Excerpt from “The Present”

(Travelers in the Forest - Etching by Anthonie Waterloo)

“I turned fifty-seven this year. Not that there is anything remarkable about that. I am at that point in life where I no longer see the passage of time as a wondrous thing, but I don’t fear it either. I could be afraid of it; I have reason to. All of the men in my family one generation above me died by the age of sixty. My father and his two brothers lived hard-drinking, hard-driving lives, dying at ages sixty, fifty-eight, and fifty-nine. While I don’t smoke and only drink occasionally, being closer to sixty than fifty is sobering.

When I was in my thirties, during a particularly difficult time in my life, a good friend took me for a hike on the shore of Lake Superior. As we walked along he suggested that although things were hard now, life could be viewed as a series of stages, each lasting about twenty years. He said that each stage had its own distinct character but was not lesser or greater than any other, and each was an opportunity for a new beginning.

I appreciated my friend’s kindness but I was not wholly convinced by his ‘equal but different’ stages of life theory. Perhaps cynically, I suspect that our time here is more like The Duration of Life folktale recorded by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. It goes something like this:

God created the world and gave each animal a duration of life. He gave the donkey thirty years, but when the donkey asked to be spared so much toil, God in His mercy took away eighteen years. God gave thirty years of life to the dog. But the dog begged to be spared so many years growling at everything until he was old and toothless – all bark and no bite. So God in his love took twelve years away from the dog. When God gave thirty years to the monkey, the monkey sighed, since thirty years was so long to be mocked and forced to do tricks. In His compassion God took away ten years from the monkey.

Then God gave the man thirty years of life, but the man complained saying, ‘Oh Lord, I am man, and at thirty years I will have just begun to live, and then I am to die? Lord, this life is not fair, I need more!’

In his consolation, God gave the donkey’s eighteen years to the man. But the man complained louder, and God gave the dog’s twelve years to the man, but the man was not content, complaining even more. So in his benevolence, God gave the man the monkey’s ten years. But the man was not satisfied, and he cursed God. In his wrath God sent the man away, leaving him alone with his selfishness and lack of gratitude.

And so it goes that for the first thirty years of life man lives as God’s creation, happy and content. For the next eighteen years, man toils like a donkey, working for others and carrying them on his back. For the next twelve years, he yaps like a dog, whining and barking at everything just beyond his front door. And finally, in the last years of his life, he is mocked and ridiculed like a monkey, an object of amusement for all who are younger than him.

In crossing the threshold of my late fifties, I don’t believe that I am a monkey yet, but there are days when I worry that I am devolving into a barking dog with a strange, prehensile tail…”
~Jeff Gardner​