It’s a Thursday afternoon in Fox Glacier, New Zealand. Sue and the rest of our traveling party are on a daylong excursion, hiking on nearby Franz Josef glacier and then through the wilderness. I’m back here at the hotel because of this:
I’ve written previously about my podiatry travails—a torn peroneus longus tendon in the right foot back in January of ’24, repaired three months later, and the failure of the nerve block to wear off completely, as advertised, which has led to an unnatural bend inward of the foot. Then the left foot took a double hit during our climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro last October: a large blister on the underside of the big toe became infected, and a smaller blister on the pad behind the little toe caused a wound that has yet to heal. The big toe was amputated in December. Just as the left foot began to heal from that surgery and we started getting a handle on the remaining wound, I somehow suffered a fracture in a bone of the right foot. The podiatrist called it a “pathological” fracture, meaning it wasn’t necessarily caused by any sort of trauma. I’d been very careful with it, having to give up any sort of kicking when I worked the heavy bag at the gym, and I was very careful not to drop anything on the foot. But it might’ve happened on any of a number of occasions when I was walking and the surface changed from flat to uneven, causing the foot to bend outward. Not a problem when your feet are healthy and strong, but for me now, it’s a problem.
The foot problems, along with a respiratory illness I contracted last spring which still has occasional lingering aftereffects, have really changed my lifestyle in ways I never anticipated–and don’t at all like. I can’t hike anymore, even on smooth, flat surfaces. I took a walk through a neighborhood near the hotel this afternoon and even though it was probably only a mile and I wore the boot all the time, the foot was starting to feel it by the time I got back. I wasn’t happy about missing the hiking outing today, although I was the one who made the decision to stay behind.
I’ve tried to stay active today, though. There was the walk, and before hitting the shower this morning, after Sue departed early, I did 50 pushups and 50 pelvic thrusts. Normally I do the latter with a 35-pound kettlebell (at home) or a 40-pound med ball (at the gym) on my abdomen, but today I made due with Sue’s carry-on bag, probably about half that weight. When I looked in the mirror after my shower, I saw a guy who doesn’t look like a lot of 68-year-olds, to be honest, although I’ve been feeling it lately.
But one thing my father taught me–among many things–was that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I’m not going to let the old man in.
From a guy who should know.
Back in 2018, the actor/director Clint Eastwood had a conversation with country singer Toby Keith. At the time, Eastwood was 88 and working on his next movie, The Mule. Keith was 57 and a superstar in his field. Keith asked Eastwood about aging, and how he dealt with it. Every day, Clint said, he made a decision: “Don’t let the old man in.” Keith wrote a song about it: “Don’t Let the Old Man In.”
Toby Keith never got to really test that idea, dying of cancer last year at 62. Eastwood is still around, nearing his 95th birthday and reportedly still working. His latest movie, Juror #2, was out last year, and while there’s been little word about any further projects from him, we learned long ago not to count this guy out. Eastwood’s career goes back 70 years, to his first film appearance: a minor speaking role in Revenge of the Creature, a sequel to the classic monster movie, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. His big break came with the TV series Rawhide in 1958. Although he once called his character, cowboy Rowdy Yates, “the Idiot of the West,” the role lasted seven years and provided him with enough experience to get the lead role in three classic Sergio Leone “spaghetti” Westerns in the 1960s, and then his career started rocketing upward when he played hard-nosed San Francisco police detective Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry series of films.
Eastwood has directed more than 30 films and two of them won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director: Unforgiven (1993) and Million Dollar Baby (2005). His films received another seven nominations. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his movies, but perhaps my favorites are The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Gran Torino (2008). In the first film, set in 1965, Clint plays a National Geographic photojournalist, Robert Kincaid, who comes to rural Iowa to photograph the area’s famous covered bridges. He meets farm wife Francesca (Meryl Streep), whose husband and children are away at a livestock show. They fall into an affair, in which each finds something missing in their lives. For Robert, it’s the love of a good woman, and for Francesca, an escape, however temporary, from what she perceives as the stale routine of being a farmer’s wife. At 65, Clint shows he can still play a romantic lead quite convincingly. Streep was 46 at the time, but the age difference appeared very negligible. Sue refused to see the movie; she’d read the book and cried at the ending, and for a few days afterward would break into tears whenever she thought of it. My daughter Kim and I watched the film together on TV when she was 14, and at a critical moment, when Francesca is on the verge of leaving her husband to be with Robert, Kim shouted, “Do it! Do it!” (You’ll have to see the movie to find out if she did.)
In Gran Torino, Eastwood at 78 plays widower Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet and retired autoworker. Depressed after the death of his beloved wife and estranged from their only child and his family, Walt reluctantly befriends the Hmong family that has moved in next door, overcoming his long-held prejudices against Asians that go back to his wartime experiences. When the family comes under attack by an Asian gang that is trying to recruit Thao, the teenage son of the neighbors and Walt’s protege, the old veteran takes action in a way that’s very Clint-like, and the audience is rooting for him all the way. In the end, his heroism rids the neighborhood of the gang. I first saw the film in Arizona while visiting my parents, and I thought, “This is the way my dad would like to go out.” Now, I’m beginning to think that would apply to me, too.
