On the Look-Out

The aging process is a continual adventure, often arduous, almost always tiring, and sometimes just plain hazardous.  Compensations are many, though, not the least of which is a well-honed sense of humor.

Yesterday, for instance, as we drove out of town and stopped at the stop sign at the ‘Y’ neither of us could turn our heads far enough to the right to check for on-coming traffic.  For some time, bone spurs have effectively frozen Nyel’s neck in the straight-ahead position and I had a mysterious one-day-only-I-hope crick in my neck.  In our defense, though, I must point out that looking both ways at that stop sign requires more than a 90° turn of the head.

So, I strained against my seatbelt, turning my whole self to see that all was clear and on we went.  “What are we going to do when we can’t even turn our old bodies?” I asked.

At the Oysterville Church

“Get seeing eye owls,” Nyel said calmly.  Great idea, I thought.  Service owls!  And with all the remarkable things going on in the world, no doubt there are owlets-in-training as we speak.

Later in the day, a young man arrived to wash the windows inside and outside of the church.  As I watched him clamber up and down those tall ladders and balance on narrow window sills, I thought of all the other day-to-day chores we now need help to accomplish.  Cleaning out the gutters, taking down the swallows’ nests and, with our eleven-foot ceilings, even changing light bulbs – none are challenges to be taken lightly.

“No problem is so great that it can’t be solved by just throwing money at it,” someone once told me.  True.  But just about as realistic for most of us as getting that seeing eye owl.  “When pigs fly,” say I!