The Families that keep alive…

Thirty minutes into the new day, and I’m here again, wide-awake! I wonder if this is some kind of curse visited upon the aged and inform that sleep slides away when darkness deepens. For I’m sure that it happens to more than to me. I’m sure it doesn’t help that I lie around in bed until 9 AM, rather tan leaping up at four or five as usual, and then walking folk km at a brisk clip. It probably also doesn’t help that I lay down after lunch and sleep, or that I walk now at a stroll…

And then, there are the innards. As a runner, some 40 years ago, and even as a walker these past few years, bowel functioning was rarely an issue for discussion, or even for thought. How, it has become both. A life of relative inaction is part of it.

How to cope? I found a wonderful product, a laxative tea, which works more effectively than any market product I have tried. It is herbal, all natural, and quite tasty. The manufacturers have a twisted sense of humour bas well. Its name is “Smooth Move.” I kid you not. Look in your local Health Food store for it. Relief is at hand!

Lack of activity has had me thinking about my other major exercise program, working out in the pool. Largely, but not by any men exclusively, women, this group – well there are three of them – meet in the AM at 8:30 (you can tell it’s for old folks, because what working person could lie around waiting for 8:30!) The Monday, Wednesday and Friday ladies are all upper crust in their own minds. They invite people into the group, and for tea. I have never been invited to workout, or to e. I just come and do it. These women come to talk. On occasion the din has been so loud that the instructor has had to whistle it down and tell them she was getting hoarse leading the class. At times she lays on really heavy workouts to see is she can induce silence! These women are largely a self-important pain. I mostly ignore them and their invasive questions.

Then there is the Tuesday and Thursday AM group. This is a group for “Seniors.” The age of the group is roughly the same as the upper class ladies, but we own our years. There 7 or 8 men in the group, and we talk less than the others, and have more fun. He have water fights, we goad the instructor into tougher workouts. We “coffee together once a month, (sometimes I bring Baileys) and the men have long, world-problem-solving discussions in the hot tub. We are friends.

Then there is the deep-water class. Tuesday and Wednesday nights, groups ranging from 3 to 21 gather in the deep-water pool to REALLY work out. A small number of men are part of the group. Float belts so you won’t drown, all ages come. I’m likely the oldest by 20 years. And There. Are. Bikinis. Very Small  Bikinis.  Many of the old salts roll their eyes at these, knowing, as we, that sooner or later a top will come loose in exercise, there will a shriek from somewhere in the pool as a kid tries to tie up before her breasts float away. Of course, no one can see anything. It’s just the idea that counts. The women who are serious come in bathing suits, usually black.

For those of us who come regularly, a kind of family spirit develops, even with the youngsters who work at the pool and drive us through our heavy workouts. I hate missing it. And known we come to one of the deep reasons for why this is so important to me. These are my family. I am everybody’s grandfather or father (in my own eyes), we care for one another, and we share that “I almost drowned tonight but wasn’t it a great workout?” There are mothers in need of a break, tired schoolteachers, mental health workers, and one old minister. I belong with these people, more than any other group in Ponoka.

When I came home from hospital, there were cards waiting for me. One was from the pool crew, not only all the group participants, but also all the staff, including the kids that annoy me so much. It was the only card I received that made me cry. The loss of them (temporary, I hope) is one of the keenest. And of course I realize that as old folks must drop out of bridge clubs and golf games, and bowling leagues, and swimming classes, their lives begin slipping away. Some of the people who love then, wrinkles, bad jokes and all, are no longer there. When old Henry…over 90… could come to class no more because of hip, we knew the end was coming. And sure enough, his hip was followed by cancer, and he never returned.

This scenario is becoming my new normal. I missed because of surgery…and now it’s a stroke. Will I be back? I sure hope so. But you wonder…