Keeping My Head Above Water

Health is not a destination. It’s a journey. I am healthier today than I have ever been. But I haven’t “arrived.” I still have to work at it every day. I will never stop trying to be healthier.

It’s like any other journey, whether by car, bus, or airplane. There are wrong turns, accidents, breakdowns, delays, and wrong turns. At the moment, I’m on day six of a seven day vacation at a lakefront cottage in New Hampshire. I have seen a loon, Great Blue Heron, and a snapping turtle…but not the sun.

It has rained every day. Not the kind of rain that lightly mists your L.L. Bean Gore-Tex® pullover so you glisten a bit. This is the kind of rain for which you need the knee-length, hooded, yellow shiny plastic puddle-jumping rain coat you wore in the fourth grade. In a pinch, you could try outerwear worn by crab fishermen in the Bering Sea.

My bike is in the kitchen. My kayak overturned under a tree. My sneakers drying out in front of the gas fireplace. The tennis rackets never even made it out of the car.

I could let the weather be my inspiration for a nonstop eating and drinking fest. After all, what else am I to do? My vacation is ruined and it was hard earned. I finally finished my MBA after six years of studying nights and weekends. I just buried my father after a long period of failing health.

Haven’t I earned a row of Oreo® cookies? Shouldn’t the Lay’s® potato chips be proudly perched atop the grocery bags nested in the back of the wagon? Doesn’t this disappointment give me permission to go fishing in a peanut butter jar with a Hersey’s™ bar?

I can hear them from here. Two packages of freshly minted milk chocolate bars are behind cabinet doors--separated from their pre-determined partners--graham crackers and marshmallow puffs. Their messages taunt and torture me. “We treat sympathy.” “We offer solace to the sunless.” “We manufacture smiles.”

I don’t think so. I have worked too hard for too many years to let a little bad weather bring me down. Instead, I remind myself that one day soon I will find the time and place to be in a bathing suit. When I do don it, I imagine myself as strong, fit, and beautiful. I will overcome these clouds. I’m going to do a few sit ups and push ups on a neoprene pool floatie on the living room floor. It can be used as a flotation device in an emergency.