Some Reassembly Required
The trouble with nearly dying
is everyone expects improvement.
A clearer sense of purpose.
A tender regard for mornings.
Perhaps an interest in birds.
Instead, I woke up older,
apparently assembled in haste,
with several screws left over
and no instructions.
Still. Mustn’t grumble.
The original warranty has expired.
The lungs are aftermarket.
The heart has been serviced.
One knee predicts rain
with greater accuracy than the Bureau.
Some components make noises
the manufacturer insists are normal.
Parts for this model
are becoming difficult to source.
I now own reading glasses
in numbers normally associated with cutlery,
none of which can be found
when there is something to read.
This, apparently, is recovery.
The children remain unimpressed.
They have correctly concluded
that surviving catastrophe
does not exempt a man
from driving them somewhere.
Nor does it confer authority.
One recently threw a set of bathroom scales
from an upstairs window.
Not, as first suspected,
as a feminist critique of body culture.
She was just pissed off.
This distinction seemed important
to several people.
Still. Mustn’t grumble.
The body has suggested
a period of consolidation.
The brain has ignored this.
It is currently building businesses,
writing books,
and trying to persuade a quantum computer
that several hundred trucks
are really just an interesting maths problem.
I have therefore taken up yoga.
The human body is wonderfully adaptable.
Mine appears to have been supplied
with a narrower operating range.
Nothing teaches humility
quite like a woman half your size
placing both feet behind her head
while you negotiate with a sock.
Mustn’t grumble.
Much.
There was also, for some years,
the question of women.
I had retired.
Quietly.
With dignity.
No farewell tour.
Then one appeared.
Which was bloody inconvenient.
Suddenly I was looking at my telephone
as though it contained military intelligence,
wondering whether three dots
constituted affection.
At my age.
A grown man.
Children. Degrees.
A respectable understanding
of compound interest.
Three dots.
I had thought she was the difficult one.
Wild. Independent.
Always disappearing over the hill
just as you got close.
Except she hadn’t.
She had come towards me.
She had been open in ways
I had trained myself not to recognise,
and I had mistaken my own hesitation
for evidence about hers.
There is nothing quite so irritating
as discovering that the theory
you built to explain another person
is mostly about yourself.
That required some reassembly.
Not replacement.
There is a difference.
I am not interested
in becoming the man I was before.
He had useful qualities, certainly,
but customer reviews are mixed.
Better to inspect the surviving pieces.
Keep the daughters.
Keep the curiosity.
Keep the ridiculous projects
that begin with someone saying
surely that can’t be done.
Keep the ability to laugh
when the body declines instructions.
Keep the part that still wants
to make a fool of itself
over a woman.
Keep the scars
without requiring them
to teach anybody anything.
Feed the cat.
Make coffee.
Look for the glasses.
They are on your head.
The instructions are still missing.
Several screws remain unexplained.
The finished item
does not closely resemble
the picture on the box.
Still.
Mustn’t grumble.