What I'm Learning Now

This is a short exercise that I wrote in response to a prompt from our Thursday group. The idea came from an essay by a kindergarten teacher about the enthusiasm with which young children learn. Her essay led me to wonder about how we handle the lessons we confront later in life, so on Thursday I grabbed my mother-in-law's 1985 diary* and gave myself 10 minutes to write something.

“I don’t have much courage this morning.”

It is 6 a.m., perhaps earlier. We are up before the sun. The pavement outside the window glistens in the lamplight, wet with rain. March weather.

My husband has been on dialysis for five years now. That's a long time for a 79-year-old man with his medical profile. That he has survived this long is a miracle. But the treatment that keeps him alive also wears him down, and in the past five years, he has gone from walking unaided to walking with a cane to barely walking. He has a walker and two wheelchairs. The fancy one is electric and folds into a tight bundle that fits in the boot of our tiny car.

“I don’t have much courage” is a rare admission. Patrick is normally stoic in the face of a challenge. Stoic and calm. He betrays no thought, no emotion that might make a person feel uncomfortable. So when he says, over breakfast, “I don’t have much courage,” I take notice. Often at this hour, on dialysis days, I can see the effort it takes to put on socks, jack, and shoes, to move from room to room, to apply the numbing cream to his arm and then the two bandages, one for each needle. I see the struggle, but its appearance is subtle.

“I think you do very well,” I say.

“You do?”

“Oh, yes. The day will come when I will need such courage, and I will remember this, how you were.”

This seems to give him a little satisfaction, but what I don’t say—because I only realize it now—is that he already gives me courage. After all, we are going through this together, and it could be awful. We could be at each other all the time. Instead, we enjoy our time together.

Three times a week, he leaves the house at 7:30 am and returns six hours later, exhausted. He always calls me from the dialysis center, a half hour’s drive away. “On my way,” he says. Thirty minutes later he rings from downstairs. Lunch is on the table. I stand at the top of the sixteen stairs while Michael, the ambulance driver, helps him climb them. I know that he likes to see me standing there because he has told me so. Sometimes he pauses on the eight step to catch his breath.

More and more often, he resorts to the wheelchair, which Michael drags up the stairs—there is no elevator.

One evening, after the soup, he says, out of nowhere, “I am happy.” We are side-by-side on the big sofa.

“You’re happy,” I echo. I want him to say more.

“Yes, I’m happy. I don’t know why. I am crippled. So what? I am old. So what? That is life. We start out as babies, we become teenagers, and then we start to live our life.” He lapses into silence.

Ordinarily, I would continue to ask questions, to draw him out. This has always been my role, but now it is particularly valuable. These days, he does a lot of processing, reflecting on the life he has lived. But on this night, I am tired, and it is only now, as I write, that I realize I missed my cue.

When I said, “You do very well,” I was referring to the courage it takes to face another morning of dialysis after five years of this routine. But to lay claim to happiness, at any point in our lives—this, too, takes courage. To be able to say, “I am cripped, old, and I am happy”—what habits of mind enable us to look beyond our physical limitations?

He has always been an optimist. Is that innate? Or a habit, something one learns and develops. Am I an optimist too?

These are the types of questions we ask ourselves today. These are the things we discuss in the evening as we sit together over a plate of hors d’oeuvres, watching the sun go down.

Once upon a time we learned how to walk, how to speak, how to eat with a fork. We learned where babies come from, how to execute a handstand, sew on a button, and shift gears. Now we are learning to to fold a wheelchair, use a cane, and say good-bye.

 *My supply of writing materials includes old journals, accounting ledgers, guestbooks, and anything else with a few blank pages. My scribbling shares space with all kinds of stuff, including the handwritten notes of people who died decades ago and my own doodles. It's kinda insane.