Cycles
I just saw an older gentleman I’d worked for on a construction crew, three decades ago.
I was a scrawny, short, stubborn preteen. He, a burly, strong and seasoned foreman.
My dad secured the job, unbeknownst to me. And while I liked the idea of money, I loathed early morning rises and all-day summer sweating.
One day on the job site, while in the basement pretending to work, two full floors removed from the scorch the framers were facing, my post-lunch saunter on the cooler concrete slab was abruptly interrupted by this gentleman’s bellowing bark.
“Get your ass to work or else I’ll kick it!”
He was referring to the horrendously heavy concrete floor jacks I’d stopped hauling.
Begrudgingly I resumed, assessing that he, a foot taller and 100 pounds meatier, could easily follow-through.
I don’t know how I endured that summer. I hated every moment of it. Except lunch.
Seeing the same man, now thirty years later, was surreal.
Shoulders, once brave and broad, now sloping.
Strength, once sinewed and sleek, now slowing.
He, in decline, and I, now in prime.
Life cycles, people rise, and the torch is always passed — though we fight it.
We are not meant to be all things, for all time.
We each have our days in the sun, when on top — in charge.
And we each have our days in the shade, bemoaning the load we carry.
It helps me now, in the laborious moments I still face, to remember that everyone cycles through.
The one now on top was once a grunt.
And the same one — with strength today, will one day decline.
Whether we like it or not, we are all part of the same crew — builders on the same job.
