Public Bench

After almost a week of walking again for exercise, following an outpatient surgical procedure, I’ve increased my stamina.  Still, the other day, having walked no more than 200 steps, my thighs began to ache.  As I approached the Grand Army Plaza, I found one of its benches irresistible.  I sat down on it heavily and basked in the sun.

“It’s come to this,” I thought to myself, “an old man sitting on a public bench in the sun.”  How long have I looked down at such men, figuring they had nothing better to do?  It had never occurred to me that they were sitting there to gather the strength to continue walking.

How could I have forgotten my own father?  He'd flown out from Boston to spend a week with us in Jerusalem.  Accompanying me on my evening walk of our dog - a Eurasian Terrier, as my late friend Bob Werman called him - Dad asked mid-way if he could sit down.  He was in his early seventies at the time, suffering from a variety of maladies, if not yet from the pancreatic cancer that would kill him a few years later.  He sat down gratefully and remained sitting for what seemed to his impatient son a long time but was probably no more than the time I spent on the Grand Army Plaza bench thirty-five years later.

I hope that in the future I’ll be more tolerant of old men sitting on public benches.  And that includes me.


2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved