'Getting in and out of cars': A guest post by Daniel Lavery
On aging and moving.
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Daniel Lavery is a writer and active living assistant from California. His newsletter is called The Chatner and his next book is called Meeting New People. I’m so pleased to have him write a guest post for Body Type this week. — Mikala
I work in a building with about 130 senior citizens, more or less. On any given week I drive between 15 and 30 of them to their doctor’s appointments, their physical therapists, the pharmacy, their dentists, to the grocery store, the post office, and various cultural outings (museums, concerts, restaurants, et cetera). Depending on how many residents I have with me, and whether any of them uses a wheelchair to get around, I will either take them out in the company car, which is a big slow cumbersome white Chevrolet as wide as a steamboat, or the company bus, which rattles like all get-out but beeps when you put it in reverse, which is pretty terrific.
Driving puts you into an interesting physical relationship with another person, especially if they sit up in the front seat with you. Since you’re both facing in the same direction, instead of directly at one another, you feel both a sense of shared purpose and a sort of expansive ease. There are no eyes on you; you are travelling somewhere together. You might be likelier to open up than you would be if you were having the same conversation facing each other from across a table. People tell me about their children; their grandchildren; the children they like best, the children who live nearest, the children who don’t speak to them, the children who visit every week; the grandchildren who ask for money and why; what type of long-term insurance I should buy; what they thought of the person who used to do my job before me; what they thought of the person who used to do her job before that; what they think of the other resident we just dropped off who was sitting in the backseat. Don’t worry, usually what they want to tell me they thought about someone else is very nice.
The terms of my employment are such that I am permitted to “assist” residents getting in or out of the car, although since I am not a trained caregiver, I am not supposed to assist anyone with basic activities of daily living, like transferring them in or out of a wheelchair or performing a lift. Getting in and out of the car is difficult for everybody, especially one with seats as low to the ground as the ones we’ve got.
The clearance on the door is low, too, so people hit their heads on the frame a lot, even after I warn them about the low clearance. I hit my head on the frame a few times, too, sometimes even after I’ve just warned somebody else. Otherwise I’m a very good driver. The only thing I’ve ever hit in the company car is my own head.
Most people entering the car will follow the same sit-and-swivel protocol, given to them by their doctors and physical therapists: First they grasp the side of the door as well as the passenger assist handle near the ceiling, then they partially turn around, back up towards the door, carefully descend backwards onto the seat and then pull both their feet in at the end.
This is not an especially quick or graceful process. It’s not meant to be; it’s meant to keep you safe. If you happen to fall doing this maneuver, you’ll fall inside the car, relatively safely onto the seat, instead of over your own legs onto the sidewalk. The #1 most common thing people say to me while conducting this procedure is, “Don’t get old,” with the occasional variant of “Aging is no fun.” People say that all over the building, sometimes lightly and sometimes very seriously, but they say it almost invariably when getting in and out of the car.
It’s difficult for me to respond to this sentiment honestly. I know the expected, joking answer is “Yeah, but it sure beats the alternative [of dying young],” but I have to be judicious about delivering hokey, folksy answers while chauffeuring. It’s easy to overdo that sort of thing, working in senior living, and from there it’s a slippery slope to calling everyone “Honey” or “Sweetie” and generally behaving without dignity.
When people say “Don’t get old” in such a situation, I think at least part of what they are trying to say is, “I realize I am taking a long time to get into the car, and I feel self-conscious about it, as though I owe you an apology, but I’m trying to keep things light between us.”1
“I’ll see what I can do. Take your time,” is the best response I’ve been able to come up with, but I’m open to suggestions if you’ve got any ideas for a better one.
One ought to be quick to put one’s (relative) youth and strength to good use, working in senior living, but it is I think ungracious to make a point of moving nimbly around someone else, as if one were making a meal out of it. Don’t run to open a door, for example. If you must walk around someone in the hallway to get to where you’re going, don’t go too fast. Don’t pop up like a piece of toast from the floor when you’re picking up a purse or a dropped piece of mail. Nobody likes a showoff, and having forty-year-old knees is only impressive in this very specific context.
