Health Hacks for the Over 60s

Here are some simple life hacks:

1. be kind to yourself 💖
2. eat when you're hungry 😛
3. do something creative every day 💃 🎶
4. don't get bitter 😞
5. keep your feet happy 👣
6. drink lots of water 💧
7. get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day! 🏃
8. be alone at times but be with people too 👭
9. call your kids 👪
10. do fun things 😀

Well, those aren't really health hacks as we know  and read about them on the internet. "This amazing fruit will keep your skin clear for 90 days!" and all that. But they are basic rules that we forget about over time, and so simple to remember!

Yesterday I had a little meltdown and here's why: Okay, first of all, it's been a hell of a week. Just saying. World news was compounded over here by a humungous flood-style rain, then ice, then freezing rain, then snow. So it was hard to get around. 

I run a cafe with my son, who's obviously half my age. Business has been picking up, in spite of the provincial government's effort to kill small businesses. So I've been busy, and it's the two year mark of a pandemic that none of us planned for. I've noticed that every so often everyone I know, at different times of course, has a small Covid breakdown where the big existential questions come to the fore.

It's been a weird two years though, that's for sure. Our family got together in November, and in the week that we were all together - all five kids and four of their "others" - three of the daughter-in-laws lost someone close to them, and not an ancient old great-aunt either. I've had a series of friends with pretty shitty health problems, one got hit by a car...who gets hit by a car??? And three members of my family had serious ruptures with very close friends. 

So there ya go, and I don't think we are special. It's been a hell of a ride. So anyway, yesterday, I drove home in the snowy ice and backed my car into a snowbank in our driveway from which I could not extricate myself because the snow was on top of three inches of ice.  I never get stuck! I've been driving since I was 18 and I'm a damn good driver! My son helped me get out and I was PISSED. And scared.

Scared? Later in the evening, I was definitely hangry but I just melted down. Because the incident with the car scared me into thinking that I was turning into a weak old lady with none of the strength and sass that I've always had. Driving badly, getting weaker, losing my hearing, maybe even losing my marbles.

It's like being a teenager: you don't know what's happening and you're worried it's going to be fatal. And it is going to be fatal, of course. So I start thinking about how much I can fit into the next thirty years, if I live to 95, and how I would have done things differently, and I go down a rabbit hole of doubt and despair. I look at myself in the mirror, and I'm not young any more! And I wonder how that happened, and why. My dog's snout is all white as she, too, ages. 

Follow my rules: be kind to yourself 💖, eat when you're hungry 😛, do something creative every day 💃 🎶, don't get bitter 😞, keep your feet happy 👣, drink lots of water 💧, get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day! 🏃, be alone at times but be with people too 👭, call your kids 👪, do fun things 😀.

Lying Fallow

I've had times in my life where I've been lying fallow, waiting for the next cycle to begin. I think I'm just coming out of one of those times. I may have seemed busy, either to myself or to others, but the busyness was a superficial activity like the microbial activity on the surface of the earth. 

In a way, I think I was lying quietly, waiting to capture something that can't be captured. That elusive prey was a feeling of belonging, of being recognized and acknowledged. I lay so quietly, wanting that thing, that I started to forget who I was. So I started to be someone else, who I really wasn't.I started saying yes when I meant no, and no when I meant yes.

Living through the pandemic has thrown many of us into looking more carefully at our lives and our choices. I've been noticing weird parallels and similarities between my life and choices and other people's - people who I would never have admitted a similarity to had it not been for this dramatic event we are all living through.

I went to the desert a few weeks ago. I love it there. I would move there tomorrow if ... 

I love the clean-ness of the air there, not clean in the environmental, physical sense (although it does seem quite fresh), but clean almost in a spiritual sense. The wind blows, the sand moves, the bunnies jump around, the desert truly and clearly doesn't give any indication that it cares about you or notices you, in the sense that you can't anthropomorphize it like a shady tree or a sweet babbling brook.

So the desert gave me a chance to strip myself (figuratively, folks) naked and ask myself: who am I? 

The pandemic has given everyone this opportunity: a chance to be alone, to ponder, to daydream, to change our "normal". Have we done so? No, we have not. 

But one thing the desert always shows us is that there's always another morning, when the wind is blowing and the sand moves lightly. It's not too late to wake up and make a move. It's not too late to recover the land that has been lying fallow. It's scary, though. To be honest with yourself. To say what you believe. To engage in a discourse with others, instead of either deleting people (guilty) or falsely agreeing with them (guilty).

Well, my answers to that age-old question (who I am) were not super clear. The desert doesn't actually give you the answers, it just gives you the peace and quiet so you can try to figure them out. 

• I'm a woman 👩
• I'm a wife 👰
• I'm a mother 💞
• I'm a runner 🏃
• And a Grandmother!!!! 💓

And then there are all the microscopic things that we add on, like extra toppings on the pizza: midwife, writer, cafe owner, saxophone and clarinet player, traveler. I'm good at Trivial Pursuits. I don't like green peppers. I was shocked by the Liberal's reaction to the demonstrations in Ottawa. I don't mind breaking rules if I think they're unjust. I have three Pfizer vaccines in my body. 

Maybe fallow is the time we can separate fact from fiction: separate those things we do "just" to impress others from the things that we do instinctively. Or even the things that we do to impress ourselves, even those things can be recognized by the harsh light of the desert. 

Now is a time in our world when we are moving further and further away from each other. We are drawing thicker and thicker lines between ourselves and amongst ourselves, with little chance of repair. It's time to take some breaths and lie down. Feel the earth under you. Remember what's real. Remember what's true.