Category: Aging Gracefully

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Farewell #31

Monday afternoon I said goodbye to an old friend, my passenger side lower twelve- year-old molar (#31).  We’d had a long relationship; one I thought would last a lifetime.  I guess it did, but my tooth’s life turned out to be shorter than mine.  She’d been a part of me so long, I don’t even remember when she arrived in my life.  But, somewhere around the age of twelve, my molar erupted as a shiny, pearly perfect tooth, ready to masticate.

Not long after her arrival, she was shackled by metal bands as  the second phase of my  eight year orthodontic adventure began .  It was the old days of full metal jackets, wires and rubber bands that were anything but invisible.  I had the full complement of night gear and retainers.

Cleaning in between all those wires was difficult and #31 suffered decay.  It was a painful experience for both of us, the drilling and filling,  but it was for our own good.  It was the days of dentistry before painless fillings and anesthesia wasn’t always used.  As a kid I actually feared the Novocaine shots more than the drill, so I went without.

 

Eventually the bands came off and at the age of fourteen, when most of my friends were just getting their braces, mine came off revealing a perfect smile.  I remember my Grandpa Farner remarking as he admired my high school graduation photo “Her teeth sure did turn out nice.”  It was then I learned my grandparents helped cover the cost of my dental work.

After the braces came off, life went on for me and my teeth.  For the most part I kept up regular dental visits and cleanings to insure that I was a good steward of my parents’ and grandparents’ investment.  I made sure my own children’s teeth were maintained.  The advent of military dental insurance made it much easier for us than for my parents.

About the time Maggie and Andy were getting their braces, it was time to enter another chapter with #31.  I was eating popcorn one evening when a chunk of it broke off leaving a very jagged edge.  Mortified by the event, I went to the dentist the next day and began preparation for my first crown.  Many of my friends came back from duty stations in Hawaii with beautiful gold bracelets.  Me, I came back with a beautiful gold crown.  The funny thing is that I loved it!  It felt so smooth against my tongue and the cuspids were a work of art.  I thought this full gold covering would protect us forever.

About a year later, after we’d moved back to the mainland and #31 was giving me some pain.  At first it was just a little ache but eventually became a full throb.  My new dentist decreed that the nerve was dying and recommended a root canal.  So, my beautiful gold crown was drilled through and the procedure completed – twice.  I was told I had hooked roots on my teeth which made it difficult to reach all the nerve tissue.  The second time worked like a charm and we were happy again, #31 and I, my tongue forever delighting on it’s smooth surface.

Last year after my dental exam, my dentist gave me the bad news.  Decay had developed beneath my crown and there was no saving my molar.  She said the integrity of the crown had been compromised and now threatened the adjacent tooth.

I was devastated.

It took me nine months to get up the nerve to schedule the extraction.

My appointment was for Monday at 10:30.  I took my knitting along to keep my hands busy, releasing nervous energy.  Naturally they were running late.

After being sufficiently numbed, the procedure began.  #31 seemed to be as reluctant to leave my body as I was to see her go.  I sat in the chair, in my usual dental mode, calm and relaxed – a product of many years of practice in dental chairs – listening to the soothing melody of Keali’i Rachel on my IPod.  The dentist and her assistant worked methodically and calmly for what seemed like a very long time.  I figured that as long as they were calm, I had nothing to worry about.

Eventually, it was over.  I was sent home with after extraction care instructions, gauze and my gold crown in a little white envelope.

Four days later, my jaw still aches a bit.  My tongue is missing the smooth surface of the crown and is leery of investigating the empty space #31 called home.  Each day feels better than the last, and I know that eventually my days will continue without the least thought of missing her.

I know it might seem silly going on and on over a  lost tooth.  I realize just how lucky I am to have kept my teeth intact for 57 years.  I also realize that I could not have done this without the care and sacrifice of those who loved and cared for me when I was young.  No matter how I look at it, I know that #31 was a blessing, as are my other teeth.

