spasm

Older men often sit to piss. Our bladders are shot and we go weak at the knees standing at the bowl waiting for action. We can no longer piss over a brick let alone a brick wall. We drizzle rather than flow. So we sit to piss. This morning while sitting, pissing, my back jolts me out of my reverie.

A dodgy back is my one serious and continuing health burden. Crippling spasms strike when least expected, when doing simple things—picking up the bath mat, tying a shoelace—and as I age it happens more often. Like four times in the past twelve months and now while innocently sitting, pissing.

I shamble, crouched, around the house. The more I walk and stay active, difficult enough, the better it feels. So I put up a small shelf in the kitchen, sawing the wood, sanding it, drilling holes in wall and shelf and screwing it into place. I go to the carport and jemmy two plywood panels off the side wall. I’ve been intending to do this for months. It’s insanely counter-intuitive but it works.

If I sit, my back turns feral. I roam the house making phone calls; anything not to sit. I visit every room, circumambulate each, then start over.

My good woman, bless her little cotton socks, drives over with a bean salad for lunch. I perch on the edge of my chair and reach for nothing. She massages a powerful anti-inflammatory gel into my back, smothers it with a bag of wheat heated in the microwave, relieves my tension in other ways, then departs.

I comfort myself with the words of the sultan: “This too shall pass.”

Rock on.