thing: "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" My Dad will stop, hang on to the edge of the kitchen counter, and wait for the human tornado that is my grandson to pass.
Why is it that as we get older, we get so unsteady on our feet? The slightest nudge can knock us over. Why is it that the simplest of problems that require the minimum of mental effort to solve--like turning the volume control knob on the radio--becomes the mental equivalent of climbing Mount Everest?
I like to people watch, and it always saddens me to watch old people walk down the street. They move so slowly it almost seems as if they're traveling in a different time stream. Maybe they are. A time stream slower that the one the rest of the world travels in. Kids, on the other hand, seem to move along in a faster time stream. Looking at my grandson run and jump is like looking at my TV set--when my Dad's not busy wasting his time watching baseball, that is--when I'm fast-forwarding through the commercials. Looking at my Dad, on the other hand, is like watching a documentary where those underwater guys with those big, round metal helmets on their heads walk around the bottom of the ocean.
Getting old is not for wimps, my friends. Every morning my Dad goes on his walks around the neighborhood, rain or shine. I think he thinks as long as he keeps walking he'll live forever. Sadly, that's not the case. His 98 year-old brother died just a few days before Christmas this year, and the wife of the pastor of our church died just a few days after. She was 62. But every morning, in the heat or the cold, in the dry or the wet, he'll force himself to walk.
"Dad, it's raining," we'll tell him. Doesn't matter.
"Dad, it's hot," we'll warn. He doesn't care.
To him, walking means he's alive. Of course, he's walking slower these days. And not as far. And his aches and pains don't completely go away. But he's alive.
And that's what we have in store for us, if we're lucky enough to live that long. "Lucky," hmm...
One man's dream is another man's nightmare.
I guess.
Raising My Father
JimDuchene.blogspot.com
RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
@JimDuchene
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