House on the Water

 -- By Tom Phillips 

It was hard to leave at the end of our annual family vacation on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. On the last day, my sister-in-law Linda and I have a tradition of walking down to the shoreline wearing pure white robes.  

This year we got up at dawn, and sat at the high-tide line watching the surf roll in as the sun emerged from clouds on the horizon, lighting a spark and then a fire across the waves, practically into our laps. We chanted OM three times, took some selfies and shots of each other, and then just looked out into the distance, as dawn went down to day. 

On vacation, I don't read much. I prefer to sit and stare at the ocean, watching people in the water, thinking about nothing in particular. Normally my mind is busy, but by the ocean it rests---in the natural trinity of sky, sea, and sand. If I have a mental focus it's the shifting line where the water rolls up on land, then flows back, sometimes rippling sideways, sometimes just slipping back under the next wave.  

On the verge of 80, life's a beach. It's the borderline between life and death, the known and the unknown, being and nothingness, the light of day and the darkness of the deep.  

John Lee Hooker wrote a blues about it, "I'm Going Upstairs."  It's about an old man, unwanted, with no place in the world to go.  

I got a house on the water, I don't need no land.
When I'm dead and gone, bury me in the deep blue sea.  

--  Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips 

 
  

On Turning 80: First, You Cry

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash 

--- By Tom Phillips 

First, you cry. 

Lying in bed, doing nothing, thinking about nothing, I would suddenly start to cry.  Nothing dramatic, just a few deep, soft waves of sadness that came and went, with few or no tears shed.   Still, it felt like a good cry. 

My mind went back to senior year in high school.  I'd been determined to goof off and take a minimal academic load, so I could concentrate on basketball and girls.  But my guidance counselor told me that wouldn't look good on college applications. So I  reluctantly signed up for a fourth year of Latin.  And along with a handful of fellow scholars and goof-offs, we read the Aeneid of Vergil, an ancient epic that mixes Gods and humans, history and mythology to tell the story of the founding of Roman civilization, by wandering refugees from the Trojan War.      

With the very first phrase, you know you are in the presence of a great writer: Arma virumque cano, writes Vergil -- "Arms and the man I sing."  A hero, a war, a song -- all promised in three words.  And delivered, in thousands of lines of dactylic hexameter without a false note or a misplaced syllable. 

And somewhere in the middle, I came upon a phrase that stayed with me forever:  

Lacrimae rerum.  "The tears of things" is the literal translation -- but rerum means more than things.  It means what all things have in common, the common ground of existence.  

At the ground of existence, we cry.  

At 80, I hit the ground and cried.  I cried for everything I loved, everything I had lost, for life from beginning to end.  I saw my life and all lives flashing into emptiness and uncertainty.  I began to prepare for my own epic journey.  

First, you cry.  

-- Copyright 2021 by Tom Phillips 

  

A Voice From the Ditch

The Road to Dotage is the pleasantest, openest road you’ll ever encounter in life.  Free at last from the demands of working and raising a family, you get onto it as if exiting from a jammed expressway, coasting down a ramp, abandoning your car and skipping onto a broad, sunny path.  The destination is unknown, but of course it’s the journey that matters, and the journey is delightful.   

There’s just one little thing.  You have to find a way to block out or disregard the shrieks and groans continually rising from the ditches on either side.  These are the the cries of the casualties, those who have fallen or run off the road.  The ditches are strewn with elderly people: wounded, sick, demented, and dying.  These are your peers, your colleagues, your rivals and your friends.   

Of course there is an army of doctors, nurses and pharmacists on hand, tending to the casualties, trying to get as many as possible back on the road as soon as possible.  They work miracles, these people.   

Last year a man I know, an octogenarian who still teaches college and rides a mountain bike on weekends, fell suddenly and violently ill.  In the hospital they found a hole had opened in his esophagus, and food was leaking out into his abdomen, setting off a septic infection.  This man spent two months flat on his back in intensive care, as they battled the infection and saved his life.  In the following months he underwent two surgeries to repair the damage.  Now, I hear, he is back on the Road to Dotage.   

I write this from the ditch, where I too have suddenly fallen flat on my back.  The sore hip I brought back from dance camp only got worse and worse, until I could barely walk or sit up without excruciating pain.  Last week the orthopedist dismissed me and sent me on to a neurologist to search for the source of this torment.  After two more MRI's, the diagnosis is in: a "doozy" of a herniated spinal disc.  I'm seeing the neurosurgeon next week.   

I’m living day to day with the help of a wonderful wife and powerful pain killers.  But I have hope.  I fully expect that in some weeks or months I will step – or at least limp – gratefully back onto the Road to Dotage.   

I started this blog with an enthusiastic account of a book – “The Delights of Old Age” by Maurice Goudeket.  He was one of the lucky ones, enjoying the wisdom of old age and finding new adventures and pleasures as he walked in wonder through his seventies.  Since I liked the book and identified with his character, I assumed my seventies would go the same way.  And maybe, once I get back on my feet, it will be that way again for a while.  But never again will I ignore or disregard the voices from the ditch, the cries of the wounded.  I’m one of them now, and we are legion.   

-- Copyright 2013 by Tom Phillips
Photo by Django Phillips