I’ve done a lot of joking about taking my crown down and trading in the gold for cash.  I don’t know how much an old dental crown is worth, but maybe I can get a few dollars for it.  Whatever the value, I think I’ll include it in a donation to the Greene County Dental Clinic to in a small way help someone else keep their #31 for 57 years.

 

 

 

 

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My Heinz Birthday

Monica Chronicles – the early days.

Tomorrow is my birthday; my 57th birthday to be precise.  I now have had as many birthdays as Heinz has varieties.

  I don’t know why it always comes as such a shock as each September rolls around and my age clicks up a notch.  Because my birthday falls later in the year, I’ve been thinking I’m a year older since New Years.

Crazy huh?

When I was much younger, I never gave much thought about actually “being” in my 50’s let alone racing towards 60.  I did have a notion that 40 would be a nice mature age, the “ripeness of womanhood”, I called it.  It was a nice age, but it sure didn’t stick around to enjoy for long.  Before I knew it, I was into and then out of my forties and into my fifties.

No matter what I thought my life would be, it always has been, is for the foreseeable future; good.  For that I am exceedingly grateful.

I was very fortunate to be born into a large, loving family.  Even though I was the oldest of six children, my father was deployed when I was born so when I came home from the hospital, Mom and I came home to my Grandma Gray’s house with at least six of her siblings still in residence.  My Aunt Sue was only 14 months older than I and my grandmother was two months pregnant.  This serene photo of the infant sleeping was not to be replicated in real life for a while.

After my Dad returned from Hawaii where he fought the “battle of Waikiki”, we moved into a place of our own and my younger siblings  began to arrive in rapid succession.  I wonder how my folks did it; raising such a lively brood while they themselves were so young.  When I look at my own daughter and realize that by the time Mom was her age, she had just had her sixth baby, I am in awe.

Our family was big and loud but despite the crying and shouting (from the kids, not the parents) we were still loving and caring.  We still are a bit loud when we get together, but without the crying and shouting.

Dave and I before a night on the town in Standardsville!

Early in my adulthood I was fortunate in finding my soul mate.  There was also some crying and shouting in the beginning, but over the past thirty-two years we have built a good life for ourselves and raised two great kids.  We have an extended family that includes two incredible grandsons and their parents and friends and relatives in almost every major metropolitan area in the country where we can visit if we find the time.

Yeah, I guess I could whine about another year passing and the number attached to my name is one digit higher, but I’d much rather have a glass of wine and remember all the wonderful memories I’ve packed into these past 57 years and look forward to the many more to come.

 

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Catching Up

Yes, I’m still alive.

It was just an over-nighter at the house but we managed to get in a quick afternoon trip to Shenandoah National Park .

 

Papa makes his move in the high stakes game of real estate dominance.

Back at the house, we spent the evening playing games and watching old episodes of “Ren and Stimpy” and “Mystery Science Theater 3000”.    Seth got Dave and Andy caught up in a high stakes game of Monopoly while Caleb introduced me to the nuances of Pass the Pig.