I was 39 when I first saw The Bridges of Madison County. Sue and I had just married, and so the romance of the story really resonated with me, for personal reasons that we don’t need to get into here. But also because I could look at Clint and say, “I want to be like him at 65–handsome, virile, at the top of his profession, and making love with a beautiful lady.” Well, as it turned out, of those four things, I definitely aced #4; the third dream had pretty much come true, too, as by then I’d become one of the top radio sports announcers in Wisconsin and the author of some pretty well-received novels. As to the first two, well, Sue tells me I got those right, and I’m happy to take her word on it.
I’m now three years past the age Clint was in that film, and getting closer to Walt Kowalski’s age. And every day, I try not to let the old man in. That’s not an easy thing to do.
Holding the door.
It’s a hard thing, keeping the old man out. As Clint told Toby back in ’18, you have to work at it every day. Part of it is acknowledging reality, I think. There are things you won’t be able to do in your 60s that you did in your 20s, 30s, even 40s. I can’t play basketball anymore, for example; my last city league game was 31 years ago. I was a pretty decent small-town basketball player, but even NBA superstars have to retire eventually, when their bodies no longer allow them to compete at the level they need to maintain to stay in the league. Most are retired well before they turn 40, and this goes for just about every sport. Very few can compete at 40 with athletes nearly 20 years younger. There are exceptions: Alexander Ovechkin (39), LeBron James (40), Aaron Rodgers (41), and Justin Verlander (42) come to mind. Ovechkin, in his 20th NHL season, recently broke Wayne Gretzky’s league record for career goals. James, the NBA’s career scoring leader, doesn’t show too many signs of slowing down, although he has talked about retirement as he nears the end of his 22nd season. Rodgers has yet to sign with an NFL team for his 21st season and may retire. Verlander is on a new team this year, the San Francisco Giants, for his 21st season in Major League Baseball, with hopes of reaching 300 career pitching victories (he now has 262, but has been roughed up in his first three starts).
But what about those of us, the vast majority of guys, who weren’t elite athletes in our younger days? Well, we do the best we can. For me, it starts with being as physically active as possible. After returning to the room from breakfast, with my pushups and pelvic thrusts already done, I saw this article: Sit-to-stand. Of course, I had to take the test. I set the timer on my phone, positioned myself on the chair as required, and got after it. Half a minute later, I had counted 15 successful reps. The average score for men in my age group: 12. I’d beaten that by 25%, and yes, it felt pretty good.
So, what’s the secret? There is no secret, and there’s nothing quick and easy about it. No pill, no specific exercise regimen, no supplement, no magic powder in your morning drink. It’s the simple things, really. Staying fit and active. Getting plenty of sleep. Eating a balanced diet. Staying away from destructive habits like smoking, limiting your drinking to maybe three or four a week. (I like a glass of wine now and then.) Taking care of your skin; Sue has me on a twice-daily skincare regimen for my face, and it’s really made a difference in the last year since it started. I go to a nail specialist once a month for a manicure and pedicure, and no, there’s nothing effeminate about keeping your nails trimmed and clean.
The simple things. No, they’re not easy, but the easy way to deal with aging is to do nothing at all. You’ll wind up eating too much, staying up too late, watching a lot of mindless TV, not bothering to exercise. You’ll have trouble with stairs, so you’ll move to a place that has none. You’ll have a powerful fear of falling, because you don’t think you’ll be able to get back up. You’ll constantly look back on your younger, healthier days and be increasingly bitter about being old and unhealthy.
I’ve also found that you need to be on the right path spiritually. It helps to know where you’re going, and I know that whenever I have a dark moment, I can always count on the Man upstairs to help me out. And you have to be squared away mentally and emotionally. You can’t hold onto old grudges, for example. Like anyone else, there have been people in my life who’ve stood in my way, and who in some cases really tried to knock me off my path. It took me some time to get past those experiences, but I think I largely have. As the great Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
I try to stay up to date on the latest health and fitness news, especially as it pertains to my generation. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s free daily newsletter, Arnold’s Pump Club, is a great resource. Arnold himself will turn 78 this summer, and he’s certainly not in the same tremendous shape he was as a champion bodybuilder in his 20s, but that hasn’t seemed to bother him. Certainly, he looks in the mirror in the morning, like I did today, and says to himself, “I’m not what I was fifty years ago, but for my age, I look pretty damn good.”
You have to have a little hubris to make this work. Pride is one of those things that goes before a fall, but if managed carefully, it can also help keep the door shut against the old man.
A Strenuous Writer's Life 