a blast from the past

A long lost friend came to visit us tonight. She seemed taller than I remember her. Maybe I'm shrinking. This is the first time I've seen her since she quit working at Target a coupla years ago. I've known her since I was 4 years old and she and her twin sister were 2 years old. we moved in 3 houses down from where they lived, the youngest of 6 children. I am the youngest of 4. Our moms were friends for a a long time, and swapped babysitting. We grew up together until some ugliness between our moms right about the time the twins were going into their senior year of high school. Since I'm 40 now, that would make her 38 years old.



She had a stroke earlier this year and has some mobility issues with stairs, also recovering from an earlier heart attack and getting her strength back up so she can have a kidney transplant - oldest sister is the donor. If that goes well, she'll be in line for a pancreas transplant which is a newer procedure that I'm not at all familiar with actually. She's been diabetic since she was 4 years old, her twin wasn't diagnosed until she was 8 (but had her heart attack first). Her twin's trailer was destroyed during our recent tornadoes about a month ago now I guess. The ones the Federal government didn't consider a real disaster.



All of this has me thinking - once again - how fragile life is, how lucky I am that my child is moderately healthy, and how I should be taking better care of my body that I so often take for granted. Here I was given this body with no known defects and I have ungratefully abused it, misused it, and turned it into something loathesome.

I'm glad I'm learning to love my body and myself and treat it with the respect it deserves. My visit with Sarah today gave me a little more of a boost in motivation. How rude of me to poison my body with fat and lethargy when others have their bodies give out on them before they have barely begun to live.