Long Ago in Bristol and Verona ...

It's been a tough day for getting my head around the concept of aging gracefully. The exercises the chipper young physical therapist gave me to do between appointments are leaving me gasping in horror at just how much recovery is going to be necessary before I am "good as new." New in which decade, I wonder. This afternoon I limped gamely out the front door and down my six zillion front steps to confer with my yard guy about the trees that need to be pruned before they start to bud again in the spring. While I was out there I continued my hobble all the way down the driveway to the post box to see what fresh hell might be lurking therein. Much to my delight, however, a DVD I had ordered from some dodgy 'art house' distributor had arrived. I stumbled on to this particular bit of film history at the end of an internet trawl through 18th century choral music, down a side track to Beatles and Rolling Stones tunes of the late 1960's and then a sharp left turn to a film I've often thought about over the years but haven't actually seen since 1964. One is able to get a DVD with this cinematic offering from a strange little place in New York, so I ordered it. What can I say; it was late, I was tired. I can still remember most of the words from the theme song of the movie (although I am completely incapable of remembering code citations for most crimes). I was curious to watch not only the movie, but my reaction to the movie all these many (many ... many) years later. I can still recall the theater in Walnut Creek where my sister and I saw the movie originally. I recall thinking that the characters were so glamorous and foreign when I saw it (never having been out of California at that time). After watching the film and watching myself, I popped Franco Zeffirelli's 'Romeo & Juliet' (c.1968) into the DVD player and tried to remember watching that for the first time, too. The story is not only chock full of all the nonsensical and dangerous ideas of "true love", but the first time I saw it I was the same age as both of the lead characters and the young actors who portrayed them. 

It's so curious to try to remember what something was like for the first time when you revisit it with vision obscured by decades of life experience. All of the characters in both films looked so very young and vulnerable (well, shoot, they're half the age of my child now!). Cheeks are so soft and pliant; hair so glorious and thick; young lips still so full and bodies still so lissome. And how do I see these characters today? So serious in their desperate concerns about love and life. I have to curb my impulse to lock them safely in their rooms until they grow some sense. But that's not what life and living are about, is it? Romeo and Juliet continue to kill themselves. The kids in "Some People" go on, after the film ends, to the difficult life of post-war England. And I go on with my life. We all married, for better or worse, some of us repeatedly, and for the most part none of us killed ourselves or each other. That was what life and living were about. 

Romeo & Juliet today

When I have enough energy I'll pop in "A Man For All Seasons" and "Becket" and see if I can relive the awe with which I first saw those films (both in San Francisco). I'll try to recall how I remembered the films and those amazing lives when I later read several biographies involving both men. And I'll look at the contemporary photographs of the actors who played all these characters and find some peace with the girl/woman who looks back at me from the mirror and age gracefully.

"Things die, too, you know. And so, if they too have to die, well there it is, it's so much better to let them go. That has much more style about it, apart from everything else, don't you agree?" (Giorgio Bassani; The Garden of the Finzi-Continis)

Celebrate Recovery ... as long as it may take

Recovery is a strange concept. Our friends, Merriam and Webster (not to be confused with the household gods, Owen & Webster), advise us that the term's earliest known usage is in the 14th century in Middle English from the Anglo-French recoverer, from Latin recouperare, from re + caperare, from Latin capere "to take", more at "heave" (a transitive verb with the obsolete meaning "to elevate"). I can tell you from the current viewpoint that my recovery certainly has elements of elevation about it; humorous and physical. Nearly a month out from surgery, I have developed a distinctly seafaring gait that someone referred to as "Peg Leg" would probably recognize. I am assured that this will resolve itself in time and that my body will accept and compensate for the various insults and injuries done to it in the name of Repair. We'll see. I'll be content when every task doesn't have to be considered in terms of how many steps it is going to involve and whether I'm going to have to bend over at any time during the task. The dogs have figured out that, if I have to bend over to pick up something, it's going to be an extended process so they watch for their main chance at snatching whatever it is that I'm bending over to get. In a letter to a friend I was bemoaning the fact that putting on bed socks involved an entire series of discrete actions that included the hope that the dogs wouldn't decide the item in question was a soft toy, grab it and make away with it before I could put it on. Alas.

I saw Gracie striding purposefully across a counter yesterday with a sodden tea bag in her mouth, which she must have rescued from the kitchen sink. I'm sure she thought it was some sort of exotic small rodent, what with that long, string tail and all. I snatched the tea bag from her and deposited it in the trash bin (yes, I know, I should have done that in the first place). In a fit of feline pique, she went into my bathroom shortly thereafter and pillaged the pottery dish on the counter for transportable trifles. She settled on one of a pair of earrings a girlfriend had given me for Christmas and removed it to the floor, where she had more scope for destruction. I found the gutted remains of the poor trinket later and gave it and its sister a decent burial. Yes, I know, I should have put them in the jewelry box as soon as I took them off. There is, however, a certain atavistic charm in coping with domestic wildlife in one's daily affairs. I just wish that they weren't so much faster and sneakier than I. At least, after more than a dozen years, old Scooter and I know what to expect of each other and comport ourselves accordingly. These young ones, though ...

