Where Does It Hurt? Don't Ask!
My Dear Friends...
Let’s start with the gratitude.
Each morning that I open my eyes I am grateful. I mean really grateful. I mean not taking it for granted grateful. I mean at my age that eye opening event is not a given. Yeah, yeah, I know… at any age. But let’s get real. At almost 88, for me that ranks as almost historic. I have a brother totally compos mentis and active who recently celebrated 101 years who would call me a child. If only. No, that is not true. I can’t believe I am going to write this. But there really is no other age or time I want to be in other than the one I am in now. With what is going on how is that even possible?
Well, let me tell you what supersedes all… LIFE… however challening and difficult… LIFE!
So back to my daily awakening. I open my eyes and I am grateful. I roll out of bed… yes, that’s what I said, I roll out of bed to the bathroom. I am so much more aware of the waddle I purposely use and the care I take all in the prevention of the real villain of getting up there in age… THE FALL. Too many of my friends and relations have gone the way of all flesh because of a fall. So yes, I do not mind walking and moving like an aging elephant if it prevents my falling (I admit, at my age I am happily the elephant in the room, always.)
Where was I? Oh, yes! I return to roll back onto and into bed and am the happier for that initial journey. And that is when I take my first snooze… maybe 5 minutes. And then it begins.
I open and close my eyes many times. When I close my eyes, I try to go for another little snooze.
Foot or Head note: This process usually begins around 6:00A.M.
True, it’s early, but I finish reading around 10:00P.M. the night before only because that is when the eyes seem to close all by themselves.
So… 6 A.M. begins the eyes-opening-awake-eyes-closing-snooze time. I think this is an old habit. From my school days through and to my work days, I always struggled for that extra sleep time. Then, I needed it. I had show business hours. I went through the motions looking like I was awake (not!) until around 11 A.M. However, now as I have no set schedule except that which I create with the help of friends, family, and my various enterprises, I am beginning to realize after about half an hour, why I am putting off getting up and out of bed.
Waking my body up after a night of slumber is no easy task.
Who knew? Not me.
I heard from others how getting older takes its toll on the body. Not me. I plied my body with exercise and movement. But even with practice, the body reaches a point of no return. Again, I thought, not me.
I feel like Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (great movie by the way). Her character never cried uncle in defeat.
Forced by decisions she made, finally she cried UNCLE! I find myself forced by simple body arithmetic, crying UNCLE!
Sue me! My body has a different agenda than my head.
It is like the photo of myself I look at and the mirror I look into.They are both parts of the same person. And yet, they each tell a different story.
It is not good for my morale to remember hopping out of bed to get ready for the day.
The word hopping is not in my vocabulary unless it applies to Peter Rabbit.
It is not good for my morale to remember shouting to a friend, “I just got out of bed. I’ll be ready in 10 minutes.” Ten minutes would just be the getting out of bed part.
It is not good for my morale to go without breakfast which I regularly did.
I need the food to process pills.
Ask me if I am depressed?
I am not. Wistful, sometimes, but not depressed.
I repeat what I wrote before: There is no other age or time I want to be in other than the one I am in now.
What? Am I crazy? Well, of course…
Yeah, yeah, I am a late bloomer. So was Grandma Moses.
And I haven’t even mentioned the STATE of STATE affairs. The rending of our Founding Fathers dreams of a nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. It’s almost as though I want to say to each of the politicians that electronically spout the lies of racism, the election, the pandemic, the vaccinations, the climate… ”Hey, guys, I know how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning. Don’t!” Imagine having a break from all their nasty insanity… now that’s something I might try to hop out of bed for.
By all manner of ways and means, I should be depressed but a phrase keeps rolling around in my brainball: The Best of All Possible Worlds.
Voltaire, a writer extraordinaire of the 17th Century, wrote a novella Candide. It is a satirical take on those of us who choose to remain optimists as the tsunamis of life appear on the horizon ready to sweep us out into the roiling sea. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein did the lyrics and the music of this very successful musical adaptation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlIUXvAdpcw
Oh, by the way we have a present day Candide... Ted Lasso. Maybe that's why the show is so successful and why everyone loves him so much. He is the cockeyed optimist. He lives in the best of all possible worlds. He believes. Maybe we love him because we are on cynical overload and want to believe, too.
Summing it up my friends, it is definitely harder to get out of bed in the morning. All my body parts have to be aligned for it to happen with a minimum of discomfort.
I fear the news, personal and otherwise, is not going to get much better for at least the near future. However, As the Pilgrims and other early seafarers after months and sometimes years at sea, in survivor relief, shouted, “Signs of Land”!!.
And I believe there are happenings that warrant encouragement:
* Brittany Spears’s father is out!
* Prince Harry and Prince William reconcile.
* In an extraordinary bipartisan agreement Cuomo, DeSantis, Abbot, Cruz ,Hawley, and Greene, before establishing their new law firm, have formed their own anger management Foundation.
* Trump has joined an Ashram in the Catskills.
* Melania has left with her mother for Monte Carlo.
But for the most encouraging sign of all follow these instructions:
Take the fingers of your right hand, place them on the inner wrist of your left hand, if you feel the beat all good things will follow.
Right? Of course, right!
Love, Sally-Jane ❤️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEXVZUPoLVw