Nothing Doing

by Dean Kramer
June, 2006

I have been stumbling around in the backyard pruning an American spicebush that was threatening to move into the bedroom by way of the window. My balance is always poor on rough, uneven surfaces and I lurched from spot to spot trying to use my secateurs with one numb, weak hand while holding my cane in the other. I looked down at the growing pile of branches that I’d have to haul away. I looked up at the number of branches yet to be snipped. I looked across the yard to a sunny spot where a beach chair sat invitingly.

Beach chair…secateurs…secateurs…beach chair…I came inside to write this essay.

During the last year of her life, as her cancer worsened, my friend and benefactor, Suzann, was as happy as she’d ever been. She no longer rode her tractor in the broiling sun. She no longer pruned her shrubs or worked in her gardens while swatting at deer flies. She didn’t clean, she barely cooked, and she did no home maintenance at all. She didn’t fret about the things she couldn’t do or was choosing not to do. When I expressed concern over things I felt needed to be done she pooh-poohed my concerns pointing out that she was perfectly at ease. Listening to music, playing computer games, brief walks around the pond, and visits with me—Suzann did the things she enjoyed and chose to do in the time she had left though, at the time, we didn’t know how little time that was. Now the old farmhouse where she lived is being renovated. It needed paint, floor restoration, plumbing and kitchen modernization and repair. The brick needs to be pointed, the windows must be glazed and the sills replaced, and the porridge coat will have to be renewed. The landscaping around the house also requires extensive overhauling.

Fortunately none of this is my responsibility. If it were, the whole place would have to continue its graceful entropic decline because I am barely able to keep doing the (fewer and fewer) things which I consider (less and less) necessary. Puttering around the place has always been my delight. If a few are called to putter, while some choose to putter and others have puttering thrust upon them, I would formerly have described puttering as my vocation. I love turning garden soil, mending household objects or tinkering with a motor. Tasks which others find boring or onerous feel like interesting challenges to me. And I’m good at it! I love the discipline involved and the satisfaction of restoring something to usefulness.

These days, however, I am beginning to view puttering as thrust upon me for after a few minutes of hard physical labor I become very tired and uncoordinated. I have an increasingly empathetic understanding of how the elderly can allow themselves to let things go. I am more inclined to let things go, myself, and, instead, to do the things I most enjoy doing while I am still physically able to do them. I wonder how it is that we generally wait until we’re old or else require a catastrophic event (such as illness) to break us out of the prisons we create with our musts and our shoulds when it comes to doing things. I have no idea why.

No matter, though. My personal list of unnecessary tasks is growing by leaps and bounds. Dog hair drifts on the floor? I’m learning to live with that. A few crumbs on the kitchen counter tops? Not a problem if I don’t stare at them. A poorly made bed or rumpled clothing? Neither Good Housekeeping nor Vogue are coming to shoot pictures here today. I still get a kick out of fixing things and even more of a kick out of learning to do some of my old beloved puttering tasks using my new beloved mobility equipment. For instance, I have become quite skilled at trash can wrangling. I ride my scooter while leading a small herd of wheeled cans from the corral to the road each week for pick-up. I enjoy reading, listening to the natural sounds outside at Cripple Creek, bird-watching in the woods and fields, visiting with friends… so many things to enjoy. Who knows how much time I’ll have to enjoy them?

This brings me back to the spice bush and the beach chair. Both are easily viewed out the window as I type. In fact, the spice bush is rather more easily viewed than I might once have preferred. But this afternoon, one of the few sunny ones we’ve had this rainy season, the beach chair seems more worthy of my attention. I’ll take a book I’m enjoying outside and I’ll turn that beach chair so that I can’t even see the spicebush. Just let me get a period on this last sentence.