Monday, June 14, 2004
Oh How The The Mighty Have Fallen...
My father has been here for the last week. He has been helping me wire our new garage and replace siding on the old shop. Because of that, I didn't paraglide all week until last night. I think it was a conspiracy between he and Lorna. Every time I wanted to fly, they would say "I think we should go to dinner now". Last night I got everything hooked up and right before I started my motor, my cell phone rang. It was my mom. I had sent her some photos and they still hadn't shown up at her e-mail. I told her I was going flying and that I would call her back when I got back. I flew for about 30-40 min. and when I landed, my dad walked across to the airport to meet me. I figured he was going to congratulate me for the flawless landing. He said "We have a problem...the neighbors just called" (at this point I'm thinking that my neighbors called about the noise I was making with the Paraglider) "Mom fell!", he said.
As you can imagine, I was concerned. All I could think of is some old lady in a moo moo laying on the bathroom floor with a broken hip yelling "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up". In the end, it wasn't quite so bad. She simply stumbled coming out the sliding glass door and landed on her left knee. She cracked the kneecap and managed to twist the right ankle pretty bad as well. She'll need surgery for the knee and for now she's in a brace and occasionally a wheelchair.
The whole thing has had me thinking, today, about getting older. Now, my mom isn't that old, (I'm not going to tell you her exact age but, let's just say when the Japanese were dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor, my mom was dropping bombs in her diapers) but she has never been that active in life. Girls raised in her generation weren't supposed to play sports. They were supposed to stand on the sidelines and cheer on their men while they played sports. And, as my father played high school baseball, basketball and football, my mom dutifully waited outside the locker room for him to finish cleaning up.
In fact, I can't really remember my mom ever getting seriously injured. There was the time she clobbered her own foot while playing croquet and trying to do one of those cool 'foot-on-the-ball' shots(now you see why she never played sports) and there was the time a Portuguese Man-of-war stung her while swimming in Florida (she was probably trying to club it with a croquet mallet). But that's about it. Which leads me to believe that this was an age related accident. Not in the sense that I couldn't stumble coming out of a door but, in the sense that age robs us of the reflexes that allow us to re-group and handle the fall without injury. As I reach 40 yrs. old, I have noticed many physical abilities that have wained (insert your Viagra joke here). I can't run four miles in 27 Min's any more, I can't jump from a roof and land on my feet without pain. I can't balance on the ladder with the stability I once had. And while none of these are record breaking feats, I do miss them. And while I could train back to four miles in 27 Min's, I choose, instead, to run across fields with 80 pounds of metal on my back dragging a parachute. Different challenge, different reward. I know there will come a day when I can no longer fly my Paraglider. Eventually, I won't be able to fly at all. When that day comes, I hope I will have enough memories to be content to watch those younger than me take to the air.(but I seriously I doubt it.)
Those of you who have known me the longest know that I have always had a penchant for the band RUSH. I still think, to this day, that they have some of the finest lyrics ever set to music. Even if you hate their music, the insight in the words cannot be denied. The events of the last 24 hours have me recalling a song titled "Losing It" from the "Signals" album. It deal with the frustration of loosing what we once had:
The dancer slows her frantic pace
In pain and desperation
Her aching limbs and down cast face
Aglow with perspiration
Stiff as wire, Her lungs on fire
With just the briefest pause
Then flooding through her memory
The echos of old applause
She limps across the floor...
And closes the bedroom door
The writer stares with glassy eyes
Defies the empty page
His beard is white, his face is lined
And streaked with tears of rage
Thirty years ago, how the words would flow
With passion and precision
But now his mind is dark and dulled
By sickness and indecision
And he stares out the kitchen door
Where the sun will rise no more
Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be
Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it
For you - the blind who once could see -
The bell tolls for thee.
My mom will be just fine. As will I. We just won't be the Croquet, man-o-war, Paragliding studs we once were. Maybe that's a good thing. Hey I just got an idea...Paraglider Polo! If I could just get a really long...and maybe an inflatable...I'll be back in a while...