A few months into the job, my boss told me that one of my new duties would be to lead a seated exercise class every Sunday and Monday morning. I often find out that I have new duties on short notice. Sometimes my new duties have involved bartending or calling Bingo. I dislike calling Bingo. It’s not nearly as much fun as playing Bingo. But I do my duty.
I have never led an exercise class in my life. From time to time I enjoy a little social spotlight, but as a general rule I do not care to be stared at by several dozen people first thing in the morning while they mirror my every move. I was desperately anxious to do right by everyone. People in the building take their exercise very seriously, for good reason, and I didn’t know how to talk and breathe and keep count at the same time. I still don’t. Every Sunday and Monday morning I painstakingly handwrite thirty minutes’ worth of exercises, trying to taking into account recent shoulder surgeries, particularly bad cases of arthritis, knee injuries, hearing difficulties — not to mention trying to vary the routine so it doesn’t become too predictable — and then I black out from sheer nerves and try to get through somehow.
Everyone was very encouraging. Possibly a trifle too encouraging. Nobody wanted me to get down on myself, but they had to find a way to offer necessary corrections just the same:
“That was a great class. A great class. I think I’m getting used to the way you do things. It would be easier if you just used the arm or the leg you wanted us to use, instead of giving us the mirror image, but it hardly takes me any time at all to make the adjustment now.”
“That was a good class. You’re really getting somewhere. I don’t suppose anyone’s told you this, but we normally break up the workout with four counts of deep breathing every five minutes. You would have had no way of knowing this, of course.”
About half the time I lose count during the deep breaths and everybody laughs a little. I don’t know why the deep breathing counts trip me up. It’s just four, three, two, one. But about half the time I’ll say “Breathe in with me for four….two…no, that’s not right,” and I have to say “two” again.
It’s possible to take the “Don’t get old” injunction too seriously, to take someone else’s aging as proof of failure, to decide that if one just does enough balance and mobility exercises, lifts enough weights, never experience physical frailty or loss of control, remain in perfect rude bursting sheer vigor right up until the moment they drop dead, still as healthy as an ox. But I am inclined to take it seriously, that little automatic annual deduction of muscle that one scarcely notices until the stairs and the bathroom become newly dangerous; there is a balance to be struck between living as if there were no tomorrow and behaving like that billionaire who’s always drinking his son’s blood. I bike to work, I wear my helmet, I lift weights at the gym on my way to work three days a week. I quit smoking cigarettes again two weeks ago. I had quit smoking a number of years ago, quite successfully, but had in the past year resumed the habit. I felt violently insane for about five days, but I’m mostly normal again now. Here is an illustrative journal entry from the first day:
“Yesterday I wanted badly to be done with smoking again. I disliked the lingering smell, the growing awareness of a filmy scum attaching itself permanently to the back of my teeth, the compulsive need to step outside and leave the world; today I have zero connection to that desire. Smoking sounds desirable, pleasurable, sexy, healthy, normal and important. Not smoking feels hysterical. Not smoking never killed anybody, so calm down. I wish everyone were dead. No one is stopping you from having a cigarette if you decide to change your mind and have one. No one is making you do this. You have decided to stop for several very sound reasons which were all your own. Nothing good will ever happen to you again.”
As I say, I’m mostly normal again now. Someday, if I am very lucky, I will realize that getting into the car has become difficult — so slowly, and so imperceptibly, that I was not aware of it until it was too late, and I will know exactly what to do. I will grasp the door handles, and turn around, and descend backwards, hoping for the best and watching I don’t strike my head against the frame.
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Of course sometimes they are just saying what they mean, straightforwardly.
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what a beautiful, beautiful read
This was great. Thank you, Daniel and Mikala <3