A WELL TRAVELED HEART

Tag: aging

  • SEVENTY-SEVEN

    SEVENTY-SEVEN



    Seventy-seven Sunset Strip
    Snap Snap

    Seventy-seven is as new to me
    as my first pregnancy.
    Morning electrolytes prevent wobbling . 
    A plethora of drugs and minerals
    protect me from moods and migraines.
    Arthritis resculpts my hands. 
    My neck hates holding up my head.
    Time takes its toll
    but gives its gifts.
    Limitations are not prognoses.
    Deafness silences my world but
    I can still hear the birds sing.
    I'm grateful for the quiet.
    Subtitles are simpler and silent.
    I remember the oddest things

    Seventy-seven Sunset Strip
    Snap Snap*




    * Theme song from 1958 tv show.

  • SLEEPING BEAUTY

    SLEEPING BEAUTY



    Tall hedges surround the house.
    The long grass has gone to seed.
    Fading peonies hide among the weeds.
    Only one wicker chair on the porch has a seat.
    I knock on the door and wait.
    No one answers though their car is in the drive.
    I call Anthony on my cell.
    “Cindy!  Where are you?”
    “I’m on your porch.”
    “I’ll be right out.”
    Time passes.
    I sit on the chair and look at the fields 
    where sheep once roamed.
    The chicken house too is still.
    No chickens or peacocks strut its yard.
    The air smells of country – grass, pines, sunshine.
    Anthony opens the door, and we hug.
    He is old, his curly hair gone grey and wild.  
    His smile wide. Julie sits in the kitchen 
    talking to herself.  She smiles when I say hello
    not knowing me or why I’m here.
    Anthony makes us coffee from Wards in Newark,
    a joy we share.  He grew up there.
    I’ve brought pignolis – cookies his mother 
    used to make at Christmas.
    We chat and drink our coffee.
    Julie stands by back door and looks out - still talking.
    She brings something in from the hall to
    place by her parents’ photos, 
    a shrine whose people she no longer knows.
    Her eyes shine. She smiles.  
    Before I leave, Anthony shows me his tomato garden.
    It’s perfect.  Many plants. Orderly rows.
    Fenced to avoid predators – his
    escape from incontinence, locked cabinets 
    the constant vigilance that protects his wife.
    He is her husband,  
    her jailor 
    her Prince.


  • BEFORE

    BEFORE


    Before imperfection
    I sought life’s meaning
    not knowing the rowing
    was it, not the arrival.

    Before I became ignorant
    I told others what to do
    believed I had answers
    not knowing even the questions.

    Before I became old
    I found quiet boring
    its slowness a flaw, not knowing
    the rowing was all.
  • INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

    INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

    Aging is interesting.  Like a first pregnancy, it takes us into unfamiliar terrain, prompts new perspectives and is tinged with both excitement and fear.  Last week I had a cardiac calcium scan, where they look for calcium buildup to gauge the heart risk of high cholesterol.
I got a score of 200.  Yikes!  One website said I have the heart of a 78-year-old.  (I’m 74.). Another site said a score of 200 indicated that, without some change, I would have a stroke or heart attack within the next three to five years.   My doctor just said he wanted to start me on statins.  Interesting…

Several years back a brain scan indicated that my brain was shrinking and had white matter.  

Both scans put me deeply in touch with my mortality.  The idea that my brain is shrinking was particularly disturbing.  I’ve passed whatever apex I’ve aspired to and it’s all downhill from here!  No one who knows me will be surprised. 

I find the heart business comforting.  My family has two natural paths out of this life – heart attack and cancer.  At age eighty-two, my paternal grandfather had a heart attack while driving in Wilmington and came to a stop against a telephone pole.  No one else was injured.  My father was eighty-five when he got up one morning, poured orange juice for himself and mom, sat down in his chair and died.  If the statins keep me around for ten more years, a heart attack sounds just fine.  

Of course, none of this is known.  At each doctor’s appointment, we work to continue in good health knowing that one day the other shoe will drop.  It is not given to us to know the how or when.  Scans only supply intimations.

When I shared the cardiac scan info with my son, he said, “Mom, you have the heart of a lion.”
How could I not adore this man!
  • AT SEVENTY-TWO

    AT SEVENTY-TWO

    At 72, it takes two tries
to get each foot into my jeans.
I wobble and catch myself
against the closet shelf.
 
