The Council of the Years

By G. E. Shuman

I’m sixty-two years old. Or, as some of my seventh-grade students would phrase it if referring to their age, I’m sixty-two and a half. I’ll be sixty-three in July. (Remember that if you want to send me a present.)
I don’t really care about my age, (as if there is anything I could do about it if I did,) and I try to tackle the passing years as my mother does. She turned ninety-three just yesterday, as I write this column, and has often told me that she has never minded being whatever age she happens to be at the time.  I think that’s a fantastic attitude to have, and could be the reason she is still able to live on her own, drive her car, and fly to Maine for a visit each summer. She is an amazing woman.
Having said all of that, I am recently aware that people around me don’t exactly view me as being in late middle age, anymore. I guess that’s because I’m NOT in late middle age, anymore. People don’t live to be 125. Oh well.
I had to go to the hospital the other day for some blood tests. I don’t mind tests like that. The older you get the more you realize that they are just a part of life, and of keeping upright and above the grass.  I plan to do that as long as possible, so I go for the tests.
       In any case, I got to the lab at the hospital and was greeted by a really friendly, beautiful young technician, with long blond hair.  She was very nice, and perky, and seemed happy to see me, and all of that was ruined when she asked me to follow her to one of the little exam rooms. She said, and I quote: “Follow me, Hon. We’ll just go into this room, right here, Hon.”  All guys my age are, or should be, keenly aware that a beautiful young lady has mentally labeled you a dinosaur if she calls you ‘Hon’.  That’s just the way it is.
       This nice lab lady, who has been around for fewer years than some of my neckties, and who was only trying to be kind, must have called me ‘Hon’ ten times in the ten minutes I was with her. She also asked me if I would ‘be able’ to pee in a cup for her. Wow. She said that with the same, slightly sad, pleading look on her face that someone would have if they were asking you to donate a kidney. Or was that just my imagination? (If I didn’t feel like an old, humiliated geezer before that, I certainly did then.) Would I be ABLE to? Really? She didn’t think I was capable of that? And how do you even ANSWER a question like that?
       Also, although this happened before the hospital visit, a somewhat younger church friend of mine had recently said ‘Hi young fella!” as he shook my hand before the service. Wow, again. That one was a DEAD giveaway that he thought of me as anything BUT a ‘young’ fella. I suddenly had feelings of revenge that a person shouldn’t have while in church. Do you think I’m being oversensitive? I don’t.
       That encounter was almost, but not quite, as discouraging as the time, years ago, when a young female hairdresser put her pretty face down close to the side of my head; so close, in fact, that I could feel her breath on my neck. That split second of feeling ‘good’ was swept away faster than was the gray hair on the floor, as she took out some small clippers and trimmed the hair that she saw GROWING OUT OF MY EARS!  There I sat, in silent humiliation, as she did this.
       And then there was the moment, only last week, when a young bagger at the supermarket, a teenage girl who looked like she must weigh about ninety-eight pounds, soaking wet, asked me if I would like help taking my groceries to the car. Again, really? I know those kids are told to ask this question to older people, but come on. As ancient as I evidently appeared to her, I’m pretty sure I could have thrown her over a shoulder with one hand, and picked up the bags of food with the other. Okay, so maybe not, but I wasn’t about to have this little girl help me with the bags. Not yet, anyway. My wife was with me, and took great pleasure in seeing the perplexed look on my face.
       My favorite poem, Desiderata, has a line that says “Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” Even though I love that poem, I’m not ready to gracefully surrender much of anything yet. If you meet me, please don’t call me Hon, or Young Fella, or notice hair growing out of any part of my body. Also, I can still manage my own groceries, thank you.

The Month of Love

By G. E. Shuman

            I teach junior high and high school English (Yes, I probably am insane.) at Websterville Baptist Christian.  You didn’t really need to know that about me, either the teaching part or the insane part, but I had to start the column off in some way, and thought you might be interested in what I do, as least a little. Where I teach has nothing to do with my probable insanity. In fact, in a tiny plug for the school, (and I won’t even charge you extra,) I will say that if you want a really great education for your kids, our school is a wonderful place to get that. You might want to check it out.

In our great school, in my classroom, on the wall right behind my desk, hangs an 8x10 picture of two hands. Yes, two hands. You probably know how you can hold your hands, touching your index fingers together, and your thumbs together, and can make the hole between them ‘heart’ shaped.  Well, that’s what those two hands are doing in that picture. The unique thing about it is that the right hand is that of my daughter, and the left hand belongs to a friend of hers. The picture was taken when they were at summer camp together, years ago.

My daughter was adopted into our family when she was only eleven days old, and her hand in the picture happens to be dark brown.  Her friend’s hand, forming the other half of the heart, is quite light. The picture was taken in color, but is also one that our society would refer to as ‘black and white.’  It is, after all, a picture of a young black girl’s hand, together with a young white girl’s hand.

What amazes me most about that picture is not the hands themselves, so much as the space between them, and that shape that they outline in their uniting. They form the universal symbol of love, the heart, and they do it only through a deliberate, united purpose to do so.  If either hand was removed, the image of the heart, that symbol of love, would obviously vanish.

February is traditionally known as the month of ‘love’ in our country.  It is the month of compassion, and of showing a deep caring for our spouse; our significant other.  More than perhaps at any other time of year we express just how significant that other person is, on and around the fourteenth day of this month.

That special day, St. Valentine’s Day, also arrives only about six weeks into a brand-new year, each year. (It’s funny how that happens.) As this particular new year has begun, I have been sadly reminded of the divisions that have rocked our country recently, and for far too many years of our history.  Many of our people have felt divided politically, racially, religiously, and socially, for a long time.  My hope is that in this new year we will be able to come together, to help each other, and yes, to love each other. After all, we are Americans. As such we should be working to emphasize the ways we are alike, more than how we differ.  We need to show the world that we are the caring, just, and ‘equal’ people we have so often claimed to be.

I have to say, I do love that picture that hangs behind my desk in my room at school. When I see it, it always, firstly, reminds me of my favorite quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Amen, Dr. King! 

That picture is a symbol, to me, of all the beautiful things we can accomplish when we look past our differences, and unite our hands and our hearts, as a couple, as friends, and as a great nation. As with the hands, we can do it only through a deliberate, united purpose to do so.  Happy New Year! Happy February! Happy Valentine’s Day!