5. Story Time

Dearest Family and Friends,

Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again, but Marcia and I did just that a few weeks ago and spent time with a succession of our Ann Arbor friends over the course of a four day visit. Saturday morning found us at the Achilles Diner on Packard Street with Pat, the woman who started caring for our daughters when they were five and eight and kept at it all the way through their high school graduations. A tattooed waitress served us coffee and pancakes while Pat served up stories from her colorful life. “The Lord wants us to tell our stories,” Pat told us. “That’s what He wants us to do.” 

I will tell you one of my stories, but telling stories isn’t easy to do because my story — my truth — is personal and elusive and when I put my story into words I won’t capture it precisely or completely. I will write an approximation of my truth. And to compound errors, when you — my reader — read my words you will inevitably fill the gaps in my writing with your own facts and feelings, so that the end result isn’t my truth anymore but rather some strange creature that is half my truth and half yours, a hideous fire-breathing chimera. That’s what happens with communication — it never works out as planned and you wind up with a fire-breathing chimera that runs riot through the neighborhood. So the Lord may want us to tell our stories, but what I try to write and what you end up reading will be two different things and I don’t know if the Lord then bends over and laughs or becomes annoyed or simply moves on to someone else’s truth, but in any case it doesn’t seem fair.

It’s almost as if we were separated by a barrier, you and I, by a wall made of thick oak planks. I can only communicate with you through a narrow hole in one of the boards. I have shaped my beautiful truth out of terracotta-colored clay and cradle it in my hands, but I have to push the clay with my thumbs through that small hole to send it to you and it comes out deformed, looking on your side like an amorphous lump of Playdoh. My intimate, personal story is now unrecognizable and I grow increasingly frustrated and push more and more clay into the hole with my thumbs and eventually scream out: “This is my truth! This is my truth!” but you can’t make out my words because the passageway is full of brown clay and all you hear on your side is muffled moaning while some vaguely cylindrical thing emerges from the orifice and you think “Paul must be having digestive difficulties” and head for the laundry room to get some soap and a bucket, only to run head first into a fire-breathing chimera crouching in the door frame. 

That is what we are up against, so prepare yourself. I am going to share with you three versions of the same story —  about me growing older— each absolutely true in its own way. You choose the one you think is most accurate.

The first version of the story dates back to 2005, which was the year I misplaced my youth. I had just turned fifty and was no longer using my youth every day, so after the thing was mislaid some time passed before I noticed its absence and I can’t pinpoint precisely where or exactly when it got lost. My younger readers will not appreciate that we didn’t have Apple Airtags back in 2005 and there was no “Find My Youth” app to help me locate the thing. By the time I noticed it missing, it was gone. 

What clued me in to its absence was a black-and-white home movie I had digitized from an old video cassette recording. In the movie I was dancing with Marcia in a gymnasium along with our two and five year old children. Tchaikovsky played in the background. I was slim and supple, close to my college weight, able to spring into the air with little effort. “I have let my youth go,” I told myself as I watched a younger Paul pirouetting with panache. “It will take me months of exercise to get back into that kind of shape.” 

I like this particular version of my story because in the telling my youth wasn’t really gone for good. It had only left temporarily. I imagined it was away on vacation, or maybe it was taking a walk around the neighborhood and forgot to leave a note. That is how I felt about aging when I turned 50. 

Some of our most interesting stories are the ones we tell ourselves.

The second version of this story took place fifteen years later and also began with a black-and-white image. In this rendering, I was standing in an orthopedists’ office looking at an x-ray of my right hip. I don’t like to visit doctors, but my hip had become increasingly painful over the previous five years and the discomfort had progressed to the point where I had no choice but to demean myself and see a specialist. My orthopedist started to explain the image in front of me but there was no need — I could see where the cartilage should have been and the reactive bone beneath the articular surface. I remember thinking that when the end of my femur was sawed off to make room for a titanium implant, there would be no putting it back. No amount of vigorous exercise or strict dieting would restore my hip to its former state. I took comfort in the knowledge that the rest of my body was in perfect condition. One little procedure and I would be good as new.

I like this second version of my story because it is plainly delusional. Delusional thinking acquired a bad reputation in the twentieth century. There are professionals who charge common folks good money to get rid of their illusory thoughts. But a well-crafted delusion can be a thing of beauty, smoothing over life's little contradictions and unpleasantries and helping us get through our day. Most people view a delusional disconnect between reality and narrative — that fire-breathing chimera — as something harmful, as something to avoid. Not me. With the right attitude and a little training, chimeras can make excellent house pets. 

The final iteration of this story about growing older is the current version — the one I am living and writing down right now, while flying with United Airlines high over the Nevada desert. I am headed to Estes Park, Colorado to celebrate my 70th birthday with my extended family. Tomorrow, on my birthday, we will be hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park at an altitude of 10,000 feet, experiencing spectacular views and splitting headaches. 

The story I will tell myself is that my 70-year-old tissues don’t need that much oxygen because they are still surprisingly vigorous. As my forebrain shuts down and my lungs fill with fluid, my brainstem will remind itself that I have lived a rich life surrounded by people I love. It’s all gravy now, my brainstem will say. All gravy. 

The Lord likes to tell His own stories, same as us. But unlike you and me, He is able to write exactly what He means. In Psalm 90:10 we read: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” 

I’m already flying away — high over the Nevada desert, remember? — so I don’t have anything to worry about. Do I?

More Anon. (I hope.)

— Paul

P.S. — I have included a photo of fallen petals in the Berkeley Rose Garden. They, too, had their day in the sun.