while she sleeps

While she sleeps, I blog, wash dishes, water my plants, brush my cat, start going through my papers for tax time.
She takes several naps a day, now. Eats, goes to the bathroom, sleeps, eats……. “You’re my mother,” she says to me.
While I’m sorting through my mounds of unfiled statements, receipts, and slips of paper I can’t remember why I saved, I come upon my ID badge from high school. It’s my senior year photo. 1957. My thumbprint is on the back. It’s a Civil Defense ID. It might be the only record of my thumbprint in case something happens to me and the only thing left is my thumb.
I also find a rubber-banded collection of ID badges from my various jobs with the NY State Ed Department. I look at how I’ve changed over the years.

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At 57 I was ballroom dancing three nights a week and weighing in at 135 lbs. At 47, I was disco dancing into the wee hours and weighing in at 125 lbs. At 17, I was biking, walking, dancing, and was 105 lbs.
It’s 2007. Extrapolating from the above, you would assume I would be 145 lbs. If only.
There’s a Curves in town, and I’ve decided it’s time to insist on time away from her, asleep or awake, to do something for myself. Like many people my age, I have degenerating disks, and I’ve just had several days of those periodic shooting pains that one gets with that condition. Exercise is the recommended treatment. I already take the suggested supplements. I’ve got to get off my butt and move it.
These days, as Ronni reports, being in one’s sixties is not being old. My mother is old, and chances are that I will live to be that old.
And then it will be my turn to eat, go to the bathroom, and sleep, eat,…….
Although today it’s so beautiful out, that took my mother for a walk up and down the driveway and then we sat in the sun.
Now she’s sleeping. I’m blogging. And then I’ll shred some of those old files I’ve been wading through. (It’s not surprising that Ronni has just blogged about being inundated with paper). And then I’ll figure out what to feed us for supper. And then I’ll do the dishes.
And then she’ll sleep. And I’ll take two Advil. Maybe three.

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