A much-needed rest

Lest I needed reminding, I am not as young as I used to be. Even without the respiratory and cognitive limitations, doing all the things I could do years ago would likely be challenging now. It should certainly not surprise me that I am in need of some down time after the past two weeks of fun with children who are two generations younger than I. How it is that other grandparents do all these activities and you never hear about the sheer exhaustion of it?

[This is the point at which many of you will send me wonderful notes reassuring me that it is not unusual to find two weeks of meeting the food and entertainment needs of school-aged children to be exhausting for a 60-something grandmother. The difference between other grandparents and me is that I write this blog and share this stuff, while they are intelligent enough to keep it to themselves.]

Not only am I growing older (which is not really so bad when you consider the alternative), but my coordination is not what it used to be. I am not sure how much of this is can be attributed to aging, how much to peripheral neuropathy, or how much to an inability to focus sufficiently. All I do know is that I drop things more often than I used to. Usually the items are not valuable. I have broken a number of inexpensive drinking glasses, and the other day I dropped a small container with leftover stuffed shells in marinara sauce (the splatter made this especially messy). But last week I dropped our small Canon PowerShot camera, the one I keep in my purse and have used to take the vast majority of the pictures I have posted here. The piece that juts out and holds the lens was bent so that it could not retract. I figured I had nothing much to lose to I knocked it on the desk to straighten it out. It closed but all the pictures I have taken since then have been rather poor quality, so I know something is wrong. It is not a new camera and we do have our larger Nikon as well as cell phones. To be honest, my cell phone (as well as Barry’s iPhone) takes better pictures than the old Canon ever did, but I have had a hard time getting used to using it for that purpose. I suppose the time has come for me to hop on board that train.

With no children this week, the house seems so quiet! And speaking of cameras, I hope to spend some time weeding through the pictures we took and design photobooks for each grandchild’s week in New York. That project will be a much-needed respite from all the painful news in the world beyond the Bronx. In these difficult times, it is helpful to find reasons to smile and to remind ourselves that we humans can still love one another.

Have a good week.

Love,

Rebecca