When I was in middle school, I remember going to see my grandfather in Florida. He lived at the end of a culdasac where you entered into the house through a curtain of air-conditioning, stepping onto tiled floors of a room with vaguely sweet air. Things felt openly static, like vegetables in a crisper drawer. He lived on the water and light came in on wavelengths made of arrows and there was a dock where schools of these solid brown fish would swim under in packs like wild dogs. They wouldn’t be tempted by bait on hooks, only nets thrown from experienced hands, and I would gallop along in the yard watching them like a ball-hungry dog on one side of a fence protecting tennis courts.
The grass in the yard was all equal thickness; debris from a paper shredder, cut to length, and left out for a night under a green paint sprinkler. Uniform. Dry. Sharply spongey. Uncomfortably inviting.
Lizards scampered around and there were these clay pots that were constructed to look like birds with open mouths, and the geckos would dart down their throats only to pop their heads up later like lost words on earthy bird songs.
On this particular trip, my grandfather took me to his study to help me with a project I needed to get done for school: creating a map of Africa. He had an atlas and said he’d trace the outline of the continent onto a piece of printer paper for me. The outline was tough for me to see standing there next to him, and I remember thinking that he must have a better angle, but in retrospect his eyesight was falling and he couldn’t see anything. His pencil sputtered and lurched around a continent-type shape, just not that of Africa; it was more of a freeform continent. My grandfather, however, presented the paper to me with the confidence of a man with complete belief in his skills. And I remember being a bit uncomfortable by the experience, much like the first time, later on in life, when I realized I could beat my dad at 21 in basketball. The situations were different, but similar in their distinction of showing, very acutely, a specific part of time passing.
I think a nice piece of adulthood is that I’m given the opportunity to look back and not recognize myself in previous stages of life. I know who the person is in the stories, and relate to parts of them, but I’m definitely not that person anymore. If we’re lucky I think our past is a lineup of suspects (or perhaps actors) for roles in similar plays. The transition to adulthood is maybe just the first time you look back and think “huh… that person is vaguely familiar” and then turn fiercely towards the future.
I think a bad part of these stages of life is that we maybe start to bootstrap them with less intention. We begin to trace the outline of our experience a bit like my grandfather’s outline of Africa. But unlike the physical decline that led to my grandfather’s misshapen landmass, the lack of vividness that can come to sections of life is a lack of desire to look for detail, because it takes energy and time and after awhile I think we start to think we’ve seen what we need to out of most of the things we run into.
Right now, in isolation, it is hard to look for detail, especially when everyday seems to be a copy of the pervious day. I was talking to my parents the other day and had the thought about us all still getting older during all this, and not to be morbid, but also all getting closer to dying. It made me think about our future selves, who will be looking back at the selves of today and thinking “huh… that person is vaguely familiar”, which reminded me to draw my map today carefully with the tools I have. If we forget to pay attention to detail we will end up in the situation where the stages of life all look like some distorted landmass. Sort of different, but sort of the same.
And drawing maps that all look the same is sort of like the general process of forgetting. I was taking care of grandfather once over a long weekend, having flown down for one of my only 1-on-1 trips to see him, and on leaving his room to let him get ready for bed on his own, I heard a crash and ran into the room to find him on the floor having missed the seat of a chair he uses to sit on while getting undressed. He was naked on the floor with his body twisted around bit, and I remember thinking of hands in Egon Schiele paintings and just how crisp the folds of his skin looked. His body invited viewing. I picked him up and couldn’t believe how light he was, like it was maybe better to hold him down lest he float away.
His wife, Anne, came in and we made sure he was situated, before letting him get his sleepwear on. After he was in bed, under the covers, I came in to say goodnight, and he looked up at me with those same eyes that had so clearly seen Africa, and said “Were you here the other day when I fell out of the chair?” and history seemed to be coasters stacked on top of each other in a pile that didn’t change shape and I said, “Yeah, Opa, I was here. I’m glad you were okay.” And he had these real thin lips that smiled playfully, but maybe chased a bit of a narrative that only he could see.
And if forgetting is part of the process of dying, I think there’s a lot of joy to be had in even the smallest memories; harbors on the coast of a map.
