Member-only story
Today, as I was leaving my building, I saw an old man, a very dapper old man who I see very often, climbing the stairs with his cane very slowly, because the elevator was down. I and this old man both live on the fifth floor; for me, taking the stairs is a minor inconvenience; for this elegantly dressed gentleman, it is most likely a crisis, even a life or death situation. What do you say to someone who, resplendent in their ordinary dignity, does not wish to ask for help? Perhaps nothing. My only response was and is affective. I’m reminded of Wordsworth’s poem “Michael” about an elderly shepherd whose heart is broken by his wayward, ignoble son (which I have to Google because no one memorizes poetry anymore, including me most of the time):
There is a comfort in the strength of love;
’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain, or break the heart:
I have conversed with more than one who well
Remember the old Man, and what he was
Years after he had heard this heavy news.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,
And listened to the wind; and, as before,
Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep,
And for the land, his small inheritance.
And to that hollow dell from time to…
