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Conrad, Wrestling with a Plumber at the River Jabbok

What an odd feeling!  Some plumber with an orthopedics degree says I need to replace one of my parts with a pipe joint.

No, no, no!  Not that part!  My hip joint.

I think that I might have to come to terms with my mortality.  The plumber says that I will not live forever, and that my parts--here and there--(more here than there) might wear out.

Then he went on to tell me how happy people are who have a hip replacement--you know, bore out the bone, slip a handy-dandy, metal and plastic socket into the hole, and drive a kind-of-garden-stake thing with a pipe-elbow screwed to the top, down into your leg bone, and there you are:  good as new, after a while, usually, most people say, through clenched teeth.

I am no stranger to operations.  Another guy with a degree in waste systems once clipped out part of my stomach which he said was leaking acid here and there, and another time, after I sawed two fingers almost off--they flopped around like wax beans--a finger carpenter remodeled my hand two or three times.  And, in recent years, a really skilled guy with a degree in Elmer's glue has, about six times (I do not count these things, although I notch a new wrinkle into my face, each time) bored a hole into my eyeball and glued my retina back into place.

I am not a craftsman, myself, but I have respect and admiration for them and, given the hard times, try to keep them in work.

However, this time it is not simply a matter of maintenance.  This time it is a recognition that, without skilled craftsmen, or craftswomen (please, allow me shorthand!) I might find myself tipping over onto the lawn while trying to unearth a dandelion!  I am at the age and condition in which mythical Alaskan Inuits--for example:  Sarah Palin--would have put me out onto the ice to face the polar bear with the kind of religious serenity that only Michele Bachmann might understand; you know, God wants me to nourish a polar bear.

What kind of seeker after immortality wants to admit that one of his parts--O.K., another one of his parts--is wearing out, and needs to be replaced with a galvanized pipe joint?  No, I don't mean that I already have a galvanized prothesis:  I mean that. . . .  Oh, heck!  You understand!  Let me be quick to say that my mind is clear!  I am . . . I, uh. . . .  (I will get back to whatever that thought was, later.)

It is this:  This time, I am not being trimmed a little bit, here and there.  This time, it is not a matter of patching a leak, or plugging a rusty spot.  This time, the plumber, or structural engineer, or whoever he is,  says I need to rip out some of the original structure and put in some plastic or iron or whatever it is!  I am no cyborg!  I am an ordinary middle-aged guy of about seventy-nine with freckle-colored hair who is not ready to become somebody's Tinker Toy!

Replace my hip joint!  What do they think I am?  A retread?  Long since, most of my muscles somehow migrated toward flab.  Shall they now replace my tendons with baling wire?  Is nothing sacred?

You will understand, if it happens that these blog articles suddenly grow silent, that I am wrestling with God at the River Jabbok, all night long.  (I will need a bathroom break, or two.)

In my case, a hip out-of-joint will not be the result of holding the Good Lord to a stand-off, but the cause.

.

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