He is just post a late retirement, 69 or 70 years old. He sits on the porch, dusty baby blue polyester slacks and a cream off brand polo shirt. The over large nose and earlobes of a man who has outlived their younger handsome proportions. He’s ‘fit’ but not slim, strong under the decades of fleshy overgrowth. He’s shoeless, barefooted… a novelty for him to be barefooted at 4pm relaxing on the porch, listening to the buzz of cicadas and wondering what will ever be pressing again now that he has passed into a ‘barefoot at 4pm’ existence.
He’d looked forward to retirement and had imagined travel and gardening and visiting his children but now he is here and struggling to find the motivation to do much, struggling to find himself as he rattles about in the empty house and the empty hours. He’s kept up with the housework, as he has for years since his wife left, mechanically rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher. He watches his own hands with a kind of resentment and fury, running the vacuum each Sunday afternoon, hosing precise lines into the living room carpet. Now, blinking up at the porch ceiling, he tries to remember what day it is. Thursday he thinks … maybe Tuesday. He cannot smell his aftershave, but he is proud of his shave and his smell – spicy and quintessentially old, he smells like a clean bathroom and a clean cowboy – which is to say, not an actual cowboy, but bottled cowboy you can buy at Walgreens. Running his knuckles over his jaw the growth is just as it should be for the time of day and the sound satisfying. It is a solid and substantial thing to be a man whose facial hair grows as it ought.
In time he finds his way. He discovers how wonderful grass feels under his virgin feet and he learns that he doesn’t love gardening but he does love the authentic appreciation of his neighbors when he brings them the tomatoes and green peppers he’s cultivated with his own hands. He does love the sunburn that covers his nose and cheeks. He does love the ache in his back after hours of weeding and tending.
He does love Emma Stone, she’s adorable and sexy and smart. Different than other girls.
He never loves the silence of an empty house and he never travels to visit his kids. He never sees the Eiffel tower or Notre Dame (“Wouldn’t be so great after the fire anyway.” he argues). He never gets the dog he always thought he should and he never looks for the girlfriend his daughter always hoped he would. “I’d never find anyone as good as her.” he justifies.
Terrified he would be disappointed at any solid attempt to build something big he settles for tomatoes and peppers and the genuine appreciation of his neighbors and he is not unhappy and he is not ecstatic. He is forever half disappointed and half terrified and half content. Forever three halves a man.
Who am I drinking? 