"HAVE NOT HAD A POST FROM YOU...."

That nice message popped up in my email two days ago, along with several others. I realized it’s been more than a month since I wrote my last Wandering With Val. I’d love to tell you Mr. Wonderful and I were on a cruise down the Nile or sampling Pasta Primavera in Florence. 

Nope. We’ve been right here in the Wells woods. Recuperating.

Bob developed a raging UTI many weeks ago which put him in the hospital for a few days and then in his favorite blue leather recliner chair for all the days since. The illness has taken a toll on his physical condition and mind. He’s working hard and struggling to return to normal so he can stride to the first tee at Webhannet Golf Club. That may or may not happen, but I remain hopeful.

Through all this, I’m doing all I can to make sure my ticker keeps on ticking. Because of my less-than-fun diagnosis in March for heart disease, I go to cardiac rehab three times a week, have switched from Scotch Old Fashioneds to non-alcoholic Gosling Ginger Beer, thrown the salt shaker away and learned how to cook salmon 541 ways. I’ve given up potato chips, brie on Bremner wafers, Bitter End cheeseburgers and Alisson’s fried clams.  And I’m actually, frequently, feeling pretty darn good.

During the midst of all this, I read a quote that suddenly hit home: “To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”

AYUH, as we say here in Maine. Sure is. 

Because it’s all so sudden. A few months ago, Mr. Wonderful and I had a bustling social life, hopeful plans to visit friends at Pinehurst, notes-to-self reminders to get a beach sticker for the Subaru and sign up for exercise classes at Conant Conditioning so we could fit into our Bermuda shorts. Not gonna happen.

This is all so prevalent too among our dear friends and relatives — one  shows daily signs of aggressive dementia, another had a hip replacement that didn’t go well, a dear friend has issues with his kidneys (read: prostate, heart, lungs), my brother Robert (the healthiest sibling in our family) had a stroke. 

None of us are giving up! We still have memories to make and families to love, friends to enjoy. Maya Angelou said it better than I ever could in her wonderful poem, “On Aging.” 

When you see me sitting quietly

Like a sack left on the shelf,

Don’t think I need your chattering.

I’m listening to myself.

Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me!

Hold! Stop your sympathy!

Understanding if you got it,

Otherwise I’ll do without it!

When my bones are stiff and aching,

And my feet won’t climb the stair,

I will only ask one favor:

Don’t bring me no rocking chair.

When you see me walking, stumbling,

Don’t study and get it wrong.

‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy

And every goodbye ain’t gone.

I’m the same person I was back then,

A little less hair, a little less chin,

A lot less lungs and much less wind.

But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.

———-