We have low expectations for old age

… but we can do so much better

I can picture my grandfather standing like Captain Morgan, his right foot raised on the brown paint-chipped bench that wrapped around the cottage’s large wooden deck, pulling on a cigarette.

I shivered on cool mornings standing outside with him as he smoked, listening to loons and looking over Oxtongue Lake, smooth as glass at dawn. Less than fifteen kilometres away was the West gate of lake-splattered Algonquin Provincial Park where he used to go on overnight canoe trips with his wife, my grandma, before her Alzheimer’s struck. 

He usually told me to go inside, that being around smoke was bad for me. But I wanted to be in his presence and, when I persisted enough, some days he let me stay.

I loved the oddly comforting aroma that was left on his clothes when the cigarette smoke wafted away. It made me feel at home. I always badgered him to tell me stories on those mornings when everyone else was still sleeping. And between drags of a cigarette and sips of burnt black drip coffee from his beige porcelain mug, he spun spellbinding stories.

His best tales, the ones my brother and I loved the most, were of a small blue man-like creature named Kiddidlefink that lived under the cottage’s gazebo and went on heroic escapades with the animals.

He would drive to Betty’s, a corner store off Highway 60 and a five-minute walk from the cottage because the gravel driveway was too steep for him to walk. We would go on foot and meet him there. His friendly conversations with Betty, the lovely old shopkeeper, lasted for what felt like hours. As they talked, he gave my sister, brother, and me change to fill brown paper bags with as much penny candy as our allowance would stretch. When we got back, he would take his midday nap and I would feel as if the light of a lonely candle illuminating a dark room was blown out, eagerly awaiting him to wake again.

He taught us how to canoe on the side of the slowly decaying dock he built on his own, many years before I was born, with skills he learned from his carpenter of a father. We weren’t allowed to get in the canoe until our J-stroke was perfect. I never got to canoe all the way to Ragged Falls with him. He wanted to be close to shore and the falls were at least an hour’s paddle. 

Young Jack taking up the bow with my Bampa in the stern. Oxtongue Lake. July 2004.

As years passed, he eventually stopped planting his backyard tomato garden at home, some three hours away from the cottage on the outskirts of Toronto. He loved those tomatoes. He’d give them away to anyone who would listen to his stories of planting and grooming them that only he, with dramatic pauses and suspenseful intonations, could make enthralling. He used what was left of the harvest to make his famous chilli, reminding everyone as we ate that it was his tomatoes that made the dish delicious.

My Dad fumed when he paid my brother and me $20 an hour to rake the leaves in fall and cut the grass in summer. He would stand there and smoke and watch us, providing instructions to make sure we did it the right way. His way. Work my Dad had to do for free as a kid. Work my grandfather, who we lovingly called Bampa, could no longer manage on his own.

I remember crying at his funeral as I sat beside my Alzheimer’s riddled grandma who didn’t know what to do with a distraught fourteen-year-old. 

I wished we had just one more cottage weekend together.

~~~

While adjusting to 12-hour jet lag after arriving in Vietnam early this January, I would wake in the middle of the night and sit outside on the stairs of my hostel to watch the city come to life. 

One of those mornings, an elderly lady carrying, in her hands and on her back, heavy bags of produce hurried down the rain-slicked street at 5 a.m. As she scrambled by, I could sense the heaviness of her load and the tiredness in her march.

An elderly lady loaded down with heavy produce walks through rain-slicked streets at 5 a.m.

Another morning a few days later, after having acclimated to my new time zone, I was ambling my way through the city to track down a tar-strong black Vietnamese coffee and an outdoor gym. As I walked, an elderly lady diagonally darted across the street through non-stop traffic and cut me off while balancing a yoke on one shoulder bearing heavy baskets of apples and oranges.

I fell behind to watch.

Her homemade yoke looked heavy and unsteady teeter tottering on her shoulder. Steadfast, she shuffled down the street until she reached her desired sidewalk spot to set up for business. 

An elderly lady balances a heavy yoke on one shoulder, cutting through traffic and navigating turbulent sidewalks to set up her fruit stand.

A few kilometres east of that lady’s fruit stand was a street-side bánh bao —  steamed buns with various fillings, in my case pork and two quail eggs — shop which I visited three times during my week-long stint in Hanoi. 

Each time, day or night, an old lady I was quite happy to hand my money to was standing or squatting beside her pot ready to serve customers. She seemingly works all day. Every day. She may have been standing there selling bánh bao for longer than I’ve been alive. 

All day every day this lady stands or squats here eagerly serving streetside customers.

Two hours south of Hanoi in a place called Ninh Bình, a stunning UNESCO-protected site, I took a boat ride. 

I sat admiring the mountains looking like a goof in my conical rice hat while a peaceful elderly man paddled our boat with his legs for one and a half hours straight. 

Not a minute’s rest.

If I learned the paddle-with-your-feet technique, I doubt I could make it longer than five minutes without my legs lighting on fire and giving out. 

This older man displayed otherworldly muscular endurance, paddling a boat with his legs for 1.5 hours nonstop.

On another walk in a warmer and less rainy city 800 kilometres south of Hanoi and Ninh Bình, I nearly ran over a late-middle-aged lady crouched down tending to her roadside restaurant. 

Sitting in a low crouch is a common practice in Vietnam among many other Eastern countries. Being able to crouch down and hang out there means you always have a seat even without a chair. And it demands unbelievable mobility in your hips, knees, back, and ankles. 

Sit in this position for five minutes. Challenge your friends and family too.

It will be wildly uncomfortable for all Westerners, young or middle-aged or elderly, who haven’t countered years of all-day sitting with stretching and mobility work.

Raising the Bar

When my grandfather retired, his fitness began to diminish. 

Slowly at first then rapidly. 

He couldn’t canoe or walk with me anymore then he had to take midday naps to restore his energy, me missing him and him missing out on invaluable and irretrievable family time. He became unable to do household tasks and then slowly lost the things he loved most, from planting and gardening his tomatoes to walking the golf course. 

The more his movement became restricted, fitness became limited, and energy levels plummeted, the less we were able to connect because the list of things we could do together shrunk each year. 

There’s no stopping age from eventually slowing us down and restricting what we’re able to do. 

But what age is it acceptable to no longer be able to climb stairs or traverse up and down a steep hill? Or to be unable to sit on the ground and stand back up? Or to need a midday nap to restore your energy levels? Or to no longer be able to do the things you love?

From what I’ve seen in Vietnam, that age is much older than we accept in the West.

And it’s very influenceable.

But how much you delay it, that’s up to you.

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Lots of love,

Jack