...When I'm Sixty-Four

For the last few days, I've had Ringo Starr's cheery "...When I'm Sixty-Four" refrain echoing in my head for less than cheery reasons. During my holiday break from work (an extended break while the University is closed), my husband and I have embarked on some manic home improvement efforts - namely, painting four of the rooms in our 1927 bungalow.

Now, the trim has been untaped, the knickknacks have been put away, and the rainbow walls look crisp and handsome. Basking in the beauty of a completed project, I've been left with a nagging sensation - quite literally, a nagging soreness in my hands. Days after I have retired my roller, my hands still ache, making me increasingly aware of my taxing daily chores. There's an ache when brushing my hair, washing a dish, tying a shoelace, chopping onions, turning a knob, and even typing on my computer. It's like a flash forward, to a time when I am sixty-four (or maybe just thirty-four).

As it has been particularly hard to grasp things, and my tired 28-year old hand winces from opening the Advil bottle, my thoughts have drifted to my family tree and a long line of prematurely old hands. My paternal grandmother worked in the restaurant industry for most of her life. In her sixties, her hands were so numb from arthritis, I can actually remember her taking hot baked potatoes out of the oven without a mitt or a flinch. Only in his fifties, my father's hands aren't much better - clumsy after many ineffective carpal tunnel surgeries. The thing with bad hands is, they don't get better, they just get worse.

The whole thought of physical atrophy depresses me. The mind/body connection never seems more disjointed when the body can't keep up with an agile mind. Science may have perfected the bionic knee, but they haven't yet patented the hand transplant. Hands are the agents of the most underrated of the five senses (touch), but they allow us to feel, to experience the world in all of its tactile glory. To gesture. To express. To connect. On a more practical, unpoetic level, our hands are nature's most crafty tool. They execute millions of tasks each day, like keeping the door locked, cookie batter blended, our eyeliner straight, and our mortgage checks signed.

And in the digital age, arthritis is not only debilitating, it's silencing. If it hurts too much, you don't type (often or at all). Perhaps that's the thought that has resonated with me the hardest. If in five, or ten, or twenty years, my hands lost their dexterity, I'd lose a piece of myself and my voice. My long-distance friendships, sustained by daily emails and instant messages, would flutter away. For years, I've recorded my experiences and logged memories in a blog. Cutting back on my writing to lessen the pain might lead to experiential amnesia, wandering blindly forward in a life unexamined. I would have to rely on other channels to sustain friendships and rely on others to do more things for me. Never mind the fact that I can't even imagine how I'd ever work without writing.

My fate isn't absolutely sealed, I suppose. My only living grandparent, my maternal grandmother, gets on preternaturally well for 94 - especially in the hand department, knitting colorful afghans fiendishly. She's always been particularly talented with her hands, an excellent seamstress and even more gifted cook, working days on a holiday spread, most notably, shaping dozens of individual piergoies, little Polish dumplings, for my family. She is a woman who gives me a special appreciation of the term handmade.

Now living in a nursing home, my grandmother hasn't hosted a holiday in almost a decade. Her handwriting is at times shaky, but always legible. Not long ago, I remember her showing me that her pinkie finger now has a permanent crimp in the joint and she's unable to extend it fully. It was her vanity talking, she's never been one to fully believe that she'd aged. Even pointing out this curious imperfection, she mentioned it in a passing sort of, "oh, that's interesting," kind of way. I don't really know what this means, but the conversation about her finger resonates vividly in my mind.

When I told him the theme of my post, my husband reassured me that I need not fear the decline of my motor skills by telling me that by the time it happens, "we'll have robots." Still, it's more sad that that. It's not only about completing daily tasks like chopping onions or tying shoes (things machines might actually do for us in the future), there's something infinitely tragic about losing independence, voice, touch, and feel.