Point of View: A Match Yet to Play

Gustavo Morastitla said in answer to a question I’d posed following Jordan’s Run at the end of last month that the summer, after all, was only half over.

I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a chill. That, I suppose, is the difference between 17 and 77. 

Soon, very soon, summer will be over, I’m telling you. You can already see dead leaves, signs of change, but as Al Franken in a former incarnation used to say, “And that’s okay.”

I know I don’t look it, crepey skin and all, but I feel pretty good — even now, near the end of the actuarial line. Just about everyone’s 70 in the tennis club where I play, as I was reminded the other day, and on the courts we battle as hard as we can. Surely it’s comical, creaky as we are, but while the flesh is weak, the spirit is sprightly. And like Gustavo we’re bent on improving — the only difference being that because we’re bent we don’t improve, or, if so, not by much. But that’s okay.

Ever in search of an edge, I’ve begun to swing kettlebells too, a discipline that done correctly ought to help me to straighten up and fly right, to strengthen my core in short, in shorts too. 

I’ve always been attracted to the lightweight T-shirts they have at Truth Training, though the words on the back, such as “This Is Muscle” (in my case it should be “This Is Muscle?”) and “Earn Your Beer” make rather grandiose claims. 

“Oooh . . . Truth Training,” I hear some at the club whisper. As I say, whatever will provide an edge.

I entered the 70s singles tournament in a rather fraternal frame of mind, I would do it to give a fellow septuagenarian a game — no thought of winning, mind. And now, having barely scraped by in the first and second rounds, saved in the first by the fact that after almost two hours of mano-a-mano, my opponent had to excuse himself to pee, thus providing me with a restorative respite in the shade (Note: You must go in for a terminal alliteration treatment as soon as the summer’s over), I’m foaming at the mouth, uttering oaths, defying the gods, and not serving as a very good role model for my grandsons, which is probably not okay.

That I’m averse to change can readily be seen if you step into my car, a 2002 Solara. When, after the second-round agon, my daughter Emily did, she said she was doing so at risk of anaphylactic shock. It would, she said, as she wrote “Emily Was Here” in the dust and pollen-covered dashboard, be a perfect place for an allergen immersion treatment. When she and the kids alit at Indian Wells, I gathered some of the dog hairs into a white mustache before saying goodbye.

Justly shamed, after they’d left for Connecticut, I washed it and vacuumed it, and was especially proud of how neat the trunk, untouched in the past half-dozen years, looked. I knew because our late Lab Henry’s blanket was still there, under the leaves and sand and detritus. I teared up as I held it. Summer was half-over and I felt a chill in the air, though there was a match yet to play.