living large
longevity runs in my family. my great grandfather lived in his own house till he was 99. we moved him to a retirement home where he maintained for only a few months—he made it to his 100th birthday, and then three days later passed away. it was not a sad occasion by any means. the man lived long and well and never installed an air conditioner in his home and dealt with the green tinge of his aging television set while he watched baseball. as a young girl i didn’t really enjoy visiting him as it was a bit on the boring side. but if i could relive those years, you bet i’d ask him to tell some stories, i’d take exaggerated looks at his home and possessions, and most assuredly would have camera in hand.
two of my great grandmothers lived to be in their 90s, my great aunt is 90-something and my mom’s mom is in her late 80s. and dad’s mom is in her late 70s with no signs of slowing down.
the primary vices related to my health are long gone. smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day for a few years right out of school, and drinking copious amounts of alcohol throughout college and a few years after probably didn’t aid in the backend years. but i’m a firm believer in the resiliency of the human body, and i’d like to think my body has recovered, at least mostly.
so when i took this quiz, i wasn’t at all surprised by the 3-digit number listed above. sure, there is no science to really determining your life expectancy as any number of environmental influences can cause an untimely demise. but it does put things into perspective. so if i have roughly 70 years of life yet, i should probably pump up the amount of living i’m actually doing.
i don’t mean this to be a morbid entry about death or lament not doing more with my time, though there is an element of that that’s always in the back of my mind. it’s more of an opening to yet another year, reflecting on the good, the bad, and the ugly of ’07, and making mental notes of what i need to do for myself to keep the bad and the ugly to a minimum.
so i have an arsenal of goals, resolutions, plans, what have you, to work on stuff. some of it is vague and abstract, particularly personality quirks, where others are more concrete, like learning to sew.
here’s to a new year, and as the boy says, it’s bound to be a good one since there’s an 8 in it.