SubscribeThere’s life, there’s death and, hopefully, in between, there’s a bit of renewal. And there are parallels, it seems, between updating a no-long-spanking-new motor home and revitalizing an ever-so-slightly-aging body.
Forgive me if I’ve said this before…seems I may have, but with my geezer memory I can’t swear to it….but in the RV World updating RVs instead of re-buying is ordinary, especially in our current fiscally perilous times. Fact is, there’s a whole cottage industry here in Red Bay around remodeling Tiffins. Every evening after 3 PM, multiple multi-colored monster machines (2009 literary license granted courtesy of Alliteration R Us) roll on out of their assigned spaces, idle down around the rows of Tiffin service bays and south to the “runway area” just off the Tiffin-owned grounds…so-called because this whole piece of ground was once an airport, abandoned years ago but with all of the concrete beyond it still a set of mostly-intact runways. We head down there because this aforementioned Red Bay cottage industry is staffed mostly by current Tiffin employees also working full-time side-jobs, like Tim who yesterday finished the first piece of our cherry cabinets, including a (gasp) fully-removable dining-room table allowing four adults to sit AROUND it instead of scrunching in cheek-to-jowel two-across with knees a-knockin’, and Brannon who will install our residential refrigerator tomorrow, and Chris who, hopefully, will re-working our bedroom TV cabinet the day following.
By executive fiat they can’t do non-Tiffin work that Tiffin could do on Tiffin property, (can you even imagine), so that’s the most convenient work-around for them…and not all that bad for us, as, being geezers, none of us really want to be driving these things on real streets after dark. We gather together, put jacks down, slides out and generators on and wait for somebody to come by and fix us all up, at heart still just the same ol’ bunch of hopeful teenagers waiting in our cars for a kindly drunk to stagger by and buy us our date-night six-pack. Assuming they show and after they finish work late into the humid night, we-all pick up our jacks and come back around the corner and set up again at “home” and go directly to bed (it could be as much as 9:30 or even 10:00!), only to spring up the next morning ready to repeat the process again. Renewing our coaches makes them more residential, customizes them more to our own unique needs and, perhaps most important, delays the necessity of our buying new, and doing it at night gives us something different to whine about.
Revitalizing an aging body has similar benefits but is more complex. For one, it ain’t just a remodel….most of us have already done that; the tattoos, the earring, grown our hair or shaved our heads….it’s not just a new look. Physically, emotionally, there are SO many things suddenly not right…once-flat bellies now hang over belts, lungs that once powered us through marathons now come up short of breath when we just bend over to tie shoes, once-stable blood pressure now continuously roller-coasters, once-eagle-like-eyes now cloud to where we can’t read the credits for the cool song we just heard even standing six inches from the TV WITH both lights and glasses on, the mighty mood swings, the memory….did I talk about that already? – the list is long, but still, too few of us do much more than worry, well, I mean we do sporadically but not systemically.
Mike, I’m happy to say, is a bit different.
Mike, Lucy and Mo
After his heart attack and stroke I was worried about him. He’s got a bit of the black-dog about him, a touch of the ‘ol manic-depressive tar-brush, something I relate to pretty well, and I’m more than aware it can keep you down. In fact the first couple of years after his incident(s) were so slow-going for him, I thought once or twice he had given up. After he was further diagnosed with diabetes I feared we were (or at least HE was) nearing the steep, downward slope to perdition.
I was wrong.
In retrospect it seems that re-inventing Mike, for Mike, had to do with achieving a goal; well, a series of interconnected goals. First, he bought the sailboat he always wanted. Then he started diving more aggressively again. Fifty years of diving was not to be denied…he tried a few dives and suddenly he and his group, (coolly named the Feral Divers), were diving all over the known free world. Exaggeration? Only a little…when I asked recently, he sent me a list of checked-off locations:
“Taveuni Fiji, Kadavu Fiji, Truc Atoll, Palau, Peilalu, Hawaii, Maui, Kauai, Oahu, Isla Mujeres, Belize, Terneffe Island, Guanaja, Roatan, Utila Bonaire, Key West,
Puerrto Rico, British Virgin Islands, Saba, St. Eusacia, Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago Keys, Union Island, Grand Cayman Island, Cayman Brac Island, Manado Indonesia, Blue Fish Cove, Carmel Bay.”
And the diving wasn’t all he did. Suddenly surprised at his having a good time, he ramped it all up. He got his meds straight, his blood pressure and cholesterol down to the level of a fit 12-year-old, and – perhaps most important – his weight pointed downhill. He started his “WOG” – sorta an Ipod-driven eclectic weight-loss-journal with Twitter overtones, like daily weight-centric Facebook updates for friends. He and his long-suffering trophy wife Mo had adopted Lucy the Portuguese Water-Dog, and Mike found himself walking miles again to give the pup her due. Life, good, now became better. His emails, once mordant, became alive; his interests in politics, previously sardonic and curt, now blossomed, his obsessive worry over his old company, now sold to employees, dropped off, and he indeed entered the golden age of life.
Well, maybe the silver age. When we revitalize and renew ourselves it takes a bit of doing, and perhaps nothing comes as easily as it once did. There are accommodations that must be made. As example, take this current email I received from Mike about some of the dive-trip-oriented changes that have recently gone down (so to speak) among the Feral Divers,
Ferals, on Boat, with Gear
his aptly-named and long-standing group of dive junkees:
“We are getting old. Where we used to dive in rough, cold water with lots of current, we now dive in warm Caribbean waters with no current and have the young dive mistresses put on our gear for us and lead us over to the side of the boat and push us in. Of course, …(this is) after they have gone in first to check the current at depth.
Where we used to drink all night and run around nekked (sic) and get into as much trouble as we could, we now sit around the dinner table and talk about our medicines and the latest surgery. None of us can drink much any more and we will pay money to make sure most of us stay fully dressed. And bedtime is about 8:00 PM……….”
Which does not mean that he or the other Ferals are giving up on new locations, but it does mean they are becoming increasingly selective, as well…..
“…..Cushy is next on our agenda now. However, it is far removed from the most heavily traveled islands and only has room for 15 couples. That means it will be quiet at night.”
I’m pretty encouraged about all this. Not just for Mike-although it’s clear he’s working his plan and, while seemingly-sorta complaining about not being able to do the bad-boy routine any more on his dives, he’s still moving it down the road, still checking off his personal bucket list. I’m encouraged more because, well, if Mike can do it, you can do it, because, after all, Mike had struggles but you have struggles, too, like we all do, all the time. And by “you” of course I also meant “me”…maybe I can do it, too. Starting today, right after my nap.
Mike 
This is really good! Very enjoyable and thoughtful, and, as usual of course, humorously entertaining. Keep it up!