Like some fading action hero staring into the distance in the dimly-lit room at the midpoint of a movie, I’ve been realizing that I don’t heal as quickly as I used to — although, while the action hero’s moment of awareness would have been heralded by surviving a set piece that likely involved no shortage of gunfire, a shattered window or two and likely a fall of a couple of stories at the very least, mine came about because of a random gardening accident.
It’s been weeks since I accidentally got a stone embedded in my ankle thanks to a weed whacker run amok, and although it was certainly pretty deep in there — the amount of blood that gushed forth when I prized it out was enough of a giveaway about that — I’m still surprised that it hasn’t entirely healed over just yet; I looked down in the shower today to see the scab still formed and wondered how long I’d be stuck with this unlikely addition. It made me think about the fact that I still have the ghosts of scars from the animals clawing at me, too, even though those are even older, and I got to thinking about how the body changes and starts prioritizing what to work on as you get older.
(I can still get out of bed every morning without pain, and my back hasn’t given out on me yet; I’ll take both of those things over more elastic skin any day, I admit.)
At the dinner with the team before San Diego Comic-Con this year, there was a moment where I looked down and realized that my left hand was bleeding. I had (and still have) no idea whatsoever how it had happened — there was nothing that I could have cut myself on anywhere near me, as far as I could see, but there I was, with a big bleeding gash on my hand. I made a joke to everyone else as I wandered away to ask a waiter for a band-aid or two, but even then, I thought to myself, is this just something that happens now? Am I just going to start bleeding for seemingly no reason?
That cut is still on my hand, too, and occasionally it still sends a sting up my arm to remind me of that, out of nowhere. There are things you don’t think about as your body ages, and there’s something almost welcome about that, in a way. It’s nice to still be surprised, 50 years in.