ON 73

ON BEING 73

I had written an earlier post ('Painted into a Corner') prompted by the huge oil spill off the Louisiana coast but decided it was a little too boring. Since most of you seem interested in the personal side of my journey through life and now that I am getting accustomed to the age of 73, why not a note on what this is like for me.

First, a knee update. On the whole, going pretty well. However, as would not surprise some of you, I took too much advantage of this and got out my road-bike, the faithful Trek 2120. After giving it a good cleaning and tune up, off we went. Regarding my legs going up and down as I pedaled slowly and steadily, I noticed that relative to the top frame tube, the left knee now passed much closer than the right. This is due to the realignment of the joint so that it is less bow-legged, I thought to myself. All went well on the ride and a day or two later I ventured a little further. Horror!!! The next day the knee was so sore on the outside that I could barely walk. This was also the day of a visit to my physical therapist so I had to confess to overdoing things. His comment: not unusual to have a flare up like this. With a new set of exercises to stretch the offended connective tissue, lots of Ibuprofen for several days, regular ice packs, and the knee is gradually improving. When will I ever learn not to overdo things? At 73, I had better get with the program!

Ah yes, the next knee job will be on July 21, so I am about to go through it all again.

I write this on the eve of American Independence Day so the date, American fashion, is 7/3...another 73. I am rather partial to prime numbers, as 73 happens to be, and so are a bunch of mathematicians. Apparently, every whole number is either a prime number or made up from two primes. Since there are an infinite number of whole numbers, it follows that the number of primes is also infinite. However, it is difficult to predict or generate primes. My next prime age will be 79, the age at which my paternal grandfather died. On a street car, in Adelaide, and I am not sure if he had paid his fare. How many primes have I left to me to enjoy? My mother lived to 102, so maybe I have a few more.

Even at 73, first experiences are possible. Some good things have happened already. For example, just last week, as I was walking around the block as a warm up for my home physical therapy exercises, I heard a steady, loud, hammering sound. Looking up to where the sound appeared to be originating, I spied a large, black, handsome bird crowned with a red comb banging his beak against a tree. My first glimpse of a pileated woodpecker; widespread across the norther part of the country but not often seen; here it is:

Indeed, a handsome bird, but my recall is that the beak was somewhat more pronounced. At any rate, he could really pound that tree! And big, at about 18 inches or 45 cm long.

Another first happened the other night. After a couple of days of really sultry weather, a severe thunderstorm alert, prompted me to go out to see if it was coming. My eyes were attracted downward to the lawn where there were hundreds of winking, bright pinpoints of white light...fireflies!!! Amazing. So far as I am aware, we do not have fireflies in Australia (but perhaps in caves) and I had not seen any in the Northwest. The next day, the barrista in the coffee shop told me that the folks down South, such as in Georgia, catch them and place them in jars to light the night, releasing them the next day.

Perhaps the secret of living, to a degree, is the art of 'finding firsts'; at the least, they certainly stir the blood. I think I may have a few ahead. Some of you know that I plan to return to Australia later this year to resume residence there. Yes, on September 18, I board the United Flight from San Francisco to return to the land of my birth, ending some 15 years of residence in the US. With good friends and family still here, of course, I will return from time to time. In the Gospels, Jesus remarked that it is 'easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God'. He was referring to the necessity, once the main gate of a walled city was closed at night, of bending low to pass through the 'eye gate'...quite a tight squeeze! So it will be for me; my possessions will have been reduced to what will fit into two suitcases. With less than what I had when I left in February of 1995, I will re-enter my home land.

In many ways, I expect this to be the beginning of a new life. To stay with the biblical metaphors, I will be 'born again', enduring the narrow passage of birth and stripped of all but a few possessions just as Jesus said, 'Except one is born again, one cannot see the kingdom of God'.

Jesus was referencing a universal law of the journey: to go somewhere, one must first accept the discipline of the way to be taken.

What will I do and where will I live in the land that awaits my discovery?

And what is this like for me? Quite exciting; I am minded of the words that Tennyson put into the mouth of Ulysses:

I cannot rest from travel,

I will drink life to the lees...

...

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known...

...

I am part of all that I have met,

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that far untravell'd world, whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breath were Life! Life piled on life

Were all to little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things...

...

And this gray spirit, yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Ah well, a tall order; but why not give it shot?