These Days August 19th, 2021

 
                                                              These Days

    Under the box titled, “Usual Occupation,” on my birth certificate, my dad “Father of Child” is listed as being a “Warehouse Foreman’ --Des Moines Co-op.” Perhaps the fact I worked at the toy factory, many of them in the warehouse for over thirty years, was preordained. Hmmm, if only he had been a physician ... alas.

    I remember having to work in the toy factory warehouse with two other men, twenty-some years ago; I think it was in August, when temperatures approached 100 degrees, an extreme rarity for this part of Minnesota. The rest of the plant was shutdown (another extreme rarity), except for the air-conditioned front offices and engineering departments. We three alone had to unload a semi load of steel parts in individual totes that were needed for the next day’s toy production. It was brutal work, but I was only fifty-plus years old; thirteen years older than one man, and twenty-five years older than the other; I was used to it.

    With similarly high temperatures almost prevalent now, and poor outdoor air quality being what it is thanks to Canadian wildfires not so faraway, I’m feeling all of those twenty-more years older. I’m drained of energy until about three o’clock in the afternoon, which seems a strange time to get re-energized, especially as it’s often the hottest part of the day my wife reminds me. I think my toy factory work-life routine is ingrained in me from when I worked the early evening shift, from three pm to 11 pm.

    After getting off work, I’d drive 20-miles home, then stay up writing or reading until after midnight, awakening whenever I wanted, for I was never a fan of alarm clocks. I could sleep-in if I needed, then arise after five or six hours of sleep, all energized to do things for myself until I ended my day about 1 pm, ate my lunch, maybe get a nap in, and got ready to leave for work in time to get there well before three. (Even with good intentions, it didn’t always happen.)

    These days, I feel a need to get out at least for awhile in the even-slightly cooler part of the day, and often stay out until dark working at something without the accompaniment of mosquitoes; it’s been amazing not to have to endure those pests and all the flies we had earlier in July.

    "Let it go. It's too hot out, " I say to myself now. "It’s just not that important anymore." 

    For now, I measure my days by just waking up alive and greeting my wife with a smile each morning (no matter how I look); being able to stand and walk under my own power; breathing without a ventilator (been there, done that), eating solid food with the teeth I have left, defecating and urinating without difficulty, appreciating what I had in the past, what I have now, with the hope our health continues in this vein for as long as possible ... these days.