Read Online Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Donald Hall
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.so
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structure, with pretty dimples. She is tender and as sloppy as I am. She abjures earrings, makeup, and dresses; she wears blue jeans and yard-sale shirts. Combs and brushes are for sissies. We watch movies, we read Edith Wharton to each other, and we travel. In 2002 we impulsively flew to London, and later we took many trips for poetry readings without ever combing our hair.
When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone onto my chest, my beard roared like a lion and lengthened four inches. The hair on my head grew longer and more jumbled, and with Lindaâs encouragement I never restrained its fury. As Linda wheelchaired me through airports, and my eighties prolonged, more than ever I enjoyed being grubby and noticeable. Declining more swiftly toward the grave, I make certain that everyone knowsâmy children know, Linda knows, my undertaker knowsâthat no posthumous razor may scrape my blue face.
No Smoking
WHEN I LOOK at the barn in my ninth decade, I see the NO SMOKING sign, rusted and tilting on the unpainted gray clapboard. My grandfather, born in 1875, milked his cattle there a century ago. None of my grandparents smoked. I donât know when my grandfather nailed up the sign, but I know why. Sometimes a tramp would dodge inside the barn after dark to sleep on a bed of hay, and once my grandfather found cigarette ash when he climbed to the tie-up in the morning. It doesnât take much to burn down a barn. Whenever I focus on the sign, white letters against red, I pull a cigarette from the pack beside me, flick my Bic, and take a drag.
When my parents and I visited the farm, way back, my father was required to do his smoking outside. My mother, who learned to smoke when she went to college, pretended to her parents that she never touched the stuff. (My grandmother lived to be ninety-seven, and her sense of smell diminished. My elderly mother sneaked upstairs and puffed on a cigarette.) My father was a gentle and supportive man, but he was tense, shakyâand could not do without his Chesterfields. He walked up and down the driveway, dodging horse manure, to work on his four-pack-a-day habit. He started smoking when he was fourteen and wasnât diagnosed with lung cancer until 1955, when he was fifty-one. Every time I write, say, or think âlung cancer,â I pick up a Pall Mall to calm myself.
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In 1955 I lived with my wife and baby son about two hours away from my parents. In May I drove down for my fatherâs exploratory operation, and pushed his gurney into the elevator. My mother and I drove home to wait for the telephone call. If the phone did not ring for half a day, it could mean that the cancerous lung had been removed. The telephone rang too soon. When we arrived at the surgeonâs office, Dr. Appel told us that he could not extract the tumor without killing my father. He said the short-term prospects were fine, but the long-term . . . (My fatherâs radiation would give him two good months. He played golf, and didnât die until December.) As my mother realized what Dr. Appel was telling us, her fingers twitched at her purse. For her convenience, the thoracic surgeon pushed his ashtray to the edge of the desk.
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Everyone smoked in 1955. When adults had a party, they set out cigarettes in leather boxes on every table, every mantelpiece, every flat surface, beside silver Ronson lighters among myriad ashtrays. There were round crystal ashtrays, and square ones with deep receptacles over ceramic bottoms; there were ashtrays that sprouted from the floor on black steel stems; there were ashtrays with cork humps in the middle, for knocking cinders out of a pipe. In Durham, North Carolina, there is the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum. I imagine multiple busy artifacts overcrowding its showcases. There are museums elsewhere, but it would be tedious to visit them all. In Shanghai thereâs the China Tobacco Museum with Cigarette Exhibition, and thereâs another
When I turned eighty and rubbed testosterone onto my chest, my beard roared like a lion and lengthened four inches. The hair on my head grew longer and more jumbled, and with Lindaâs encouragement I never restrained its fury. As Linda wheelchaired me through airports, and my eighties prolonged, more than ever I enjoyed being grubby and noticeable. Declining more swiftly toward the grave, I make certain that everyone knowsâmy children know, Linda knows, my undertaker knowsâthat no posthumous razor may scrape my blue face.
No Smoking
WHEN I LOOK at the barn in my ninth decade, I see the NO SMOKING sign, rusted and tilting on the unpainted gray clapboard. My grandfather, born in 1875, milked his cattle there a century ago. None of my grandparents smoked. I donât know when my grandfather nailed up the sign, but I know why. Sometimes a tramp would dodge inside the barn after dark to sleep on a bed of hay, and once my grandfather found cigarette ash when he climbed to the tie-up in the morning. It doesnât take much to burn down a barn. Whenever I focus on the sign, white letters against red, I pull a cigarette from the pack beside me, flick my Bic, and take a drag.
When my parents and I visited the farm, way back, my father was required to do his smoking outside. My mother, who learned to smoke when she went to college, pretended to her parents that she never touched the stuff. (My grandmother lived to be ninety-seven, and her sense of smell diminished. My elderly mother sneaked upstairs and puffed on a cigarette.) My father was a gentle and supportive man, but he was tense, shakyâand could not do without his Chesterfields. He walked up and down the driveway, dodging horse manure, to work on his four-pack-a-day habit. He started smoking when he was fourteen and wasnât diagnosed with lung cancer until 1955, when he was fifty-one. Every time I write, say, or think âlung cancer,â I pick up a Pall Mall to calm myself.
Â
In 1955 I lived with my wife and baby son about two hours away from my parents. In May I drove down for my fatherâs exploratory operation, and pushed his gurney into the elevator. My mother and I drove home to wait for the telephone call. If the phone did not ring for half a day, it could mean that the cancerous lung had been removed. The telephone rang too soon. When we arrived at the surgeonâs office, Dr. Appel told us that he could not extract the tumor without killing my father. He said the short-term prospects were fine, but the long-term . . . (My fatherâs radiation would give him two good months. He played golf, and didnât die until December.) As my mother realized what Dr. Appel was telling us, her fingers twitched at her purse. For her convenience, the thoracic surgeon pushed his ashtray to the edge of the desk.
Â
Everyone smoked in 1955. When adults had a party, they set out cigarettes in leather boxes on every table, every mantelpiece, every flat surface, beside silver Ronson lighters among myriad ashtrays. There were round crystal ashtrays, and square ones with deep receptacles over ceramic bottoms; there were ashtrays that sprouted from the floor on black steel stems; there were ashtrays with cork humps in the middle, for knocking cinders out of a pipe. In Durham, North Carolina, there is the Duke Homestead and Tobacco Museum. I imagine multiple busy artifacts overcrowding its showcases. There are museums elsewhere, but it would be tedious to visit them all. In Shanghai thereâs the China Tobacco Museum with Cigarette Exhibition, and thereâs another
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