Vrooom!
Full
throttle, pedal to the metal!
Look
out, Aunt Willene is fixin' to blow right by.
Aunt
Willene is one of those, what you call, "senior citizens," a term
that doesn't offend her sensibilities in the least.
She
is one of many, a bubble of population boom squeezing its way through
the narrow byways of our busy world. The number of seniors is mushrooming,
their ratio to young people growing, our median age steadily rising.
Aunt Willene is riding the front edge of that wave . . .
And
she's cruising it on her ATV.
Yes,
she's still tooling around town and zooming through the countryside
on a souped-up 4-wheeler. Watch for her, and you'll see a prime
example of one woman who refuses to slow down, especially when there's
so much that still needs to be done.
Sure,
she's been wrestling with many of the challenges that come from
adding a few years to the old résumé, but then she
got hit some time back by one of the big ones: a serious medical
problem, the progressive kind you have to manage because there's
no cure, one of those with its own foundation, stars raising money,
an ad campaign to increase awareness. Her idea of a good day is
one that's not as bad as the bad days.
Still,
she works with Uncle Chester to manage the family farm, cares for
bedridden kin, and somehow finds time to raise funds and support
the local senior center, a project for which she's sold a bazillion
of her trademark fried pies.
She
especially likes to ride in the Christmas parade, the only time
the police chief lets her show off without that hair-mussing helmet
she hates so much to wear. She also collects impressive trophies
from senior beauty pageants, her photo recently featured with other
winners on a congratulatory billboard at the Waverly, Tennessee,
city limits. So much recognition depends a lot, I suspect, on still
looking as good inside as she does on the outside.
So
why do some seniors tend to slow down while others like Aunt Willene
keep the pedal to the metal-even when the path gets rough and that
old engine's burning a lot more fuel these days?
Robert
Frost used to ponder this, one of his more popular poems describing
how it feels to stop by the woods one snowy evening, then remembering
all those promises to keep, "miles to go before I sleep."
But
maybe it's discovering, too often the hard way, that conquering
each ever-steeper hill requires harnessing all that youthful momentum
from the last one, that slowing down too much risks leaving one
stranded with no place left to go.
Or
maybe it's just about loving every precious moment of life, wanting
to see what comes next, the exhilaration of slicing through stiff
winds, dodging the deepest hazards, and barreling confidently down
whatever trail stretches before us.
Whatever
your reasons, remember that when you get to the point where your
git-around isn't getting you around like it used to, it's time either
to hit the gas or pull over and watch out because that next 4-wheeler
to blow by just might be Aunt Willene.
Then
think about getting on with living the way she does:
Full
throttle.
Vrooom!
*
* END * *
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