Outrunning Age, Danger, and Death

Running is not only exercise, it is an attempt to escape getting older. The more I run, the more I am trying to outrun evidence of getting older. If I run orbits around the earth I will not, however, be able to keep from getting older. In Sonya Huber’s essay, “The Lunch Lady and Her Three-Headed Dog,” she opens by describing what I fear most. “I raise my arm to write on the chalkboard, and the skin draped over bone and muscle swings in contrapuntal melody.” She sets the scene immediately.

It’s as if Huber has been in the head of most 40 to 50-ish aged women and heard the fears that cannot be fought. Huber reminds the reader of where she has seen those “turkey wings” before and sends us back in time, “...working bodies spooning food, sorting papers in a classroom, women who did not have time, money, or desire to join a gym.” Immediately I recall similar women I swore I would never become but did.

Huber turns to an anatomy lesson to give the “three-headed muscle” a name and a job, the “writing muscle.” Huber then reaches further by tying the loosening of arm muscle to death. Huber compares the three upper arm muscles to the three-headed dog that mythicaly guards the gates of hell. The first time I read this one sentence in the essay, for a moment I thought she was giving her flapping flesh a name.

No amount of exercise can reverse time, but Huber switches the scene to show the reader how she tried. Googling exercises and following the instructions precisely. In fact, Huber leaves the reader with a decision to make. Do I want the triceps of Michelle Obama and the like, or do I rest in the fact that getting older is with me even as I try to outrun it.

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Seems even when we are young we are trying to outrun something. Immediately in Margo Barnes’ “Falling” we meet the main characters. He was the “bad boy” and she was warned to stay away. She didn’t. You get the picture of two opposites:

But the girl’s heart raced when the boy passed her desk on his frequent trips to the principal’s office, snapping his fingers as he slouched up the aisle. If he was embarrassed by his patched pants, by the sad gap of white skin between their hems and the tops of his sagging, dishwater-gray socks, he never let on.

Barnes takes the reader outside the classroom where they meet and are not constrained. Now, not only do we know what he looks like, we can also smell him in her vivid description. She writes that he had “a musky scent like a wild animal running from the cold, all feral and fierce.” And the girl liked him, too.

The tension Barnes creates as the girl rides her bike and he walks carrying her books is palatable You can feel the flush in the girl’s cheeks. Barnes uses fast motion as the little girl speeds away, attempting to outrun getting caught being with the “bad boy.”

Barnes cuts to the next day and closes by showing us the results of running from danger.

The next day, bruised and bandaged, she looked away as the boy passed her desk. On the playground at recess, she stood

alone beside the swing set, running a finger across the feathery frost on the cold metal post. Larry came up beside her,

slipped her a note: He likes you.

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Outrunning the effects of age is possible, maybe with a enough time and effort and money and a personal trainer. For the younger, outrunning danger is exhilarating. But death you cannot be outrun. In “Mom, Fading in Character,” by Don Shea the reader moves chronologically through the last years of Shea’s mother’s life. Opening with a description of his mother’s behavior expectations. More a list of manners, he uses short, quick sentences, some one word. Each sentence is short but gives the reader a big picture of Shea’s mother. She was prim and proper all the time. Shea takes the reader to three distinct moments in time with his mother that explain how the list is important and how death fades her character.

After a bone-breaking fall, Shea’s mother continues to uphold the expected character, “She was groggy with painkillers when I got there, but still managed to look perfectly coiffed and groomed,” She describes. We learn more about Shea’s mother in this same scene. Although groggy she has has made a list. Which reminds me of the beginning where we begin to understand the character. The list of practical matters includes an out-of place, juxtaposed reminder to tell her son, Don Shea, that she loves him. Shea zooms in on the fact she wrote it twice.

Shea’s next scene, again in a hospital we assume, continues to portray his mother as proper, even toward the end of her life. She even imagines Shea’s wedding that never happened. In the dialogue, the exchanges are short and Shea leaves out some words; the reader fills in the missing places. Again, back to the beginning and to her list of manners. And with a close up, Shea’s mother smiles, it makes a difference.

In the final scene on Shea’s mother, he shares an exchange of dialogue where we learn more about his mother’s character. Everything is up for debate. Even death. The time slows, and the two discuss what could be the final night of her life.

“I’m going to die tonight,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Yes, I am.”

“Doubt it.”

“We’ll see,” she said, grimly.

How could she win this one? If she lived, she lost. If she died, she would be in no position to enjoy her victory.

My mom is a lady, and fair minded.

The next morning she said, “You were right,” gracefully acknowledging her defeat.

Always proper to the end.