When is Old!? #T

I believe Dad was 55 years of age when I first realized he was "getting old."  Dad was athletic and very quick.  I was standing on the sidelines watching him as he played softball with a group of teenagers.

One needs to understand that in his teen years baseball was his passion and he even dared to dream of a career in the sport.  His reflexes were amazingly fast, and he also considered professional boxing.  Now here he is on an August afternoon exercising his skills on the ball field.  Dad came up to bat.  He let the first pitch pass, and the umpire called, "Strike one."  My father shifted his position slightly in the batter's box and when the second pitch came he swung, made contact and laid the ball neatly in left field between the third baseman and the fielder.

Dad headed for first base.  As I watched I realized his step was slower than I remembered it to be, and with a sinking feeling I realized that Dad was old!  Not so old, however, that he failed to beat the throw to the bag.

I am now some twenty-seven years older than my father was when I realized he was old, yet until today I had never encountered that realization in myself.  Oh, yes, I have aches and pains, and yes, I know I move slower than I used to, but old?  Of course not.

But today I stopped near the front door of the DG store, dismounted the bicycle and set the kickstand.

I saw a sporty red car park on the opposite side of the lot.  I headed toward the door of the market, shuffling along in my Tim Conway "old man" gait and before I reached the door the young lady who had parked the car hurried around me to "get the door."  Yep.  With extended arm she opened the door stepped back and with a smile indicated that I should pass through.  A young woman holding the door for the poor old man.

Realization.

   

Memory and Reality

Cormac McCarthy is a writer who takes the reader into the most bizarre and grotesque situations, grabs him and holds him transfixed.  His books are literally "can't put them down" adventures.  I have been riveted by several of his works.

For some reason I missed The Road when it was released in 2006, but that is okeh because now it is a new adventure for me.  I am not reviewing the book here, but rather I am lifting a sentence or two which give me pause.  "He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins.
. . .What you alter in the memory has yet a reality, known or not." (p. 111)

I have been operating String Too Short to Tie for nearly six years.  Much of the material is drawn from memories of my life past, and of course in the assembling and publishing of that material, new memories are created.  McCarthy, in this brief reflection of his protagonist, has caused me to reflect on the questions, "What violence have I done to the past, to the origins of those memories by my recalling them, by recording them?  And how much warping of reality have I engendered?  Or have I, in fact, created new realities thereby?"

I wonder if other writers reflect on these questions as they are relating the tales they remember or create.  What of the historian?

I have thought on occasion about the players that appear on the stage of my memory.  Do those actors exist in our shared reality; or do they exist only in the reality created by my mind?  Do they still exist?  I have thought, for example, of certain individuals who played a role in a scene of my early life, recalling clearly (to my way of thinking) the incident and the behaviors of the participants, yet my mind may be completely void of any recollection of a name to attach to one of these players.

Why is that surprising?  There is a chance that, were I to be introduced to you today, I would not remember your name tomorrow.  Am I revealing too much about the inner workings of my mind?  Indeed I am.

Good day.