The Challenge of Maintaining By Dr. Juan Harrison
The Challenge of Maintaining
Most of you senior saints know the routine. You younger folks will learn it soon enough. Each morning as you start your stretching before you get out of bed you start doing a quick inventory of your body parts. With your invisible metal clipboard, you start checking off right knee, left hip, sciatic nerve, big toe, arthritic fingers, snotty nose, muffled hearing. It often seems you feel worse as you continue lying in bed. Almost like overcoming inertia you grit your teeth if you’ve put them in and start reaching for the floor.
Body semi-upright, feet on the floor, house shoes optional, maybe you sit down on a couch or ottoman and try to make your hands, feet and two socks finally meet in the middle. That’s about the time you remember you need to trim a toenail or two that keep hanging up the process as the sock keeps resisting your attempts at getting dressed.
As you’re going through the process of getting dressed, you start feeling a tad bit more alive after splashing a dab of water on your eyes and face. Finally, somewhere along the way you seem to have crawled over that hump as your little red engine seems to have upgraded his chant from “I think I can” to “I knew I could.”
Coffee or tea in hand the warmth of the cup seems to help the engine moving from idle to grandma gear. Before long the joints loosen up with a bit of housekeeping and procrastinated chores.
Lunch comes and goes with whatever’s in the fridge. Maybe you slide on a pair of sandals and splurge for a baby burger and fries. Maybe not. Might make the baloney or cheese or both hold you till supper. Maybe the sandwich holds you till you have a little yogurt or some fruit as you prepare for a welcome aah as you grab the remote to the bedroom TV and watch a little “Everybody Loves Raymond” for the third or fourth time.
Where did the day go. A call from the kids. Maybe a visit from the grands. A couple of calls from a telemarketer. Maybe a trip to Braums for some bread and milk that you hope to drink before it expires. Should I, oh, go ahead. Throw those fudgesicles in the basket. Might wanna treat yourself right before you get ready to doze off. Dull is nice. Don’t want it all the time, but can’t handle too much excitement these days. Getting too expensive to replace a blown gasket.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
