It is a funny quote from James Dent. Although it can be a subtle metaphor for life, it can be insightfully profound as well. For instance, it can mean, taking the good with the bad. Although for most husbands, specially those lounging on a hammock under an oak tree, a broken lawn mower in the garage, snoring to "a midsummer night's dream" (apologies to William Shakespeare implied), are all taking good with the good.
Unfortunately, in a case like this, where one "good" is allowed to persist for weeks on end will all be blown away one day by one letter from the homeowners association (HOA) about a violation of the by-laws on yard maintenance. Furthermore, hammocks are prohibited in the front yard.
HOA, love them or hate them, strikes when least expected. They are the inveterate spoilers of suburban life, the subdivisions' dreadful interrupters of spring and summer. They come armed with phone cameras, plying the streets with eagle's eyes for the slightest irregularity in how the picket fence was repaired, or the driveway is no longer pristinely unblemished as the original concrete, thus requiring the services of a power washer.
But did you know that HOAs are mostly inactive in the winter time? But not long after the last frosty morning of spring when bees and butterflies come around to pollinate the flowers, HOA marauders too drive around like wasps and hornets armed with an encyclopedic memory of the association's volumes of regulations and by-laws.
And so it is then when husbands must move the hammock to the backyard and either fix the lawnmower, or risk the hefty fine and the ire of the HOA board. Either way, it's a choice between hurting one's back or the pocket book. Husbands, given the right financial circumstances later in life, are well advised to outsource the chore to the professional lawn service providers.
You take the good with the bad. The good with HOA, to be fair, is that if not for it, who will prevent homeowners from painting their homes bright-red orange or avocado-green or turn their driveway into a car repair bay, or let their front yard become a natural habitat for creatures great and small, or what started out as a weekend yard sale is extended into a mini flea market? I exaggerate, of course, but HOAs are the necessary guardrails to the proverbial slippery slope.
Now for the serious business of life's perfect summer mixed in with a broken lawnmower.
Life, if we've learned it well enough, is not always layered with perfect circumstances because it comes constantly sprinkled with just the right amount of not-so-perfect ones. The latter is just as significantly important if only to remind us that we do not inhabit a perfect world.
Our lives will always come with hopes of spring and perfect summers but we must expect and be vigilant of the broken lawn mower.
For three decades I have enjoyed playing tennis. As to be expected of a sport of stop and sudden go, from side to side, forward and back, coupled with the march of time, I've encountered my share of broken lawn mowers. Injuries to the wrist, elbow and ankle, and other seemingly unrelated visitations by aches and pains. That brought me face to face with the orthopedic doctor one day. I knew he was serious when he said, "Let me ask you this, how much do you really love tennis?". Although I knew he was leading the conversation one particularly dreadful way, I still replied that I love to keep playing that when my wrist got persistently injured, I switched to playing lefty to which he interrupted with, "Listen, that's the wrong answer, because if I have to do surgery on your Achilles heel and tendon, the next time you see me when it gets re-injured, the surgery I will do is not so you can keep playing but just so you can walk. I suggest you find something else to stay fit". That was one big broken lawnmower.
I was surprised at myself, however, that by the time I reached home after the thirty minute drive, I got over it. Then I decided to take up swimming, learned the proper way to do it and now I swim 1000 meters freestyle, non-stop in 30 minutes. (I may have mentioned in my earlier musings that I was doing it in 26 minutes, but now I realized I was swimming in a 25 yard pool and the Garmin wrist watch I started wearing confirmed it. There's a huge difference between a thousand yards and 1000 meters - 40 lengths vs. 44, 20 laps vs. 22.). But then that motivated me to swim the longer distance; "just because".
That is how I turned the broken lawn mower into "good" because swimming is something anyone can do almost at any age. I'm glad I did and my Achilles heel and other troublemakers of physiology never bothered me once.
Now, for the biggest broken lawn mower in our life. My wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's almost three years ago. As can be expected, not only is it such an overwhelmingly hard and difficult burden for her, it has affected everything around us. And we're reminded again that the ticket price to living longer is to grow old; but not without the challenges, yet we must realize that whatever is thrown at us, the alternative presents a grimmer picture. The pain of movement, the slowness of ordinary motion, the frustration and helplessness when and where ordinary chores we took for granted that we could no longer do are enough to show us some imperfections to expect from lives long-lived.
My wife, like everyone with Parkinson's, was dealt one seriously "broken lawn mower".
But you know what, there is so much good to take with the bad. Just ponder for a moment about the inconveniences of living longer today and how we are able to cope with them, because we live in the 21st century. It must be the envy of those who dealt with them just fifty years ago. And to be living where we are today, in a country blessed with so much, presents plenty of good with a few bad. This is not just ebullient optimism, it is about confronting reality head on. For a minimum copay, insurance paid for a motorized scooter, a wheelchair and a four-wheeled walker for my wife. By just imagining how and what it must have been like fifty years ago, some of the burdens of today are partly assuaged.
