LIfe Changes

I used to wonder, when my parents were in their eighties, why they wanted to stay at home, not having the urge to shop, wander through the park, or walk the streets of our subdivision. Dad would sit in his favorite chair and watch sports on television for hours on end, sometimes falling asleep during the third quarter of a game.

Mother, who no longer could remember how to get from one room to another without getting lost, didn't watch television, but would nap all day long. Whenever I suggested to her to watch a favorite show, she'd reply, "I'm into interested in that anymore." Or she'd suggest "go riding." She didn't have to think or listen to anyone but me when I took her for a ride through the countryside. She'd ride to the ends of the earth without complaining, as long as she was moving without trying.

I was only 20 years younger than my parents, but still I couldn't understand their desire to do nothing.

Today I do. However, what is nothing to you is something to me.

I am now 20 years older, the same age as my mother. Luckily, I have a few sit-down hobbies I enjoy. But I don't look at television. Why? Because the speakers on the programs are talking too fast. Is this typical of us Southerners, that at an older age when we are so immersed with the slow language of the South,can't understand anyone from any other part of the country because they speak too fast for us to register the words?

I've become more fond of the bed for afternoon naps than any other time of my life. A short time in exercise, followed by running errands makes me tired. I flop down on the bed and have the best sleep of any withing 24 hours. Despite chasing ancestors,viewing a good movie on my Kindle, or reading the latest crime novel, I can be engaged all afternoon, but at 5 p.m. I notice I've missed my nap and fall into a stupor of two hours.

If it is true about napping extending one's life, I should hang around doing the same thing past my 100th. I've always said I hope to live to 140 because there are so many areas I want to cover. At the rate I'm going now with these naps, I can certainly count on additional years being added to my present age.