SEPTEMBER 16, 2024 – Today on my walk I ran into . . . er, encountered . . . an acquaintance of mine, a retired engineer, whom I hadn’t seen since early this summer. He and his wife own a nice home with a grand view of the park, and he was out tending a garden along the sidewalk in front of his lot. We half-joked about the issue that increases in prominence as we age: health in older age. The immutable direction is understood despite contrary hope and desire.
After he told me about his wife’s recent hip surgery and I told him about my wife’s knee, which causes severe enough pain to distract her (and me) from her chronic back pain, we moved on to other matters—grandchildren, the declining condition of customer service, and inevitably, the election. It didn’t take long before we were a couple of curmudgeons sounding off, trading strident and redundant indictments of social media (except he described with a ringing endorsement, a recent post he saw in which Harris was trouncing Trump in a boxing ring).
My counterpart is not a classic curmudgeon or even a traditional geezer. He reads a lot; he’s genuinely amiable, engaging but soft spoken, and quick to laugh. He golfs a fair amount but isn’t obsessed about it. He seems to know a lot about plants. He and his wife belong to a local Lutheran Church (ELCA); based on conversations I’ve enjoyed with him since I made his acquaintance a few years ago, however, he strikes me as being more philosophical about his religion than he is committed to its doctrine and dogma. When it comes to politics, my friend keeps company with Republicans but can’t stand their party or its standard-bearer. What concerns him most is accelerating climate change. His likes and dislikes mirror most of my own.
As we exchanged the same views on matters of mutual despair, I wondered how an innocent bystander might gauge us—were we a couple of geezer-curmudgeons or two well-intentioned liberals upset with “conservatives” who truly aren’t?
After he said he needed to check on his recuperating wife, we wished each other well, and I continued on my way. Striding up the street and down another and yet another to my neighborhood, I pondered how easy it is to think the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Age brings a curmudgeon’s proclivity for negativity, I reminded myself, and in that is nothing new. Oldsters since ancient times have liked better the way things were than the way things are. In knowing that, however, perhaps I could avoid the worst of being and sounding negative. I promised myself that going forward, I’d be (or at least sound) less like a geezer or a curmudgeon.
Having made this resolution, I looked forward to spending time with our granddaughter after school. This proved to be the right move. It reversed my earlier slide toward geezerdom and curmudgenhood. At Illiana’s suggestion on the ride home from school we stopped at the store to buy fresh fruit and chocolate sauce so she could make a mouth-watering “fruit charcuterie board.” I delighted in watching this creative little third-grader work her magic—to the upbeat music of her latest favorite, Vera Lynn.
Afterward she wanted to ride her scooter down to the local playground three blocks away. I got an early start as she stopped on our front walk to don her helmet and fasten the safety strap. Upon catching up to me she called out, “Wanna race, Grandpa?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t want to admit the truth—that I was feeling somewhat spent from my earlier hour-long power walk; that I was . . . growing old. “I’m feeling lethargic,” I said.
“What’s lethargic?”
“A fancy word for ‘lazy.’”
“Lazy?” she said over her shoulder. If I didn’t want her to think I was becoming a geezer, I certainly didn’t want Illiana to think I was a lazy one. On the other hand, I didn’t much feel like chasing down the sidewalk in a vain attempt to keep up with an almost-nine-year-old on her scooter. Thus, I compromised. I quickened my walking pace and simply delighted in her youthful exuberance. By the time we reached the playground, I was feeling young again myself.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
