Snow Days and Birthdays and Death, Oh My!

This is a post about being prepared for the good and bad in your life, and whatever else comes along. Today is a snow day, next week is my birthday, and just over a month ago my youngest sister died. These don’t sound related, but they are.

January and February in northern Virginia we all play a game called Guess the Snow Days. There will always be some, they will not always match the weather or the weather predictions, and they will often be over- or under-prepared for by localities. With one of the nation’s largest school districts (Fairfax County), the school system is usually the trendsetter in calling a snow day, but some years they can’t win for trying. This is one of those years. On the home front, we were better prepared this year than usual. We now have six shovels at the house (with four people to use them) and one in each car, snow brush and scraper in each car, two snow-blowers (gas and electric), an ice chopper, and a leaf blower that we could probably use to blow snow off the cars. We have a kerosene heater, a propane camping stove, and a gas grill out back if the power goes out. We have a generator, for the coffeemaker and other important reasons. We live in a townhouse. Really, we are ready for some snow.

Next week I will enter a whole new demographic. I will turn 62, eligible to apply for Social Security. I feel somewhat less prepared for this than for snow, although I have seen this coming for a lot longer. I take better care of my body, spirit, and emotional health than I used to, although I am still not a great example to follow. (No, really; just ask me.) I was 10 when my mother died of a heart attack, and assumed for many years I would be lucky to see 50. Around 58 years old, I realized I was still here, and might have another 20 or more years to go, and if I wanted to keep doing anything interesting I had better whip this body of mine into a condition that would support those interesting things. I had dabbled in exercise before (weights, treadmill, Zumba, tap dancing) but in 2011 I got serious, partly because I found something that felt better than cookies and milk taste. I lost 45 pounds by going to Zumba, and later rebound classes using Kangoo Jumps® rebound boots, at Chakaboom Fitness. This was no casual fling, since by fall of 2011 I was attending as many as 12-13 classes a week. The classes were high energy, the instructors were easy on the eyes, and the camaraderie with the other students was amazing and supportive. In 2013, very gradually, the classes changed and it became easier to skip them sometimes, and eventually almost all I still attended were rebound classes. I was not the demographic they were aiming the classes at any more, and it just wasn’t fun for me like before. That’s when the struggle began. I started to gain weight back, and a snow shoveling injury started a year of less than optimal movement which made it even easier to skip exercise classes. (To condense the medical side of this, I should have started with the massage therapist, not waited 10 months to try that.) Apparently, I was not prepared for aging; I had just been lucky most of my life.

My youngest sister was also not prepared for aging. I suspect she did not expect to outlive our mother as long as she did either. She started smoking in her early teens, kept smoking after four minor heart attacks, and got her only exercise taking out the trash. Even when you know someone’s habits are going to get her, you are still not prepared for her to leave so suddenly or so soon. My preparedness take-away from losing my youngest sister is to stop procrastinating about being in touch with friends and relatives. I am turning an age she will never see, and that’s an opportunity I choose not to waste. I am trying to learn to cherish most of the moments I have left, whether they are days or many years. (Admittedly, there are some moments I am not cherishing, but I am at least trying to accept them.)

So as I turn 62 next week, there are some things I am looking forward to and some I am hoping to change.

• I want to return to sending letters on paper to one of my longest-known friends, Nancy, since she refuses to use Facebook and I still want to keep in touch.
• I want to start talking on the phone regularly with my second-longest-known friend, “Bean,” because I still can’t figure out how to get us in the same state again.
• I want to find something else to do that is fun-fitness in addition to the rebounding I adore, because too much of just one form of exercise is not a good balance for the body I happen to have.
• I want more time to sit on the deck and enjoy the beautiful flowers in my garden, both alone and with friends. (Um, but not until it’s warmer out there.)

I want to do, or stop doing, many other things, but I find myself typing and erasing them, so I guess I am not ready to share the rest of this list. Let’s just say 62 feels like more of a landmark birthday than 50 or 60 did, and we will see how prepared I can become for whatever life brings my way.