Depending on the day, hour or moment, I describe myself as either late-stage middle-aged or early-onset elderly. So, here, somewhere in my golden, waning days, I approach lifting heavy things much differently than I did when I might have been described as young, dumb and full of, uh, an utter lack of wisdom.
Most of the hard work building my garden was done when I was in my 30s and 40s. We had no extra money, but I had a big vision and a ton of energy and I spent many a weekend, usually in the rain in the dead of winter, appropriating rocks from muddy, rutted construction sites and bringing them home to become winding walls and the sculpting bones of garden beds. Truckload after truckload, hour after hour spent in a world of my own, focused only on the task at hand. It was hard work, a lot of lifting and bliss.
To fill these beds, I would go to a nearby creek and fill five-gallon buckets with sand and gravel (and, turns out, millions of weed seeds), carry them two at a time up the hillside and load them into the truck. If we received a higher than usual tax refund, and if the furnace didn’t need replacing, I would splurge on a truckload or two of topsoil and scoop it, shovelful by shovelful, into a wheelbarrow to be rolled, dumped and graded.
I estimate that over a handful of winters I moved somewhere around 20 tons of stone and probably an equal amount of soil. I totally destroyed two-and-a-half pickup trucks and dozens of wheelbarrows. Implausibly, my muscles and bones—covered as they were by medical insurance and also having the ability to heal—outlasted all that steel and iron. Back then, the only question I ever asked myself before lifting a heavy object was, “Can I lift it?” And the only way to answer was to try. Usually I could.
Now, depending on the day, hour or moment, before I lift anything heavier than a brick I spend an inordinate amount of time just looking at it and asking myself a series of questions: Why are there heavy objects? Why am I here? Why must we suffer? Do I really need to lift this heavy object? What if it just stayed there? Who can I get to lift it for me? Why don’t Jedi mind tricks work in real life? If I put off lifting this heavy object for another day, week or year, what are the odds I can get off the hook by dying somehow? What’s on TV? Is there any bourbon left?
Despite the procrastination, existentialism and fatalism, I invariably wind up picking the damned thing up and moving it wherever it has to go, vowing to never put myself in such a position again—and yet knowing full well I will. Until I can’t.
Illustration by Tom Beuerlein
