My father worked for the telephone company for 44 years, 6 months and 26 days, and at the age of 65 he retired. Then, the family jokes, "He really went to work." There were things around the house to be done, church buildings to take care of, city councils to run, Rotary meetings to attend, and then of course, there was the lake cabin. Docks to build, waterfronts to clear, porches to screen in, rooms to build, water tanks to haul in; the list was endless and the hard work continued well into his 80's.
I think of these things now, because there is a lull in my contract work and I have turned to retirement work to fill my days; the front flower beds need a lot of work, trees need to be trimmed, borders need to be placed around our new trees, gutters need to be cleaned. I have my own long list and these beautiful days beckon for me to get out and do them. There is only one thing wrong. THIS STUFF IS KILLING ME!
I dug up 3 linear feet of monkey grass to transplant and I couldn't walk for two days! I cut down 3 small hack berry trees and needed an arm transplant! I need to dig 28 feet of a dinky 4" trench - nay, trenchlet - to put a border around the trees and at the rate I'm going the trees will be mature before I'm done!
I have long admitted that my father could out-work me at any stage of my life but these last few days have been humbling. Three linear feet of monkey grass and I'm done for the day? Sad. Sad.
Now, where did I put my Tylenol?
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4 comments:
Of course, you need to remember that he was physically active pretty much all his working life, too, which neither one of us really was.
Yes, my thought was that he had done physical work all his life.
When we lived in Dublin they had a very large vegetable garden that they worked in every day after he got off work.
"Trenchlet" - love it. :)
I just happened to be thinking about that today, too. I was at the lake cabin last night/this morning and as I was walking around was thinking about how long I had been going out there, and different areas of the place I had worked with Granddaddy. It struck me just how much he actually did out there.
I then want back to the house and sat on the porch and watched the lake. Even thinking about it made me tired!
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