The next morning Seth wanted to go for a walk down to the pond.  In the past I would have insisted that someone else go with him but since he’ll turn 11 next week, I made the faith leap to just let him go by himself.  Letting go seems more difficult this time.  I’d have let Andy go that far when he was younger than that and I know my range of exploration at age 11 was considerably larger than the 500 yard distance to the pond.  For some reason, each generation just seems a little younger and more vulnerable than the last. My next big event in my “quiet” time was that I finally painted my bedroom!  Dave was gone on a three day Cursillo retreat so I seized the opportunity to get ‘er done.  My plan was to paint half the room each day but once I got going, with Andy’s brawn to move the heavy furnishings, I finished in just one day.  My hours in the gym with Lorenzo prodding me along are paying off; my stamina has increased and I had few aches the next day. When Dave came home Sunday evening he began to sneeze – a lot.  There has been so much pollen in the air, it was difficult to determine cold or allergy at first.  It was a cold and I got it too.  So, I spent the next couple of days hunkered down on the couch watching Netflix and dozing.  By the weekend I was feeling better.  Monday morning,. when it was time to go meet Lorenzo again, I was worried.  I felt crappy and began to worry that I wasn’t up for the new intense cardio sessions we’d started.  It was too late to cancel, so I decided to drag myself in and see how at least a warm-up would make me feel. I started slowly.  My legs felt very heavy.  After ten minutes on the elliptical, I grabbed a mat and elastic band to stretch.  When Lorenzo came in, I told him I would try my best to get through the session, but had no guarantees.  He took me to the treadmill and we got started.  With my hands gripped onto the bar for dear life, I walked, trotted and began to jog as Lorenzo worked the controls.  He never said how long I would be running but after six minutes, he said, “I think we’ll shoot for ten minutes.” Last week he’d had me running in circles for ten minutes over  various obstacle courses of gym steps and ladder ropes so the duration was a length of time I was mentally prepared for.  In comparison, jogging on the treadmill was a piece of cake. After the treadmill, Lorenzo led me through the rest of my workout.  With a good sweat going, I felt so much better than when I arrived.  When I’d completed my workout, he smiled and told me I’d done a good job.  It’s amazing what that man can get me to do just to see his smile and hear those words! When I got home I was a dynamo!  I cleaned up, went off to meet with a friend, came home, baked a pie, cleaned the kitchen floor and began supper.  I never even really sat down to relax until after the dishes were done.  Incredible. Yesterday I met with my new doctor for my annual physical.  She was over the top with the blood work I’d had done last week.  Except for slightly elevated triglycerides and a minor Vitamin D deficiency, I am the poster Nana of good health. So, that is some of what I’ve been up to.  Thanks for worrying about me….. 

 

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Reblooming

Remember my Amaryllis that bloomed in early in January? When its blooms began to droop, I stuck in in the corner to allow the plant to die back.  When the time was right, my plan was to plant it in the yard.

When I got back from Florida a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the little sprout you can see down by the base of the bulb had grown into a stalk taller than the first, full of buds.

This week, three months later, it has begun to bloom in a splendor that overshadows the first flower which is still there, withered and dry.

As I begin the journey into myself to discover my Life-Keys, I wonder if my second blooming will be brighter than my first.

Some days I feel withered and dry, waiting for the next me to emerge and bloom.

These things, I’m learning, happen when I least expect them.  There needs to be quiet time, as if set in a corner to rest.

Since moving here I’ve been in the corner for seven months.  I’m ready for new possibilities.

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Anchor and Chain

Last weekend I saw “The Vow” . I’d not heard of the film before coming down to Florida.  Partly because Dave and I almost never go out to the movies anymore and partly because we watch the vast majority of our yet television from our DVR, we just don’t hear about films unless they are heavily promoted.

The story was of a young couple who lived an artsy lifestyle. She had cut all ties with her family, he had none but her. One night they were in a horrible car accident where she suffered severe head trauma resulting in amnesia.  The last four years of her life, including her entire relationship with her husband were wiped from her memory. Her husband, refusing to lose the only family he had, spent months trying to help her remember him and their life together.

I won’t give away the rest of the story, the movie was worth seeing.  The reason I’m writing about it is because since seeing this film, I’ve been thinking a good deal about love and commitment.

Falling in love is easy. We do it all the time. We visit a new restaurant, try a new recipe, read a good book, meet a new friend or even see a good movie and we say we “love” them all. Making the commitment to be with any of these things for the rest of our lives is another story.

During the course of any marriage we all tend to suffer from amnesia.  At times we forget what it was that made us fall in love with our partners.  They seem so different or we are different (or so we think).   Without commitment to the relationship there is nothing to keep us from running off to find someone new to fall in love with.