My father has been here for the last week. He has been helping me wire our new garage and replace siding on the old shop. Because of that, I didn't paraglide all week until last night. I think it was a conspiracy between he and Lorna. Every time I wanted to fly, they would say "I think we should go to dinner now". Last night I got everything hooked up and right before I started my motor, my cell phone rang. It was my mom. I had sent her some photos and they still hadn't shown up at her e-mail. I told her I was going flying and that I would call her back when I got back. I flew for about 30-40 min. and when I landed, my dad walked across to the airport to meet me. I figured he was going to congratulate me for the flawless landing. He said "We have a problem...the neighbors just called" (at this point I'm thinking that my neighbors called about the noise I was making with the Paraglider) "Mom fell!", he said.
As you can imagine, I was concerned. All I could think of is some old lady in a moo moo laying on the bathroom floor with a broken hip yelling "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up". In the end, it wasn't quite so bad. She simply stumbled coming out the sliding glass door and landed on her left knee. She cracked the kneecap and managed to twist the right ankle pretty bad as well. She'll need surgery for the knee and for now she's in a brace and occasionally a wheelchair.
The whole thing has had me thinking, today, about getting older. Now, my mom isn't that old, (I'm not going to tell you her exact age but, let's just say when the Japanese were dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor, my mom was dropping bombs in her diapers) but she has never been that active in life. Girls raised in her generation weren't supposed to play sports. They were supposed to stand on the sidelines and cheer on their men while they played sports. And, as my father played high school baseball, basketball and football, my mom dutifully waited outside the locker room for him to finish cleaning up.
In fact, I can't really remember my mom ever getting seriously injured. There was the time she clobbered her own foot while playing croquet and trying to do one of those cool 'foot-on-the-ball' shots(now you see why she never played sports) and there was the time a Portuguese Man-of-war stung her while swimming in Florida (she was probably trying to club it with a croquet mallet). But that's about it. Which leads me to believe that this was an age related accident. Not in the sense that I couldn't stumble coming out of a door but, in the sense that age robs us of the reflexes that allow us to re-group and handle the fall without injury. As I reach 40 yrs. old, I have noticed many physical abilities that have wained (insert your Viagra joke here). I can't run four miles in 27 Min's any more, I can't jump from a roof and land on my feet without pain. I can't balance on the ladder with the stability I once had. And while none of these are record breaking feats, I do miss them. And while I could train back to four miles in 27 Min's, I choose, instead, to run across fields with 80 pounds of metal on my back dragging a parachute. Different challenge, different reward. I know there will come a day when I can no longer fly my Paraglider. Eventually, I won't be able to fly at all. When that day comes, I hope I will have enough memories to be content to watch those younger than me take to the air.(but I seriously I doubt it.)
Those of you who have known me the longest know that I have always had a penchant for the band RUSH. I still think, to this day, that they have some of the finest lyrics ever set to music. Even if you hate their music, the insight in the words cannot be denied. The events of the last 24 hours have me recalling a song titled "Losing It" from the "Signals" album. It deal with the frustration of loosing what we once had:
The dancer slows her frantic pace
In pain and desperation
Her aching limbs and down cast face
Aglow with perspiration
Stiff as wire, Her lungs on fire
With just the briefest pause
Then flooding through her memory
The echos of old applause
She limps across the floor...
And closes the bedroom door
The writer stares with glassy eyes
Defies the empty page
His beard is white, his face is lined
And streaked with tears of rage
Thirty years ago, how the words would flow
With passion and precision
But now his mind is dark and dulled
By sickness and indecision
And he stares out the kitchen door
Where the sun will rise no more
Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be
Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it
For you - the blind who once could see -
The bell tolls for thee.
My mom will be just fine. As will I. We just won't be the Croquet, man-o-war, Paragliding studs we once were. Maybe that's a good thing. Hey I just got an idea...Paraglider Polo! If I could just get a really long...and maybe an inflatable...I'll be back in a while...
// posted by Chris @ Monday, June 14, 2004
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