Nan in Search of Clarity–Day 8

I walked the bay today–well, I guess that what you’d call what I did. I walked the whole length of Bay Front Court, all along the north side of Keene’s Bay and then up 2.8 to the drive by the boat barns and then down Lazy Acres Road and out to the docks, then back up the west side of the park drive and all the way around the court to home. It turned out to be about 2.25 miles–a little over 5K steps. I walked mostly at a pretty good pace, but also some of it was leisurely. I even skipped on the road by the boat barns because I am determined to be able to skip again. For some reason, I’m guessing the arthritis in my knees and hips, I haven’t skipped in a lot of years. But we skipped in the pool the other day and I decided if I can skip underwater, then by God, I can skip on land. I got about 300 feet of skipping in before my hips protested. Tomorrow, maybe I can go farther.

The lake is dark and cold right now, but there was a pair of mallards on the bay, maybe looking for a place to build a spring nest and a blue heron landed on the pier just down from where I sat for a moment to rest. I remembered when Kate came up summer before last–it was July and it was hot. We took a borrowed “party float” out with Moe (one of our lake buddies) and floated in the bay. Kate got sick and tossed her lunch and at the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Just maybe it was the motion of the float with the three of us on it and she seemed just fine after that–ate hearty and drank wine and margaritas. But, now, I wonder if it was a sign of things going wrong in her body. That was more than a year before she was diagnosed.

Funny how you look back on stuff like that and try to make the pieces fit. PJ and I have revisited last summer endlessly, wondering what we missed, if there were signs we didn’t see. Kate was tired a lot and we attributed it to overwork and lack of exercise. But it was cancer attacking her liver and colon. We all get tired and it seems, the older we get, the less stamina we have, but as I think back, Kate was more than ordinary tired.

Why do we do that? Ignore things our bodies might be trying to tell us. Self-diagnose. Find excuses when we just don’t feel…right. A reluctance to grown old maybe? I know I have a terrible habit of attributing every ache and pain and moment of feeling bad to being fat. No matter what’s going on with my body, I just chalk it up to having a fat ass. Then I have to remind myself that not everything has to do with the size of my admittedly sizable butt. Does everyone do that? I wonder…

Five things I’m grateful for today:

1. I am strong enough to walk 3.5 miles
2. The lake in spring is still beautiful
3. Trees are budding
4. We went with lake pals to a nursing home for a brunch today–it was different and fun.
5. Husband–always so kind and gentle

**The picture is Keene’s Bay, but it’s from last fall–I didn’t have my phone with me on my walk, so I couldn’t take a new pic. Same water though.