Men often joke about their wives, referring to them as “the old ball end chain”. I’d hate to think of myself in that way. Instead, I think of my commitment to Dave as an anchor and chain, securing him, as he does me, when seas are rough. (Navy wife imagery).  We work hard to help each other remember why we fell in love in the first place.

We have had our share of white caps, but for the most part have enjoyed fair winds and following seas. Either one of us walking away during a rough spot would have only made a bad situation worse.

So, on this second day after St. Valentines Day, four months away from our 32nd wedding anniversary, I’m thinking I’m pretty lucky to have found someone not only to commit to but to commit to me as well.
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Middle Aged Gym Rat

At my training session last Monday, Lorenzo asked me if I’d write a little article about my training experience for the gym’s monthly newsletter.  Naturally my first question was ,”Why me?”  He hemmed and hawed, but I think the bottom line was that initially he thought I was an unlikely candidate to continue the workout sessions and he was very proud of my progress.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I would become a gym rat.  In high school, I hated gym class.  I wasn’t particularly athletic and saw the hour of PE every day as torture.  I did enjoy spending time outside when we played field sports, but chose to play far outfield positions where there was little need to really participate in the game.  Once I did attempt to play short stop but was rewarded by catching a bouncing ground ball squarely in my nose.  My deviated septum reminds me of my foree into team sports on a daily basis.  Later, when running became popular and my friends were all jogging, my mantra was “I’ll only run if someone is chasing me with a knife!”

I wasn’t a total couch potato.  I have always loved to walk.  Before I owned my first car, I walked a lot.  I have also always loved badmitton, although tennis has eluded me.  Dave and I played once  and that was 35 years ago!  I just didn’t have the wrist strength for the racquet.

In the mid ’80’s, I joined the Jazzercise craze and really enjoyed the dance steps.  But, as I became more and more involved in PTA and church activities, my evenings were filled with meetings.  Dave’s schedule was always an issue so childcare was a problem

 My first step back into regular exercise was when Dave and I joined the YMCA. We usually went twice a week; Tuesdays and Thursday evenings.  The workouts were self guided and I was happy to just do the minimal routine.

Last summer, a few weeks after we moved to Ruckersville, I stopped by the Anytime Fitness Center to check out the facility. Mike, the manager was so friendly, and the gym so compact and conveniently located, I decided to join then and there. After my initial training consultation, I could see the benefit of working out with a trainer but wasn’t sure I wanted to make the commitment of time and finances.

In late August, I got a call from Lorenzo, one of the trainers at the gym, asking if I’d like another consultation.  We were still settlin in and I still wasn’t ready to commit so we agreed he would call me back in about a month.

One month later, Lorenzo called back and I made an appointment to meet with him.

I’d seen Lorenzo’s pictures in the gym.  He reminded me of a Marine DI – a compact muscular bauld  headed black man, with a brilliant smile.  When Dave was at AOCS in Pennsacola, I’d seen how those guys could be barking out orders to the troops one minute and then turn their heads and be as charming and polite to a wife the next.  I needed a DI to whip me into shape.  Lorenzo appeared to be the guy for me.

At our initial meeting, Lorenzo weighed and measured me (the most painful part of the process) and then did a thorough evaluation of my muscle strength, endurance and exercise experience.

The first couple of meetings were the toughest.  Getting my body to move in unaccustomed ways was not always easy, and my balance was not the best. There were times when I thought I’d never be able to keep up the work.  But early on, I could see that Lorenzo was not doling out more than I could handle.  I learned to trust that each exercise was building me up for the next.

Sometimes I felt downright silly running sideways through the gym with a huge elastic band strapped around my ankles.  Other times I felt like Charles Atlas as I bench pressed a 50lb bar bell above my head.

Lorenzo made sure that my sessions were rarely the same.  He has shown me how to use almost every machine, ball, strap, weight and elastic band in the gym, giving me the confidence to approach and use them when I come in by myself.  Now I can swagger up to the weights like the other “guys” who work out in the evenings.  But I refuse to grunt -that’s where I draw the line!

