Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying aging is a bad thing. After all, what are the alternatives? If you could pick any age you wanted, what would it be? 21? 30? 40? Can you imagine being 21 forever? Vitality yes, but eons of hangovers??? Or how about 30; wise enough to pace yourself but still young. Sounds great, but what about that drive to work and having to be productive? What about the angst of having lost your 20’s? What about all the questions one starts to ask? I.E., is there life elsewhere? What is the Soul really? Am I doing what I was meant to do? Is there life after thirty? And well we all know about 40…”OMG I am ½ dead! What have I done with my life! I must get to my ‘buck-it list’ right now.” Many have tried to categorize aging into stages as though they were sequential rooms we walk through while living; entering one stage and leaving another. 5 stages, 7 or more, it depends on who you listen to, but a typical setup includes infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early and later adult hood. Yet I can think of several times when as an adult no one would be blamed for calling me a child. Come to think of it, I know several 60 years plus kids. You know who you are 😊.
One way of tracking age is in reference to beautiful women. When 15-20 they were the things of dreams. 20-30 we catch each other’s eye thinking, maybe… maybe. 30-40 a nagging question, is it worth the trouble? And after 40 I simply became invisible to pretty women. I thought that was the last stage, but no. Now in my 70’s they hold the door open for me.
There are other ways too. You can tell a man’s age by the number of groans it takes him to get out of a chair. One can guess a woman’s age by how quickly she passes through the hair color isle at the grocery store. The more time it takes to pick the exact shade the older one is…
But I digress
Broadly speaking we can think of our time as the age of accumulating skills, like riding a bike, or picking a winner in the stock market. Then comes the time of gambling with those skills, i.e. this job or that; investing in a retirement fund or a big blow-out party. And finally, observing those life skills start to fade. That is the stage where I find myself today. We have been traveling in the 19foot can for a lot of years, but this year seems to be the hardest. We hike in those hills, but man it’s a lot harder than it was 5 years ago. We still do it yes, and that is a blessing. The body takes a little longer to heal; I get tired more easily; taking the softer way seems like a good idea. Take what I am doing right now writing this note. 5 Years ago, I would think nothing of sitting in this chair and dashing off some lines. But today there is a pain in my butt that just won’t let go. Ever sit on a hill of fire ants? Try it sometime and you will have a sneak preview of sciatica, that all-time favorite of aging people everywhere.
If it were only me, I might have toughed it out. Stacie’s body is also barking – loudly. Too many aches, to count, and all without an explanation.
So, we shortened the trip.
We have plans to meet Jessica, Bee, Tony, Jeva, Joe and John [Stacie’s former husband] in Las Vegas just before Christmas and are excited to do that. Certainly, we want to do that. Heading north from Yuma we find new places to stay including the Needles area north of Lake Havasu and the Lake mead recreation area. But who can describe Vegas? A fantasy town where Paris, New York, and a Roman Colosseum are all a walk apart. A place with a drive through wedding chapel, and a great sphere 20 stories tall just for concerts. Talk about surround sound…The TV hit “Pawn Stars” are taped there too. And for talent? Magicians, singers, dancers, all national fame, compete for the thousands of Las Vegas visitors each night. There is a new place in town, Area 15. It’s built by the same people who created Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. Hard to describe, it’s a diabolical fantasy. Imagine walking into a convenience store wanting to buy a beverage. Upon opening a cooler, you walk into it. The bottles warp as you shuffle down a narrow passage that leads to a weird and wild series of rooms, each totally different.
Soon you realize you’re in a giant three-dimensional puzzle with scattered clues pointing to the disappearance of a woman, in interspatial being, and a mysterious earth mission. I have heard only 5 people have figured the puzzle out. It would take a long time to solve the secret, much more than we had. After three days we headed back south towards the warmth of Yuma. We decided to head back home. It was cooler than we expected, we were both feeling the burn and frankly our sense of adventure simply dulled by all the physical problems. My leg pains grew to intolerable, and Stacie’s aches made traveling
very hard. A sad thing was missing my nephew and niece. Meghan and her family live in Los Angels, but there was no way we could do that. And we had plans to meet Mike in the desert for a few days, but had to blow that off too.
Travel Angels?
As it happens, we started east staying low to keep warm for as long as we could.
After spending New Years eve just outside of San Antonio we watched U of M march toward the national champion GO BLUE!! Then headed north. Though it was cold, we only had one day of rain. With angelic help we slipped between the major storms of the Midwest arriving home the first week of January. It’s a good thing too because just a few days after being home my leg pain went into overdrive. Sciatica is the worse physical pain I have ever felt. Today as I write the conclusion to this small piece, I can say 5 days in the hospital and steroid injections seem to have reduced the pain by 80%. That’s med talk meaning I can walk but it is still present. We’ll see how the healing goes. The hard part is acceptance. Am I the master of my body? Can I simply “will” to stop the cycles we all live through? Knowing the answer to these questions and believing in them are two different things.
In the meantime, Stacie has some doctor appointments lined up, so we have some hope for some relief for her. I’m going to get some physical therapy and chiropractic care and we will pass this phase of our lives looking forward to more travel this summer. As the first hymn I ever learned says,
“Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream…”
And that is exactly what we intend to do.
With love, Stacie and Barry.
For more pictures go to: https://photos.app.goo.gl/cr8TxHr1EABuc6SA9