Oiling Our Hinges

I did something important yesterday.
I took my boat to a marina and put it up for sale.

A few years ago, when I was a mere seventy-something years old,
Sture asked whether I had been serious when I said I wanted to build a boat.
If so, he said, he thought he knew of a space to build it.

My most important reason for wanting to build a boat had to do,
not so much with the fact that it was a boat, but that I was beginning
to think of myself as getting old; too old to do new things.

I was old, and getting older. The evidence was obvious.
When I walked, I made sounds like a door needing oil on it hinges.
I could no longer go as long between oil and filter changes:
the doctor explained that my moving parts were suffering from fatigue.
My right eyeball sprang a leak that required multiple repairs.

But I built the boat!
I even went to a diesel engine workshop.
I learned to do things I had never done before.
Boats, I learned, are not really built: they are sanded into shape.
I drove to Lexington, Kentucky to buy a triple-axle trailer,
and rebuilt it to fit the boat. But all those things are details.

What was important was that I reaffirmed
that I ought not allow myself to settle gently into old age;
that I ought not to go gently into that good night,
but that, when that good night does come,
that my fall ought to be onto something I was doing at the time.

And now it is time to put the boat aside,
not so much because we are moving to a desert (we are),
but because it is time to do something else.

Mari is retiring from teaching.
We are--both of us--looking at everything and wondering
what ought to be left behind, and what we ought to bring along
to the next thing we do; to the next place in our lives.
At first, it seemed scary, but now it has become fun.
It is time to do something new.

We have been oiling our hinges.

Comments

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