Lorenzo has pushed me to work myself harder than I ever would on my own.  He is immune to whining (I know because I tried- once) and simply will not accept less than my doing my best.

My first three month session in “The Lorenzone” has been so rewarding and fun that I’ve “re-upped” for another session.  I have learned that for me, the benefit of having a personal trainer is well worth the time and cost.  I still have a way to go to reach my goal but I know that with Lorenzo’s skill and my perseverance, I have a better chance at getting there.

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Exercising With Mom

I had my second session with Lorenzo, my personal trainer this morning.  He’s a pleasant man with a nice smile and positive coaching style but he finds the most challenging things for me to do!  So far his most effective means of torture has been this elastic band that I have to step into and strap around my ankles and then walk sideways up and back the length of the gym, all the while maintaining tension on the band.  Sounds easy enough huh?  It is a killer!  About one quarter of the way through my paces, my legs begin to burn.  It’s difficult to say just where it hurts the most because the pain is almost everywhere from my waist down.

This morning, as I was “feeling the burn” I thought of my Mom.  She had her second knee replacement surgery yesterday.  I spoke to her a bit this morning.  She was groggy and in pain.  We chatted for a short time and she compared the pain to what she experienced last year when she had her first surgery and remarked that it seemed much worse.  When I thought about the pain she is currently experiencing and the kind of PT she’ll be dealing with in the next four weeks or so,  I thought that maybe during my next few weeks with Lorenzo as exercising with Mom.  Maybe I can’t take on her pain for her, but I can certainly stop the whine on mine.

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The All-Nighter

My home has become a flop-house for exhausted men! Dave arrived home this morning after pulling his first all-nighter since retiring from the Navy.   As the proposal deadline neared, his team worked through the wee hours doing final edits and publication for delivery today.  Andy and I waited up for him until almost midnight watching an old Mystery Science 3000 movie from Netflix before giving up and crawling off to bed.

I woke up a couple to times during the night and was aware that he hadn’t come home yet.  Trusting that he was alright, I rolled over and went back to sleep.  When his alarm went off at 6:00 and he still wasn’t home, Izzie and I decided to keep to our routine.  We came downstairs, made some coffee and Izzie cried at the door to be let out.  Then I send Dave a text to make sure he was still alive.  Even though I had convinced myself I would have heard something if he’d landed in a  ditch on his way home or succumbed to a massive corinary, it was a relief to hear my phone’s melodic flourish when he responded to say he was indeed still alive and kicking.

Years ago, under similar circumstances, I would have been a basket case, working myself into a frenzy of fear.  Then, there wasn’t the easy non-evasive easy touch of texting him.  Instead, I would get up immediately the first time I woke up and found myself alone.  From there I would set a blast-off time; negotiating with myself the appropriate time to take action.  If I hadn’t heard from him in say, an hour, I’d make a call.  Calling wasn’t easy either.  Depending on where he was working, on a watch or shipboard, direct phone lines weren’t always the norm.   The combination of no word and frustration of failure to connect fueled my anxiety allowing dramatic emergency scenerios to take my mind further and further into the dark night of the soul – always unwarranted.  The next morning, and for the majority of the following day I would suffer dearly for the sleep I’d lost.  Thank God nothing bad ever did happen!  If it had, I certainly wouldn’t have been physically prepared to handle it.

I guess it’s part of that “with age comes wisdom” stuff.  I certainly don’t love Dave any less than I did then.  Simply put I have learned to trust that in most situations, everything will turn out alright.  It has taken a while to get here but I am certainly enjoying the stay!

So for today, I am sort of alone.  Andy has recovered from his jet lag and long work hours prior to his trip and is quietly working on his job applications.  Dave is snoring happily in our bed.  I am happy to have them both in the house, enjoying our non-together-togetherness.