Heavy Weight Boxer

I came across a forgotten photo this morning.  A few years ago I found it near the boat ramp across from my house. I was surprised that I even noticed it as it was half-covered in a layer of sand.  There was no one to ask about it, the fishermen hours before launched on the lake.  I stood idle for a few moments, wondering if I should place the photo on someone’s windshield.   It seemed such an important item, so personal.  I slid it into the parker of my windbreaker. 

My best guess is that the photo was taken in the 1970s, judging from the shag carpeting under the man’s canvas high-top sneakers, supporting what looks to be a heavy-weight boxer.  Shirtless and in short silk running shorts, his fists closed and in position, this man is confident and intent.  A posed photo, the camera captured all of his youth and vigor. 

The photo is cut to show only the subject.  Creases in the photo tell me it was in someone’s wallet for many years. I was strangely attached to this photo and pinned it above my desk.  I coveted this bit of  borrowed personal nostalgia but I wasn’t quite sure why.  

Fingering this keepsake inside my pocket, many mornings I would slowly walk by the fisherman, ready to reveal my role of imposter, to return to the rightful owner the photo and all of the sentiment that I had created.  I wondered if the photo was the key to a storehouse of memories for someone.   I worried that by my keeping the photo, I would be guilty of initiating the loss of those memories.  But still, I kept the photo.  And, then, I packed it to accompany me in Mozambique.

I had tucked it into an Altoids tin that I had filled with paper clips to bring with me to Mozambique.  Our allowed luggage weight of 100 pounds for the two-year Peace Corps assignment was a challenge, to say the least.  In hindsight, packing office supplies seemed odd.  Including this photo, even odder.

The average life span in Mozambique is 52 years old. HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are largely accountable.  Horribly poor nutrition, economic woes and political strife add to the difficulties.  And sadly, predictions are for the life span here to decrease in the next five years, contrary to most other places on the planet. 

Having just turned 54 years old, I can’t help but to compare myself to this statistic, and to the people around me.  While I am in good health and physically fit, since my arrival I have noted that I’ve crossed into the threshold of my late mid years.  Serving with a group of volunteers in their twenties has also given me cause to observe the differences.  My confidence, sense of spirit and self has grown, traded for the endless energy of my past.  I move and think slower, which I’m actually enjoying and consider a good thing.  There is a quietness within that wasn’t there before.  And, yes, thankfully, I am healthy.

Although I didn’t understand at the time just why this photo grabbed my attention, or why I packed it, I understand it now.  The passing of time, the loss of youth, and coming to terms with aging, all things we can’t really know until we experience it. And all the things that I imagine an old fisherman was very aware of and the reasons why he kept that photo for many years. My subconscious understood it before I did, and, intrigued, began the process of preparation to enter into this next phase.

I have often wondered why I accepted the invitation to serve in Mozambique.  I know now it was to be the backdrop to enter into this new chapter.  Unlike Mozambicans, I have had the benefit of good health care and a privileged life.  And I can be pretty sure that I will continue to enjoy these benefits. 

The photo can remind me of all the yesterdays now gone by, my own and those of others.  My days in Mozambique make me acutely aware of the value and quality of life, of life right now, today and tomorrow.  Of my life and those around me.