By the time you are reading this, I will have successfully navigated one more milestone (the ninety-third anniversary of my birth) and will be well into my ninety-fourth year. According to the Social Security actuarial tables, my life expectancy is 3.14 years, which calculates to September 6, 2027. I will be happy with that, and will no longer worry about the Social Security/Medicare accounts going “belly-up” in 2030.
My birthday has been full of highlights. Beth took me to the Benedum for a delightful live performance of “The Music Man”. She and Sara gave me a new patio swing which Mike assembled (built?) and installed. My friends at the Bridgeville History Center greeted me with cupcakes when I visited there. Brunch with my brother and my high school gang, including John Rosa just in from Arizona, was quite enjoyable, after which I drove to Beth’s for a celebratory dinner with Jonathan and Marsha Maddy. And John announced that he is coming in for the weekend. “My cup runneth over”!
In years past, the question “How are you?” has generally been interpreted as an invitation to small talk. More recently I have realized that folks posing that question are genuinely interested in my health and welfare. Before my wife died, my pre-programmed answer was “Never Better!” Since then that answer obviously would be an untruth; it has been replaced by “Fine!”, usually accompanied by an internal question to myself regarding its validity. In all honesty, it is valid. I am blessed with reasonably good health and the ability to continue to enjoy living (almost) independently in the same house I have occupied for over fifty-five years. At its peak, the eight rooms, four bathrooms, basement, and tandem garage in our house were fully occupied by five humans, a dog, and at least one cat. Recently I have “down-sized”; I regularly use my bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, and the living room, dining room, kitchen, and powder room on the first floor. Three bedrooms, the side porch, the basement, and the garage have been converted into storage areas containing a frightening amount of non-catalogued semi-precious items.
The past year has seen me decline physically. My sense of balance isn’t what it used to be, although I only fell once this year, and that was associated with a light-headed spell. My world class team of medical advisors is unanimous in blaming this on dehydration; nonetheless five fifteen ounce glasses of water a day hasn’t improved my balance. I stumble a lot and automatically revert to shuffling my feet rather than taking normal steps. The negative consequence of this has been my prevention from walking in the woods, though I stare longingly into them every day. When I am outside I walk with a cane, mostly so I can fight off Boy Scouts trying to help me across the street for their daily good deed. It is remarkable how much steeper the hills have become and how the pull of gravity has increased so much; two more consequences of climate change, no doubt. Fortunately I am still comfortable driving and confident of my capability.
I am pleased that the deterioration of my mental faculties has been at a much slower rate. Like all nonagenarians I frequently have difficulty remembering a specific name or place, even though I can visualize the person or the location perfectly. I am content to accept that as part of growing old. I am grateful that I still have the ability and opportunity to read voraciously – “so many books, so little time”. The past month or so I have been on a Faulkner kick; the more I read, the more convinced I become that he is “head and shoulders” over all his contemporaries. This despite the fact that much of his work must be read numerous times for the reader to understand what he has written. In many respects the fourteen novels and dozens of short stories he wrote about the fictional Yoknapatawpha County are all one huge story. They recount the sins of the Southern white folks – destruction of a natural Paradise, forced removal of Native Americans from their homeland, and the introduction of African-American slaves to perform their dirty work – all to enable a tiny group of aristocrats to live like English noblemen.
If I were to give a sermon on the personal characteristics that I would like to see all of us emphasize, it would combine compromise, tolerance, forgiveness, and gratitude. Of these four, forgiveness has always been the most difficult for me. I have a long history of carrying a grudge and being unwilling to forgive the person responsible for it. This, of course, requires tolerance and the willingness to accept the fact that each of us is unique and warrants being permitted to practice that uniqueness. I wish it were easier for me to accept facial hardware and tattoos, for example. Compromise used to work. President Clinton quickly recognized he had to work with a Republican Congress; together they produced the only non-deficit years our country has experienced in a century. Can’t we find leaders with that focus anymore?
Gratitude is a given. We are incredibly blessed with “creature comforts”; why can’t we be grateful for them and satisfied with them? We lament the fact that twelve per cent of Americans live below the poverty limit and forget that, in Bridgeville in 1940, half of our families were below that limit and that their living quarters, clothing allowance, and diet were an order of magnitude worse than their contemporaries today. I personally am grateful for my immediate family, my extended family, and an eclectic collection of friends. I am embarrassed (sometimes even feel guilty) that I have inherited far more than my fair share of blessings.
How am I doing? I am indeed doing “just fine”. Every day is a bonus.