The snow that has been our constant companion for the past week is finally showing patchy. The river rocks in my dry stream have reappeared and the mess the local teenagers made of the playing fields in the park across the street is now much less ugly. It is unusual for so much snow to stay around for so long in this part of the world. The snow and ice, the cold temperatures and the physical situation of my house rendered me housebound for a week. My deathly fear at the moment is falling. That has primacy of place on the list of things my surgeon said I must not do. My house sits at the top of the property and everything then slopes down to the street. My driveway would do service as a bunny run at a ski resort and it was lavishly covered with lots and lots of fluffy snow, which then packed to lots of snow and ice. I discovered that even going out into the garage to let the dogs in and out for routine airings caused a great deal of discomfort to the entire area that the surgical team had been messing with. I have no idea how well or poorly titanium conducts heat and cold, but I do know that it hurt like stink by the time I got back into the house! There were no snow plows for two days after the first snowfall (it is The South, after all) and the street in front of my house more closely resembled an ice rink than a thoroughfare for motorized vehicles. This did not, I note, hinder some local yahoo from tearing up and down the street in his beat up green pickup truck at about 30 mph towing a plastic sled behind him with small children on it. I was appalled but saw little point in attempting to explain the physics of that stunt to the bonehead (even if I could have gotten out of the house); the children on the sled were traveling as fast as the truck and ... had no brakes. I still don't know how they managed to stop without death or disfigurement because there isn't really anywhere on the street for them to turn around without making a 3-point turn. Oh well. I didn't hear any emergency vehicle sirens and the Life Flight helicopter didn't have to land in the field in the park, so I guess there were no tears before bed. I heard later that several of my acquaintances had also engaged in this behavior themselves, so I suppose it's a rural nonsense. At least my friends were doing it out in open fields where the driver could spin the sleds out behind him to stop ... that's what I'm telling myself, anyway. The day I finally was able to go back to work, a large and sturdy detective came to collect me and held on to a large handful of my coat all the way down the driveway to his car. We figured my dignity was of less importance at that point than the real possibility of taking a header off my crutch. I suppose that, if I wasn't in my current state of disability, I would have found the snow and its attendant weather more invigorating. As it was, though, it was just a great thumping nuisance and I'm glad it's scheduled to head out. I see in the extended forecast, however, that they are guessing there will be more by next weekend. Somebody explain this global warming stuff to me again.

"The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don't let it get the best of you." ~ Will Rogers

Cotton, Flannel and River Water

This shirt is old and faded
All the color's washed away
I've had it now for more damn years
Than I can count anyway.

* * *

This shirt was the one I lent you
And when you gave it back
There was a rip inside the sleeve
Where you rolled your cigarettes
It was the place I put my heart
Now look at where you put a tear
I forgave your thoughtlessness
But not the boy who put it there

* * *

This shirt is a grand old relic
With a grand old history
I wear it now for Sunday chores
Cleaning house and raking leaves
I wear it beneath my jacket
With the collar turned up high
So old I should replace it
But I'm not about to try.

These are some of the lyrics to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s song, “This Shirt.” I’m thinking of them today because I’ve been sloping about in a perfectly ratty old flannel bathrobe that an ex-Someone left behind with all the other things he didn’t want. I bought the bathrobe for him when he was in hospital with one or another of the various surgeries I nursed him through. I suppose I keep it around because you just can’t have too many ratty bathrobes when you reside with a pack of corgis and a couple of insistent cats. And since, during my recovery and rehabilitation from my latest hospital outing, I can’t lean forward when I’m eating, I either wear ratty old bathrobes or one of those big, plastic pelican bibs we used to put on the kids when they ate in high chairs on plastic throw cloths.

This solitary recovery is beginning to get me down. The furkids are marvelous company, but one can only stretch the intellectual conversation so far with them. When I checked on Owen today because he did not answer with the others when I called, his only excuse was that he had his head so far in the cats’ litter box that he didn’t hear me. So much for living on a higher plane … I can’t seem to get my Dr. Doolittle act together. The text messages and emails are entertaining, but not the same as the sound of a human voice (other than my old friends on NPR) or the touch of a hand.  I shall have to find a way to get back to humanity before they come looking for me and find my mortal remains in the laundry room with the radio blasting in the kitchen … (waggery only).

A friend contacted me today asking if he could give my email address to a woman who is looking for someone to help crew her sailboat on the river. I was suddenly taken back years to when I lived on another planet with Someone who loved to sail and the ocean was minutes away (he is not to be confused with the Old Bathrobe Someone). I have toyed with the idea of a small sailboat for years, but the reality of the maintenance required put me off. A bicycle is so much easier to deal with. But, if I could just be responsible for crewing, that would be grand. The woman and I made contact and we’ll talk more when I’m not hobbling about on crutches and can lean over when I eat.  How glorious to have the possibility of doing the things I wanted so much to do but chose not to because I thought I had to do things with somebody else. All I have to do now is figure out how to divide time between the bike, the boat and the music. What a marvelous problem to have!

My ratty old bathrobe, with a grand old history, is calling to me to put it back on and feed the dogs. It’s good to have faithful friends about; animate and otherwise.