Thoughts

at the end of 3 weeks of recovery from surgery

Zev Shanken

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There’s self-satisfaction at recovery and self-loathing at frittering leisure idle hours away and receiving receiving all day long just receiving, but also there’s self-serving consolation: what good is having a lot if you can’t be wonderfully wasteful?

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There’s discovering my body at 81 to be that of an old man what did I expect? And there’s the floating billboard over my bed when I try to fall back to sleep. The billboard is beckoning me to climb it and paint on it something profound, but not too long so motorists going to work or driving their kids from school can read it on a country road in Pennsylvania or Missouri or San Antonio or Vancouver.

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There’s the ought that I should feel gratitude that I’m winning the longevity race. And there’s the scold that it’s not a race, but if it is, I’ve already lost, because I’ve already lost a handful of friends and a dozen acquaintances and what decent wise old man would call that winning?

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And there’s the let down after the trophy is placed on my mantle — near my grandmother’s naturalization papers, discovered in my late father’s trunk by his second wife’s kids who sent it to me along with his flight book of 54 missions culminating at Anzio where he almost lost his left leg and mind at 21 years old — 60 years younger than I am today — as I recover from painful bladder stone and old man prostate surgery, feeling during the agony that it’s so small compared to dad’s 3 months in Foggia, preparing to walk for the rest of his life with fascist shrapnel in his knee.

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When adults compare themselves to others— especially to their parents—they’re doing fool’s work, children’s work, neurotics’ work.
This is done so often in passage rites. Comparing also ignores other people who are not part of the comparison. This too is as fools and children and neurotics do. I must clear my mantel and give back generously.

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Here’s how I try to compress these feelings into a 13 line poem.

My Mantel

After surgery that hurt like hell/
I placed my pain on the mantel /
near my father’s flight book/
that records he almost lost /
his leg and mind and learned /
to walk with PTSD shrapnel /
in his knee for the rest of his life.//

When my wife said, “Dinner’s ready.”/
I said, “Put it in the fridge. /
I’ve taken enough.”/
While she was changing to go out, /
I cleared the mantel/
for the rest of my life.//

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-Zev Shanken is a poet and Alte contributor.