August 26, 2002

Reflections on double nickels

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

One of my favorite performers, Garrison Keillor, wrote the following verses from a poem titled "Longevity" in 1999 on his 25th year of broadcasting "A Prairie Home Companion."

They seem appropriate for me on this solemn occasion.

"The secret is not a calm disposition

"It isn't a deep inner strength

"It isn't yoghurt or yoga or a good physician

"The secret of longevity is length."

If the good Lord's willing and I don't drown in a rising creek, I will celebrate the big double nickels this week, my 55th year.

The approaching date has caused me to look back down the long and winding road that has brought me thus far, and I can't improve on what the late songwriter Eubie Blake said as he celebrated his 100th birthday just before his death in 1983.

"If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

Amen, brother Blake. Fifty-five is a long way from 100, but it's also a long way from the wild and woolly youth back in my rock Ôn' roll days and some other vices I don't talk about now.

I'm reminded how far I've come when I sit a while and try to get up again, and my bones and muscles protest being moved.

As I read in the funny papers, middle age is when you're still young enough to get down but then you can't get back up again.

But I had cause to be thankful for my good health on a recent visit to a local dentist's office. After I had filled out the usual form as a new patient, the dentist looked at my answers and commented, "That's unusual, no meds for someone your age."

I think that was a compliment. I shall take it as one anyway.

I do have a regimen of vitamins and fiber and so forth I take every day -- mostly the result from a two-year stint working for a health-food company and writing their advertising copy. You might say I sold myself on the benefits of some of the products.

But as for medicines, no daily pills. As the eternal optimist said as he fell off the Empire State Building, "so far, so good."

I had two great-uncles and a great-aunt who lived into their mid-90s and a grandmother who was also 95, and the four are sprinkled on both sides from my parents, so there's good genes.

But from where I sit, I'm not looking so much ahead to the next 40 or so as I am back on the gone-in-a-moment first 55.

Just yesterday, I was a little kid, not a care in the world playing around in the yard wondering what "school" was about.

Just yesterday, I was a teen working as a car hop, dreaming of the day I would be rich if I could make $100 a week in salary.

Just yesterday, I was heading off to college, and assumed life would be one long party, just occasionally interrupted by work.

Now I have four grandsons, and when one says "Come play with me," I can't resist, because I know tomorrow will come too quickly and I'll just look around and they'll be grown and gone.