These Times

On the bright side, at least I’m spry

Kirk Ericson | Mar 20, 20250

“Spry — able to move quickly, easily, and lightly, used especially to describe an older person.” — Merriam-Webster

The woman down the aisle from me was returning from getting more alcohol, so when she reached my seat on the end of our aisle, I hopped up so she’d have space to pass. The woman looked to be in her mid-30s.

“Wow,” she said to me, smiling. “You got up quick. You’re spry.”

Ahh … the comment I’ve feared and anticipated for more than 15 years had finally came to pass.

I had a planned response to this “spry” eventuality, but I blew my line when it mattered. Instead of what I had scripted many years ago — “I. Am. Not. Spry. (pause) I. Am. Agile.” — what came out was, “I’m not old enough to be spry.” That came out when the woman was 15 feet past me and totally out of earshot.

A few years before I turned 50, I was bracing for the mailbox appearance of my first edition of the American Association for Retired Persons monthly magazine, which starts appearing in your mailbox after your 50th birthday. I escorted that first issue directly from mailbox to recycling bin, a practice I’ve continued for years with each issue.

Now that I was suffering under this AARP marker of advanced age, I wondered what indignity would come next. I settled on someone calling my spry.

Last weekend’s accusation of spryness came to pass while my oldest son, Alex, and I were sitting in the Moda Center in Portland to see Heart, the band led by two Washington-raised sisters, the indomitable Ann and Nancy Wilson.

Before Heart took the stage last Friday night, a hype man came on stage to explain to the not-sold-out crowd that Ann — the singer of legendary and sonic voice — would be performing from a wheelchair because she broke three bones in her elbow in February. It was too painful for her to sing in a sling, he said, so she would sing sitting, her broken elbow resting on a pillow. Then hype man pointed out that her infirmity wasn’t because of her cancer treatment of the previous year.

“She [Ann] kicked cancer’s ass!” hype man yelled to the crowd, and the crowd roared. Then he told us, several times, that we were about to have “the best night of lives!” Again, roars.

Show business can be such a silly business.

Heart took the stage, and it was soon obvious that Ann’s voice was missing notes in her upper register, and it seemed she was a beat off on the timing of some of her vocals, which could have been caused by the pain she was in, the effect of any pain killers she might be on or that she was 74 years old. Maybe it was a combination of the three.

The voice I was hearing in Portland was not the same voice I started listening to when I was 17 years old, the year their song “Barracuda” came out. I felt sorry for her, and for myself. This Ann Wilson did not compare to the Ann Wilson who had enchanted me so many years ago.

That Ann Wilson, along with her guitarist sister Nancy, wrote and performed songs that led to hundreds of needle-lifting moments.

I’d hover over the turntable listening to Nancy’s guitar intro on “Crazy on You,” lift the needle and play it again and again and again. It was the same with a one-second section of “Kick it Out” when the guitarist hits two notes at the end of a solo. That one-second sound at two minutes and nine seconds affects me today just as it did when I was a teen. I shake my head, smile and say “Damn!” Ann singing every millisecond of “Magic Man.”

Ann’s voice roared and soared. It had an urgency to it. It was without artificial flavors or enhancers.

A couple of songs into last weekend’s concert, Alex leaned over and said, “She doesn’t sound like she used to, but she’s still got a great voice. If it was anybody else, we’d all think she was a great singer.”

That changed my view. I stopped comparing Ann Wilson to Ann Wilson.

A long life requires much accommodation and adjustment, and retreats and advances.

If you have to sit in a wheelchair to do what you love and what you’re best at, sit in a wheelchair.