One of the ways I dealt with my fear was to write the previous article about plastic in every human and animals body on earth and in every bird, every fish (everything that lives has plastic inside it now).
This is just a reality of life.
we went north this week to Santa Rosa where my wife lived until she was 7 and where she learned to swim. We even stayed at the historic hotel where this big swimming pool is and it is sort of a summer hangout for people who like to swim in big pools. We got a nice room right next to the pool with a patio and a gate into the pool area. I'm not someone who swims in public pools anymore but as a child I could spend 7 hours straight in a pool and be perfectly happy doing this except for a little food and a few trips to the bathroom.
However, long about age 12 to14 I found I didn't know really what to do with myself in a public pool anymore. I think going into puberty and all that makes a person much more self conscious. Another factor now is so much sickness can be in public pools especially after Covid that you might not want to expose yourself to a public pool if you are older than 50 or 60 because of your immune system over these ages.
And it's true most people going into this pool were from babies to about 40 or 50 years old. It was nice to see people lounging around the large pool and hanging out and partying like this like people did much more in the 1950s and early 1960s than now.
Mostly I have swum in the ocean or mountain lakes or rivers and stopped (like a lot of people) going to public pools by the time I was 12 to 14. However, there were always church swim parties in my early teens still that I might swim at and where I got to know 2 of my girlfriends from ages 16 to 20 much better.
However, I think by the time I was 12 I had given up going to public pools pretty much.
So, why was I afraid this morning so that I had to get up at 4 am? I wasn't really sure at the time. Sometimes you just feel fear and have to deal with it somehow. I wore a t-shirt under my pajamas and it might have gotten too hot for me or something like that.
However, the plastic thing I learned didn't help me much and we traveled from Santa Rosa to our home on the foggy coast near San Francisco too yesterday so maybe I'm just getting used to being home in the north state once again and missing my kids who have their own lives in Oregon, Texas and Europe and then there is our adopted daughter who lives in San Diego County too.
I met the son and his wife of my wife's best friend from childhood who I hadn't seen since about 10 years ago when he sister got married at her wedding. He was looking forward to when he could retire.
I told him that the difficulties of being upper 30s and 40s and married change into different difficulties after you retire and that raising children and the stresses of that tends to prepare you better for being retired because being retired is stressful in a whole new way than raising kids.
I think I miss most my 30s when my older kids were growing up the most. Even though I have enjoyed my life more since my 50s I still miss when you are young enough to still do everything you want to like travel the world and have enough knowledge about life in your 30s to where people can't take advantage of you like when you are in your teens or 20s.
So, if there is a time I remember most fondly it is NOT my childhood or my 20s it's being about 30 to 37 years old raising my older kids.
But, since my 50s there is a lot more peace in my life it's just that physically you are not who you used to be in your 20s or 30s anymore.
But, I still think that I'm always surprised when ANYONE survives to be 30 at all.
It's why they say: "If you live to be 30 you likely will see 90"
But, you have to survive to 30 first for this to be true.
By God's Grace
No comments:
Post a Comment