Pruning and Maintenance

I’ve been quietly refueling, and sometimes that’s how it is. Most of my writing has been inside my head, or in texts and emails to friends, if the latter even count as writing. My activities lately fall into the categories of observation and maintenance, nothing even remotely creative, but it has finally occurred to me that these are essential, and when I stop imagining that there is something more substantial I should be doing, I feel pretty good about things.

The other day, Monte and I pruned and weeded, and isn’t that exactly what needs doing? We clipped the errant branches of the pomegranate tree, a new-ish tree that has yet to meet its promise, but it looks more hopeful now, standing trim and tidy and budding with fruity dreams. We discarded decaying oranges and grapefruit that had dropped beneath the trees, rescued many, and squeezed them into juice. We were brutal with the Mexican sage, which had flowered and fallen and looked frankly sad. “It has to be done,” said Monte. We cut it down to its greenest lower stubs, raked out rotting leaves and macadamia nuts, and stepped back with fingers crossed for a spring revival. We also sawed off dead twigs and leaves from the shrubbery along the driveway, and pulled weeds from the ground. As for the weeds, millions remain. and it occurs to me that I will never be without purpose, for there will always be weeds to pull.

My body too has been in need of maintenance, and I took a stab at that in my half-hearted way, mostly by walking, and not eating quite so much ice cream. But about two weeks ago, I tripped and fell and twisted my left ankle. I didn’t think much of it until the following morning, when my foot began to swell like a yeasty loaf of bread, turning colors in the process. I accommodated the injury by relying on my right side a little more, which I figured was good for me, since I’d been experiencing some aches in that knee, and I thought this might sort of balance me out. “You’re limping,” said Monte, which I denied. I explained to him that I was not limping, but simply favoring my injured foot. “That’s called limping,” he said, with his usual candor. “We have words for things, and that is called a limp.”

I went for my Medicare so-called wellness visit also, a peculiar annual ritual that seems designed to reveal depression or cognitive erosion, and is a prompt for setting up a series of appointments for things like mammograms, bone density scans, and colonoscopies. I dutifully drew an analog clock face set at 3:30, and managed to retain the three words I was to repeat after five minutes of distracting chit-chat: apple, penny, watch. I suggested that they might want to change their words, since these were the same ones as last year’s. “If you remember the words from last year,” said the doctor, “I’m not worried about you.” Her main concerns about me were related to my diminishing strength and muscle mass. I have been instructed to do weight-bearing exercises, and break into a run sometimes when I am walking uphill. Whatever.

But since it was a wellness visit, and I often feel less well when I look at my face in the magnifying mirror that I keep in the bathroom, I decided to ask her about the bags beneath my eyes that seem to have erupted rather suddenly. The one beneath my left eye, in particular, is disturbing, not so much a bag as a flap, a puffy flap. I wondered if it might be related to the acoustic neuroma surgery I underwent five years ago, since, in addition to one-sided deafness and increased clumsiness, facial drooping is a common result. “No,” said my doctor, matter-of-factly, “That’s just an aging face. Asymmetrical wrinkles and folds are common. Maybe that’s the side you sleep on.” Oh well. I shall live with my asymmetrically aging face. Cosmetic surgery strikes me as a pricey form of denial.

A few days later, I took my face up to the top of a very steep hill. The mud was dry, but the hard ground had been broken up by cattle and was covered with deep, irregular holes and bumps. It took a lot of concentration to maintain my footing, and not even for a moment did I have an impulse to break into a run. But oh, how the sea sparkled in the distance, and how the grasses rippled! California poppies were blooming here and there like little suns, and I sat on the ground, and nothing on me hurt. That night, I watched the sun set from the west end of this ranch, a white strip of the purest light beneath a magnificent progression of color, and the moon rose like a misshapen orange pumpkin, stunningly bright, beautiful in its imperfection.