Do we miss the travels we've enjoyed and rue all the unrealized plans to travel more? Yes, but while we missed all future travel plans, we too missed, rationalizing justifiably now, the stresses of the airport experience, the tedium and drudgery of air travel. It all balances out, if we must take the good with the bad, that with the joy of "being there" are matched by the inevitable rigors of "getting there", both ways, going and coming. Don't get me wrong, we do cherish those experiences but are forever mindful that we were years younger then and the experiences remain in our memory, now a little hazy, but the photo albums are always there to reminisce with total clarity. My wife over the years has kept over twenty photo albums all meticulously chronicled and labeled, neatly arranged at her library. Afterall, all the travels we've had now reside only in our memory and the photo albums. You see, every world traveler, no matter how seasoned or how they fabulously planned their trips, each and every experience is now a memory. We cherish those as best we can.
We can still travel through YouTube and TV specials, practically anywhere we want to go in the comfort of our living room. TV can bring them and all those we planned to do and then some, at the click of the button. Machu Picchu, Iceland or the Angkor temples in Cambodia to name a few we haven't gone to are available for streaming. What I'm saying is that the mind will overcome broken lawn mowers of unfulfilled travel plans - limited only by our desire to explore from our armchair.
Do we miss going to the movies? Yes. Do we miss having to drive, the parking, the randomness of where we get to sit, etc.? No. The only thing to miss is the big screen. The sound, with today's technology, can be replicated by 5.1 stereo surround, tuned to your living room's listening area, if that is truly what one desires to be important; but a 55-inch plasma or LCD screen five feet away from your seat should be close enough for the big screen experience. Set that aside and we find that at home, we can pause the show for a bathroom break or snack. We find that old movies we watched again are better understood because certain parts of the dialog that Marlon Brando used to mumble are all made clear by closed captions. The broken lawn mower of not being able to go to the movie theater is easily fixed where popcorn and drinks do not cost an arm and a leg. And you are no longer at the mercy of the randomness of the availability of vacant seats or hostage to who sits next to you, in front and behind you, because you are in your favorite seat and location of your choice and the bathroom is no more than twelve paces away, the refrigerator even closer.
We miss going to the stage theater too but then again there are choices at our leisure either through paid subscription or YouTube. And you can walk out anytime the show is not to your taste. That is not easy to do at the live theater, not until intermission, anyway. And don't forget the bathroom privileges of watching the show at home.
How about going to restaurants to eat out. At our age, do we really miss that? Again, like in traveling, the last restaurant meal you had, no matter how sumptuously prepared and presented, are soon memories the following day you wake up. Depending on one's inclination there are quite a number of ways one can replicate a dish, given time and motivation, through one's own home cooking. That may sound overly ambitious but retirement presents ample opportunity to the adventurous and the willing. And again, YouTube, the cooking channels and recipe books are there to help.
The least I can do today for a household of two is to embrace the chores that my wife used to do thousands of times during her able days. She did it for four, with two growing boys, when she managed the household with a lot less financial wherewithal than now. One may look at it as a challenge to be grasped with the enthusiasm of a new hobby or simply a fervent desire to make good, "you promise to be true in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health". My wife had done much of her share in advance when she faced higher degrees of difficulty and a much lower family budget to work with while I now have the privilege with so much more financial leg room to move about.
There are obviously more words to express but the reader gets it. So. I will end with a simple example.
Every now and then my wife and I would go for breakfast at one of the local restaurants nearby. Almost invariably, she chooses her one favorite - "Yogurt parfait". Presented in a fancy bowl with all the trimmings, the "Frenchy" sounding restaurant (so named because the franchise root is New Orleans, Louisiana) is "licensed" to charge what eating out costs. Restaurant dining, while now a hustle to do, has become as rare as a double rainbow to us.
One day I researched how yogurt parfait is prepared. Well .. below, based on what I read this is how I prepare it for her besides pancake or French toast, pan-de-sal topped with fried egg sunny side up, oat meal - choices from the menu I offer her each morning. And this is exactly what the Frenchy restaurant has, sans the fancy bowl and presentation; at a fraction of the cost. And she gets to choose the yogurt. She has options on what flakes to put on top.
There are, of course, many examples that will far exceed the limits of one musing but it is well understood that one must embrace caregiving to a spouse as a simple act. However, it is one to be embraced for the nobility of the partnership and standing by a promise made by both because it is where necessity ends that kindness is profoundly given and felt.
Broken lawn mowers are part of the realities of lives long-lived. We must realize soon enough though that if we view life as a painting, one may have to squint hard to spot the broken lawnmower sitting at the corner of the garage - a tiny part of the landscape.
No comments:
Post a Comment