I have been told on very good authority — my doctor, no less — that the cause of my sore back is entirely in my mind. Apparently I have a common age-related disability wherein my body responds exactly the way an 80 year-old body should respond when governed by a mind that believes it is only 25. It hurts. It hurts, as well, for longer periods and in more places than it used to hurt when it really was only 25. The logical remedy proposed by the mind is to accept the fact of the body’s chronological age and treat it accordingly; however, I am married. I am married, moreover, to a sculptor who has ventured into the media of cement casting of garden ornaments. There is no hope.

I remember a patio we once had. It was adorned with ceramic pots of flowering plants, and the only small difficulties they posed was how to place them in the most pleasing arrangement and to keep them watered with the little irrigation lines. Those small difficulties as I now think of them, could keep us busy for the whole of a summer with my repositioning the pots, and of course rebuilding the irrigation systems, as the artistic judgement of my beloved deemed most aesthetically pleasing. That aesthetic of course, changed frequently, sometimes hourly, but it appears now in the clarity of hindsight and recent experience to have been a trivial imposition on my time. Cement mixing can destroy a patio as surely as it can wreck a body.

There are collaterally damaging activities besides the primary ones of hauling water and mixing cement. Preparing moulds for casting requires tables on which to work. Shoulder the flower pots aside, drag out the picnic table and dig out the tarps to cover it. The extra cement from each batch can be used to cover large leaves placed on sand mounds in plastic pot trays. Head off to the hiking trails to collect leaves, and never the dusty ones by the trail margins, No, no, that one over there by the edge of the blackberry canes. Oops, are you all right?. Partially-used bags of cement harden up over a winter’s respite. Drive to the building supply store to stock up, and why do they make 50-lb bags heavier every year, and why do they make 50-lb bags at all? Yes, it is a multi-tasking task, this artistic enterprise, and almost all of those tasks are physically challenging if not downright hazardous. My first answer was strong drink.

A small tipple after an arduous afternoon’s labour at the trough was balm to the spirit and an anaesthetic to the aching muscles. A little whiskey washed the cement dust from mouth and throat even as it worked its merry little miracle with despondent thoughts on the brevity of life and the fading of youthful strength. A good snort straight from the bottle was even better! At first. Then the above- noted discrepancy between mind and body perception asserted itself. I am fairly certain that I used to be able to consume twice as much liquor with only half the hangover. So, now I had two problems: the whole cement mixing-casting thing and the whole debilitating drinking-to-forget-my-pain response. It was a vicious circle, made all the more vicious of course by the complete absence of sympathy on the part of one who had always assured me of her undying love and concern for my well-being. When I regained control of my sobriety, rational thinking and bowels, I determined to restore some tranquility to our lives.

If the cement casting had grown out of the sculpting endeavours and sculpting evolved from an expressive drive, well then I believed a substitute activity appearing as an extension of the artistic impulse could be made to attract my Dear One’s attention. What should it be? Something light, of course; something manual, by all means; something cheap, if possible; something solitary — oh be still be still, my heart.

It came to me, slowly, as all of my better ideas are wont to do, without those annoying flashes of light and cymbal clashing so favoured by the writers of crime novels and religious tracts. Whittling! Well, wood carving to be more general about it, as mere whittling conjured images of barefoot boys hacking away at pieces of tree branch. Yes, carving, in the great tradition of ... well, whoever the great carvers were. And it worked.

Out came the little chisels and little blocks of wood and wee vises and first aid kit. Little muted tap-tapping noises replaced the grating cacophony of cement stirring. Shovels and buckets and remains of 50-lb bags of Portland grout were sequestered in the depths of the garden shed. I returned to the quiet life of the summertime hammock reader with cool if non-alcoholic drink close at hand and ice packs wedged around shoulders and lower back.

Our little patio world has reasserted its benevolent influence on our senior lives, and the only small disquieting element has been the volume of library books downloaded by My Beloved, all on the topic of west coast totem poles.