At 72, I nap each day
enjoy my dreams 
scary or complex, puzzles
to ponder in waking hours.
 
At 72, it seems absurd
that I remember a child’s
great great grandmother. 
I'm a walking history text.
 
At 72, my 87-year-old friend
says I am young. I should
not fret but get to work.
I have another 20 years.
 
At 72, I think of poems 
unwritten, songs unsung
and return to my desk.
The day is young.
  • MISSING

    MISSING

    The Lord’s Prayer went missing today
on my knees no words to say.
Often a name, a place 
evaporates as I reach for it.
Whole chunks of books I’ve read
when opened, I’ve lost the thread.
 
I used to drive with knowledge sure
of roads from today and long ago
my sense of place, a source of pride.
That map in my brain is gone.
This troubles me.  It isn’t clear 
what’s normal.  What I should fear.
 
I trust the journey - friends, family, God
and if I must – will seek in books, maps,
stories, prayers to fill my lips
and ease my grip upon this world
and what remains – the precious gift
of days and hours, I ‘ve yet to claim.
  • GREY

    GREY

    Grey’s the hair color you can’t buy.
I tried. I urged my hairdresser to
change my entire head.
“Not possible”, he said
“although new grandmothers
often ask.”
 
It’s good perhaps
some things remain
beyond our grasp
Time’s provenance
to bestow
If we’re so
blessed.
 
My grey hair
like my mom’s
lifts from my brow
on just one side.
I’ve left it pale since
the February day
she died.

  • UNCLE

    He walks the woods no more
    this land whose every hill he knows
    geodes by the stream
    the trail where turkeys file at dusk.

    Right hand upon his dog,
    he sits beside the window to watch
    the squirrels she used to chase
    cache nuts against the coming dark.

    A doe, two fawns at clearing’s edge
    browse by the lick set out last fall.
    Their colors blend with leaves and brush
    that hide morels awaiting spring.

    His wife is ill. Her malaise named
    but without cure. His hips, once limber,
    grate now sharply bone on bone.
    He lets the dog out, sees her roam.

    When he whistles,
    she trots slowly home.

    Cynthia M. Sheward

  • DUSTING

    DUSTING

    It’s us we dust
    not some distant rabbit fluff or forgotten flake of stranger.
    Our very mitochondria’s cast off about the sofa, table, chair
    our entire lair’s alive with microscopic leavings.
    It’s our breadcrumb trail back to time remembered or forgot.
    Small bits of days from childhood – nights of
    watching tiny satellites pass overhead-
    the miracle of travel where once only stars and comets
    flew – who knew the things to follow – cell phones, laptops
    GPS – we know more now by knowing less
    but break still in the old, weak spots.

    Cells too remain from proms missed and attended
    dried orchids hung on curtains
    hearts broken and by time mended.
    Teenage love songs, Buddy Holly, Elvis
    George and Ringo, John and Paul –
    the words, key changes, new hair styles
    we loved them all.

    Flecks too remain from tying sneakers for my son
    and knitting Kate a turquoise sweater,
    praying daily for my marriage to get better.
    Those small children now have babies of their own
    and I’m a grandmom with grey hair, cell phone, creped skin.
    The scales of aging waltz without and within
    toward a place past time and dust.

    Published in Evening Street Review, Autumn 2012.

  • KNOWING THE LIGHT

    KNOWING THE LIGHT

    The way the light falls into my bathroom
    each morning in summer
    is known to me
    deeply
    like my name.
    I know it better than how to
    grow old
    retire or
    navigate social security.
    Its soft presence
    from the east, gently,
    predictably
    lifts me into the day.
    It’s only absent in storm
    but then still present in a
    diffuse way.
    Light, more faith than fifty creeds,
    daily holds me
    in its glow.
    Moving is not just a
    new baker, grocer, dry cleaner,
    a change in the way home,
    new paths
    to reach old friends,
    it’s a shift in how
    the world looks when I wake
    as I splash
    water on my face,
    how I see myself
    as I prepare
    to meet the world.
    It’s a change in all I know.
    The way the light falls into my bathroom
    each morning in summer
    is known to me
    deeply
    like my name.

     

     

    Published in Evening Street Review, Autumn 2012.

    Image ID: 19334240
    Copyright Christophe.rolland1 | Dreamstime.com
    http://www.dreamstime.com/christophe.rolland1_info