Time on the Flying Trapese

Has it been over a week since I blogged? Oh, dear. I used to assume that time would somehow slow when people retired. I have longed for time to slow down, but instead it goes faster and faster. Some have told me that time does this for people as they grow older. Certainly I did not calculate how much slower I would be with everything I do as I age. So the same activities fill up more time than in the past. I have heard so many retired people wonder how in the world they used to fit in an eight-hour-a-day work schedule. Life has a way of gobbling up time once someone retires. So that is my excuse for not blogging, and I’m sticking to it.

Katherine had been waiting patiently all summer and filling in aides shift by shift the best she could. She was comforted knowing that even though two of her summer workers were going off to college, she had two other aides coming on her staff who were highly trained and experienced.

As her always difficult life would have it, however, one of the two developed transportation problems that have prevented her from working so far, and yesterday the one who had begun this week somehow had an accident with a hospice patient in a Hoyer life. She ended up in the Emergency Room with three broken ribs! All this has certainly destroyed Katherine’s plans and hopes for consistent scheduling. Yet she keeps coping. It also does not help that Katherine has been quite ill with an infection that is being treated with an antibiotic. It does help that this time the infection is expected to be cured with meds taken only every 12 hours instead of the more frequent kind. Two extra pills a day is not that difficult for someone who takes a huge number already of various kinds for different reasons for a systematic disease like multiple sclerosis.

When David left Katherine to go to the farm today, I arrived at their house to replace him before noon at 11, and I found myself eating supper back here at Woodsong at l0 tonight and taking the eight pills I take daily with that meal. Like many women I will take thyroid pill when I wake up in the early morning hours since it must be taken with lots of water but no food. I know my good health prohibits me from griping, although when I was younger, I always refrained from any kind of pills if at all possible.

Katherine was up and dressed in her chair when I arrived, but she and I were busy for most of the time I was there: repositioning, eating lunch and a little supper and taking those many pills with apple sauce, adjusting ceiling fans and lap blankets as her needs changed, trying to make her more comfortable in that miserable wheelchair by pulling on the draw sheet on top of the seat cushion. Nevertheless, we did have time to watch Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, which she had recorded, and that was fun even though we kept being interupted. She watched a bit more television and napped a tiny bit while I was doing some kitchen clean up.

Sam slept late this morning recovering from the late night high school football game last night. I had taken him Thursday night for their marching band rehearsal, and I wondered how any director could get a band ready to perform in August so soon after the start of school. But he did, and Sam was enjoying every minute of it.

He also was enjoying his plans for today to be picked up by his cousins Trent and Brianna and their friend Sarah. They have all known Sarah for years, but she has just moved into her grandmother’s former home in our village of Crab Orchard, so now they can see her more often. They were headed to Trent and Bri’s new down-here home to watch movies. Their dad Brian was down for the weekend from central Illinois to work on his crops here. Mary Ellen was tied up in Springfield with a real estate responsibility and had told us yesterday she couldn’t come this time.

Gerald was mowing up at the other place when I left the farm this morning, and I left his lunch in the oven. He was already asleep when I returned this evening. But from notes left on my desk, I see he also made time today to do some shopping for a new mattress that the physical therapist has been advising him about. He had just started physical therapy this week, and already he is feeling better.

We communicated by phone a couple of times. It is interesting that families are often spread out over much more geographic territory than in the past, but with cell phones, texting, and Internet, families are more in communication contact than ever before in history. Our son was watching Little League baseball. Jeannie, of course, was riding her bike. Gerry and Vickie’s grandson Aidan in the first grade won his first football game today. Our piano rack holds three photos of three-year-old Maddux on his first day of preschool this week. Gerald copied them off the Internet as he also did the 8 by 10 photo of our beautiful Brianna, which now graces our bookcase.

I not only know about my own family today, but our young friend in the Washington, D.C., area talked to both of her college kids today, and she not only knows they are doing well, but thanks to Facebook, I know it too. I also observed her North Carolina aunt and uncle in a photo they posted showing their outing to a mountain. Another friend was celebrating with a family party tonight for their adult son’s birthday, and I know who attended. A young friend who has spent three weeks with her mother during a serious hospitalization sent me a return message on Facebook as well as posting her mother’s turn-around and great progress. One of Katherine’s classmates now out in Oregon told of problems they once had with their new-born and asked for prayer for another couple going through this same situation. I sent up a prayer for them.

On and on, I learned about various folks I care about and some folks I don’t even know. Maybe the wealth of information is one more reason I stay busier than I would like. Yet I find it happily amazing that I have all this information at my fingertips. This availability makes this century incredibly different than any previous time. Regardless, we must face that fact that time no longer marches on but that it flies with the greatest of ease while we try to keep our balance and embrace the experience.