The family dog is 14 now and there are days when I laugh as we both grunt or groan as we stretch and move around the house.
“Takes a minute to warm up huh, but then it is like no time has ever passed.”
He wags his tail at me, licks my hand, arm or leg, whatever is close and I tell him to move back so I can do my push ups.
“You know the doc says I only have one bad liver enzyme now, used to be two. Let’s see if we can fix that.”
He barks at me because he wants to be let out a dozen times and I tell him that most of the time I sleep through the night without having to get up to pee.
“If I drink too much coffee I’ll be in and out during the day like some kind of old man. Can’t go 12 hours any more.”
He wags his tail and I tell him that I think I know the answers to certain questions. I tell him that I think I might be blamed for things I ought not to be blamed for.
“I could be wrong, but there are moments where I feel like someone says ‘I blame you for this’ and I shake my head. I am good at getting into trouble, but I don’t take that responsibility. Hell, I think some things would have happened regardless.”
He wags his tail at me and I say I am irritated, not angry, but definitely irritated. “Would like some time, but guess I have to wait.”
I think I have some minor tendonitis in my right arm. It is not enough to prevent me from doing what I want but it’s noticeable.
Tried resting it and didn’t do any lifting for a few days and it went away but like an uninvited guest it came back.
Pushed my way through some lifting to see if maybe I could get things to loosen up but I don’t know that it worked the way I wanted it to.
I was able to do everything I wanted but that little thing never disappeared and it was just loud enough for me to wonder. So I decided to try resting it again or at least drop the weights down to something relatively simple.
A little resistance, but not as much as I want.
That kind of concession is hard for me. Most days I expect I will exceed my father’s lifespan without question but there are moments where I ask myself to answer the question of what if I don’t.
Because if I all I do is match him I have twenty years left.
That is enough to do quite a bit with but not enough to do all I want and dependent upon luck and genetics my health might impact what those things are.
Archives
Still dropping recent posts in because, well because I want to.
- The Blog Posts No One Reads
- What Do Fathers Know
- A Clue For SQ & The Others
- When Mothers Scream
- Some Of My Favorite Writing
- Some Questions Don’t Need To Be Asked
- Places In Time & Space
- You Will Take My Hand…Again
- How To Wrap A Shmata Around You
- What About Your Liver
Band Of Brothers
Decided to rewatch Band of Brothers for the first time since I was in my early thirties.
My grandfathers didn’t have HBO so both asked to watch it with me as WWII was a big part of their lives. As it happened we were only able to watch a few episodes so as far as I recall they never saw all of it.
But I remember them talking about the war, who they knew that didn’t come back and who they knew that did. I remember them telling me a few stories and how I recognized that it and the Depression had made big impacts upon their lives.
Seventy-eight years later I think about what I have experienced in my fifty some years and how my children have been around for a big chunk of life changing stuff too.
I think about what I used to hear from my grandparents and the members of what we call the Greatest Generation as well as the Holocaust survivors who came to the states.
Echoes of European tinged English accents, tattooed arms and sitting with the old guys listening to them exchanges greetings like “What do you know Joe” and or the conversations that would slip in and out of English and Yiddish.
Makes me wonder a bit what memories will stick out for my kids when they get to be my age.
For the moment we’ll get ready to celebrate another Thanksgiving together and be grateful as it could be much worse. Hell, we have already lived through that so I am appreciative.
Life is one hell of an adventure sometimes.
