Like the Skin on a Balloon
Eschatological Statement, This is Not.
It happens the way things like this happen. Not all at once but subtly, lightly shifting, day to day, until it forces your attention, usually when looking into the bathroom mirror. That singular moment when you realize you are old, unfolds differently than did the previous milestones of your life.
It crept in as the number of funerals you went to caught up with, then surpassed the numbers of weddings you went to each year. It crept up on you as the hints of lines at the corners of your mouth ever so slowly morphed into the beginnings of the bulldog jowls your Dad grew in his seventies.
It slipped in slowly as you changed from regular drinks with friends to middle school cross-country meets you had to drive the team to. It silently burgled into your weekends, stealing your reckless abandon, leaving hobbies like gardening, or yoga, to mock you. It crept into your work-week, as you transformed from an entry level public employee trying to wrangle a day off in May to hit Carb Day at the Speedway with your friends, into the tie-wearing middle-aged guy trying to figure out how to get the city controller to let you buy a new computer for the entry level public servant who is sitting in front of you trying to wrangle Carb Day off this Friday…
It was less a sudden boom-chick a-wow moment like losing your virginity, or when you put that little piece of paper in your mouth at that party in Bloomington, than a slow and profound progression of how you see the world- punctuated by sudden understandings of physical and mental limits, like the day you finally walk into the CVS and buy a pair of those little glasses your gramps kept in his breast pocket with the Luckies…
Then you start to realize, that the beast is actually out there, waiting. You’ve known it from earliest understandings- but it gets real now- that motherfucker IS there, hopefully a good ways off in those dark woods, but he is out there. Inexorably strolling towards his moment of introduction that is your mortal birthright.
When he makes it to the door, perhaps we can make light conversation over a beer, before we stroll off together into our forever, nether friendship. Perhaps he can friend me on Facebook, and we can argue politics, and share vacay shots, so there’s a casual comfort when we first go virtual, face to face.
Yeah, that’s the plan, like the clicking knees, I’m just going to make friends with it all, and be grateful for the company…
