Old Man Winston
My heart seems to beat louder these days. I can feel it now, as I lie in bed, the off-beat rhythm that I’m not quite used to pushing against my worn out bones and weathered skin, wrinkled and dry. I need lotion. It’s odd to think that this is the same skin I’ve had since I was a child. I get bruises now, large ones. Sometimes I’ll wake up and not even know where they’ve come from. I don’t sleep walk. No, no, I don’t sleep walk. At least I don’t think I do. But then again, I can hardly remember where I’ve placed my sandwich thirty seconds after making it. I frustrate myself more than I used to. It’s as though I don’t have any control over my mind, it chooses what to remember and what to forget. And my knees creak like the floors of this old house. I can hardly bend them anymore. I don’t walk anywhere, can’t walk anywhere, it’s more of a shuffle. One foot after the other, like ice-skating. I thank God for my hardwood floors everyday. Nothing makes me happier than a clean pair of socks and my wooden floors. I can scoot across any room in my house without even trying, it’s like ice-skating. I said that already. But I fell the other day, in the kitchen, took me ten minutes to get up. That’s where that bruise came from…
She left her lamp on again. I can’t reach it. I want to turn it off, close my eyes and dream of things I can no longer accomplish. These dreams used to be more exciting, a telling of what may happen one day. Now they are torture, ideas of what can never happen, I have run out of time. But I have accomplished enough, I am almost satisfied. She doesn’t know how to properly brush her teeth, hasn’t known how to since we’ve been married. Fifty two years. A lifetime. I’ve spent more time with her than I have alone. I remember the first time I saw her, one of the few things I can remember. She was wearing blue, my favorite color. I can’t remember what she said though, I’m not sure I was paying attention, but I liked the rhythm at which she said it, the tone of her voice and the way she smiled big through her bright red lipstick. She was wearing blue. She hated me at first, thought I was “appalling”. Now she says that was a lie but she isn’t a good liar. She didn’t want to like me, thought her husband would be taller, perhaps better looking, but I convinced her. Somehow I convinced her. A majority of the toothpaste falls off the bristles and into the sink the moment she puts the brush in her mouth. But yet she continues to brush, drooling into the sink and onto her hand. It’s the most disgusting thing you’ll ever see, yet I love her. “Stop it,” she says, eyeing me through the crack in the door. I haven’t said anything but she knows. She knows I think it’s disgusting. She smiles, her teeth are yellow now, she hates them, wants to pull them out. She asks me what can be done, whitening? I tell her toothpaste would help. She slaps me. Right shoulder, every time, right shoulder. “Stop it.”
Her feet are cold but in a few minutes they will boil and she will pull them out from underneath my legs. She kisses my forehead and tells me that she hopes she dies first, doesn’t want to live without me. Nor do I…without her. I hope I die first. We are too old to make love. Never thought I’d say that. Alas, I am too old to make love. Never too old for love but too old to make it. Not sure why they call it that, “making love”, but that’s what we call it and it seems to make sense because, in that moment, it is something we make, something we create. Her father tried to keep away, wanted to kill me for kissing her “too passionately”. We were young then, passion is only something that can be understood when you are looking along it, when you are experiencing it. But for an old man, looking at passion, it is immature, to have passion is to be naive. “They can’t understand love at their age.” We have understood it then and we understand it now, only now it is more tame, it is silent, it is a look of the eyes, a touch of the hand. When we were young, you would know our love by seeing the way we looked at each other. Now, we can look at each other without seeing each other, I can speak without speaking, know without being told. I know her better than she can be known by anyone. I find find her disgusting and beautiful all in the same moment.
She rolls over, hugs her pillow and slowly drifts to sleep. I watch the skin on my chest rise and fall, the off-beat rhythm that I’m not quite used to. Tomorrow she will look as though she jumped from a plane and her breath will wreak of a thousand deaths. Toothpaste would help. But this time I will not see it. I watch my chest rise.
And fall…
Rise…
And fall…
Inspiration
I need some of it.
Heard “Life is For Living” today. Makes me think of this video every time I hear it. Pretty sure Seth showed it to me. It’s inspiring. So I watched it. You should too.
If you don’t know the story of Kyle Lake, go here.