Fighting against the inevitable

San Felipe sunrise

To repeat what I said last week:

"If someone offers you a travel opportunity, you may regret it if you don’t go, but you aren’t likely to regret it if you do go."

This is a true story. It more or less has a beginning but, so far, it has no end. It isnʼt fiction and doesnʼt have a villain or even much of a heroine.

It happened to me.

The "I" in the book is me, Kay Davies, a former workaholic turned government-registered unfittie; the "he" in the book is my husband Richard, a senior who can still run fast enough to referee high school basketball and football, plus play tennis and pickleball.

My mind boggles at the thought of his energy.

"OKAY, I’LL GO SOMEWHERE

 BUT HOW? AND WHAT IF...?"

After a few successful trips westbound from southeastern Alberta for visits with my family on The Wet Coast, including popping down from Vancouver to Seattle, Washington, to watch the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team play the Seattle Mariners, my husband Dick and I decided we should try "real" travel...

Rather than the 30-hour round-trip drive to the coast and back, we decided to try flying somewhere.
The Toronto Blue Jays were about to play in the first-ever World Baseball Classic in San Diego, California, so we flew down to take in the sights as well as a game or two.

2006 World Baseball Classic

Yes, I ached all over but, still, I was a different person then...younger,  a little healthier perhaps, but certainly no wiser: so when Dick had suggested San Diego, I thought "Sure, San Diego, piece of cake" or words to that effect. Catch a couple of ball games, go to the zoo, eat some seafood, smell the ocean. Why not?

PRELUDE TO THE ABOVE

Travel wasn't new to me, and nor was San Diego. In my earlier days, I thought nothing of flying from the west coast of Canada to the east coast of the US to meet up with friends for a weekend...or spontaneously catch a flight to southern California, rent a car and pop down the Baja Peninsula  to visit my parents and much-younger brother at their winter home in Mexico, so San Diego wasn't new to me, either.

My brothers, Rob, left,
and Clint, 1968

I once took a year off to play, rather than work. During that year I took my 14-year-old brother Rob to Australia for a month, then returned to British Columbia to write my first (and only) novel. It was not a success, and never published, but I was pleased to have finished it. 

Later came the time when it all stopped...not just running foot-races with my much-younger brother. That went first, of course, because he got faster as I got slower...but my pick-up-and-take-off lifestyle eventually stopped, too.

I didnʼt relinquish my wanderlust willingly, but relinquish it I finally did, because I could no longer work as a newspaper compositor. My several disabilities meant I couldn't guarantee Iʼd show up on the job every day, nor be able to produce any significant amount of work once I got there.

For a while (for too long, in fact) I fought my fate. I denied it even as I railed against it, and  refused to apply for a disability pension until several different illnesses, pains and horrible-awfuls in various parts of my body had me pretty much licked. I had tried to work, but couldnʼt, so was forced to sell my house and live on the proceeds.

Moved myself and my cats...Herman, left, and Ava
(Drawing by Rob Davies, Atomic Cartoons)

Then I gave up, applied to the feds for a pension, and waited for my application to be approved. 

When it saw I was thoroughly beaten down, the government finally started giving me money every month to make up for my general uselessness and lack of reliability.

I moved myself and my two cats from The Wet Coast to a drier climate in central British Columbia, where my new doctor discovered that the medication prescribed for one illness had caused more damage to my already beleaguered body.

My eyes developed cataracts, my teeth began to shatter, my blood sugar went wonky, my bones got terrifyingly thin, and I got fat. I swelled up like a balloon, and have never lost that steroid weight.

My old self-image

It was a few years after this that I met Dick. He didn't realize I had lost my looks, and if he did notice I wasn't slim, he didn't seem at all put off by it.

I, meanwhile, was still hanging on to my old self-image, inwardly screaming because "I" was gone, and I still wanted to be me.

However, being cared-about was somewhat seductive. I sold my mobile home and moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta, married Dick and took up some serious traveling with him.

Sometimes I still wonder which I miss most, a successful career in the newspaper and printing industry, or a pretty face and a slim body.
Itʼs a tough call. 

My job would have disappeared anyway. Newspaper compositors have now been replaced by computers the world over and, on the other hand, it doesnʼt much matter if old ladies arenʼt pretty.

Dick thinks Iʼm cute, which is probably why I married him. However, it is a compliment about which Iʼm ambivalent. Most of the time, I am glad he thinks so, until I remember Iʼm a cute old lady, not a cute young thing. Sigh.

So, where was I? Oh, yes, I relinquished my lifestyle, moved away from the wet west coast, and some years later settled into semi-domesticity (Iʼm no oneʼs idea of a housewife) out here on the prairie, where the deer and the antelope play.

I could still book a seat-sale flight, or Dick would drive me out to BC to check on my elderly parents a couple of times a year. Iʼd see other members of the family, visit a few old friends, get some good fish and chips. Coupled with our occasional adventures, it was enough.
I was content. 
(more to come)

POSTING FOR LADY FI'S MARVELLOUS MEME

OUR WORLD TUESDAY