Becoming Seventy-Two

My birthday was celebrated in ways that included time on the water and have left me in a glow of friendship. And on my actual birthday my wife Pam left a gorgeous red satin box on my pillow. And My Withered Legs and Other Essays is out there in the wild. Today I saw it my own self on a bookstore bookshelf for the first time. People I know and people I don't are leaving messages of appreciation. I have a folder that I've unabashedly labeled "Fan Letters" where I store them to read when I need a boost. 

Five weeks ago Pippin, my aged dog, died. I'm a writer so, of course, I already have a document labelled "Grief." But I don't want to craft some lyrical essay about losing her. Not yet. Right now, every day, I only want to howl and sob. But I can write about writing and moving through this early part of my seventies.

When my mother, Yvonne, moved into the assisted living center down from my house, we would make observations together. She noticed that at bridge gatherings and bingo sessions there were a lot of people in their seventies but then the numbers dropped. We decided that the seventies was when the strokes, heart attacks, or all that smoking got you. If you made it past them it was clear sailing for another decade or more. She was seventy-eight at the time. We joked that she only had to hold on for two more years. Yvonne died at eighty-three. It was that half century of smoking that did it.

I never smoked. That's not true. For six months during my first year in college, I would stay up all night in the hospital cafeteria next to my dorm smoking Newport Menthols while I studied. A paper I wrote, in one night, on Denise Levertov was given an A-. The instructor explained that if I had been trying to make some sort of poetic statement by omitting any punctuation, it had not worked. Hence the minus. The lack of periods was not on purpose. I had been buzzed on Black Beauties (methamphetamine) the whole night.

My father died at seventy: heart disease. I had a heart attack at sixty-six. I don't know what this recitation of medical history means. I don't know what it has to do with my writing this year, this summer. But it is what I think of during these unsettled days of grief, a book release, and another birthday. It doesn't help that my shoulder is injured and my elbows hurt more than usual. The changes aren't dramatic and I'm sure the injury will heal and the pain will ease back down to regular, but I am unsettled.

My poet friend Aliesa and I are having another of our retreats soon. I always create a writing itinerary beforehand. And each evening we email each other (from the next room) a list of how we spent the day. Going by my parents genetics, I either have another decade to live or death is overdue. Should I buckle down and delve into this novel in a serious way? That would take two years or more. Or use the retreat week to finally finish up the short story about a community of disabled people who survive the climate apocalypse. Essays, I can always write an essay. I'm just going to go right ahead and list long sessions of Netflix for each day.

In the meantime, we're having the bedroom and bathroom repainted. I looked around the house one day and realized I too closely resembled the stereotype of an old lady who doesn't notice they are living in a home with walls last painted a quarter of a century ago, with a roof equally old, and with wheelchair ramps whose boards are iffy. We're starting with the two rooms. I hate even this much disruption in my life. And the prep work is why my shoulder aches. This lack of flexibility could make me call myself an old lady in a derisive way except me getting surly when my house isn't in order is nothing new. I could also say it's an important part of being disabled. Having a set way of doing things makes life easier and, paradoxically, more expansive. But it's also possible, I'm just that way. Especially since I know plenty of disabled people who live messy, spontaneous lives and do just fine.

Somewhere in all the meanderings above is something about the shape of my writing life in this seventy second year of my life. But first I have to decide whether to sleep in paint fumes tomorrow or get a hotel room. Both choices annoy me. Just so you know, my beloved Pam is, as they say, a saint. Also, that red satin box that she put on my pillow the morning of my birthday, it had socks in it. Which delighted me. Yes, I am of the age to appreciate lovely socks.