There were a number of lifestyle changes that I had to make in order to adopt five children. Throughout my working career, I always said that the one thing that I was going to do when I retired was sleep late every day. That thought is now officially a joke. We have five boys and only one of them is a late sleeper. At least I do not have to get up in the night for baby feeding any more.
I also thought that perhaps I would get to play a little golf after I quit working. I have given my golf clubs away. I still enjoy looking at golf equipment catalogues, I am not sure why.
I love to read the classics. I was going to go back to reading “Moby Dick” once a year and maybe finally finish reading the two or three Dickens novels that I have not read. Instead, I spend what little time I have to read with books that help us meet the challenges that the boys brought to our home. I’m also self-teaching an African American studies course.
Finally, I had to face up to the fact that I was becoming a “senior citizen”. I looked and felt the part. I have noticed that when I tell friends that are my age about our life, they always say one of two things. Some say that they do not have the energy to do what we do. Others say that they recently had their grandchildren for two or three days and it will take them a month to recover.
Here was my problem; I am 58 years older than my youngest child. I decided that I needed to do everything possible to live for at least 25 more years. I was overweight, out of shape, and never feeling great.
My doctor and I have become friends. I went to him and told him that I needed to live into my mid-eighties and I wanted to know how to do it. He first reminded me that the Bible says that we are promised seventy years and asked if I wanted him to promise me more years that God does. I said that I did. He said that I needed to lose 100 pounds, but slowly.
That day was May 24, 2006, and I weighed 272 pounds in his office. My goals were to weigh under 220 by my 60th birthday in October, 2006 (I weighed 202), and to weigh under 180 by my birthday in 2007 (I weighed 194 today). I swim workouts six days a week with the thirty year olds at the YMCA. As long as I don’t step out in front of a train, I think that I will live to celebrate my 85th birthday with my eight children and their children.
So I have quit sleeping late, quit playing golf, quit reading, quit eating, and I swim like crazy everyday. I love my life.
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