Catholic Herald Parenting™

	Lorenz and Friends

Growing old doesn't scare me. No way. So what if my cholesterol is squeaking over the normal limit. So what if every single chocolate-chip cookie I eat ends up attached to the outside of my stomach instead of in it. Yes, I exercise, but I'm not a six-day-a-week fanatic. To me, exercise is a nice, relaxing eight-mile bike ride on an interesting bike trail meandering through parks, or an hour-long swim in the condo pool in-between chatting up the other residents.

I don't get yearly physicals. So far I don't have to take any prescription drugs. Why should I? I have good genes and growing old doesn't scare me.

Great-uncle Collie lived to be 103. Great-aunt Peggy was 100 when she died peacefully in her sleep. My grandfather was 93. And my dad? Well, it's downright disrespectful to even put his name in this paragraph. At 84 he still looks and acts like a fit, robust gent in his 60s. Dad makes my physical activity look like someone taking a nap on the rug in Romper Room.

While I nurse an arthritic knee with Ibuprofen and refuse to go up a lot of steps, his knees don't hurt a bit, anytime, anywhere. While I do slow bend-overs to nurse my aching back after standing around at a museum or a mall, he's volunteering to help move his older sister, Aunt Helen, age 93, into her newest apartment.

It gets better. Two months before he turned 83, Dad rode shotgun in a two-seat stock car driven by a professional in a Winston Cup-style qualifying run at Chicagoland Speedway. He went around the mile-and-a-half track three times going 160 miles per hour. I like to think I've inherited some of his adventure genes but my speed is more like going 25 miles an hour on my bicycle downhill.

One month before Dad turned 83 he rode shotgun again. Only this time it was in the right seat of a four-place Piper Cherokee airplane with my brother Joe in the left seat.

Shortly after take-off, Dad took control of the plane and proceeded to do five take-offs and five landings by himself. He says the landings weren't as good as he wanted, which means they weren't like butter sliding off a hot ear of corn. But my brother says they were pretty darn good. It's true, Dad had been a fighter pilot during World War II in the Pacific and then was part owner of a small Beechcraft Bonanza from 1969-1972. But it had been 29 years since he was in control of an airplane and at nearly 83, he decides to do five take-offs and landings.

A few weeks before his 83rd birthday Dad loaded up his two restored 1930 American Austin cars, one red roadster, one green coupe, into his giant enclosed trailer and hauled them both to the Mendota, Ill., Sweet Corn Festival parade. For the fourth year in a row, he won the first place trophy for having the best antique car there. And in the past few years, he's won trophies for those cars in Michigan, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio and Kansas. Nothing stops this guy.

Those never-aging genes of my dad's put the pedal to the metal at the top of a mountain in Austria in July of 2000 when he, at age 80, joined my brother, sister-in-law and myself as we each plopped our fannies onto a sled and sped down an 1,100-foot-long alpine slide. Guess he was getting warmed up for his 160-mile-an-hour NASCAR ride that day.

I've always wondered about the secret to Dad's good health, his robust energy and his amazing accomplishments. For one thing he keeps busy. Pour that man a cup of coffee in the morning and before he takes the first sip he's out in the barn, in the garage, the yard or the porch putzing, fixing, cleaning, refinishing, building, restoring or remodeling. He simply can't sit still for more than a few minutes.

In his 83rd year, he built my sister and her husband shelves for their garage, 12 feet long, seven feet high and two feet deep. Then he hauled them 100 miles in his pick-up truck and installed them. He finished the front of those shelves in beautiful oak, nice enough for a family room.

I suppose there are two other reasons for Dad's good health. One is that he's been happily married to Bev since 1982. Mother died in 1979 and Bev, bless her heart, just keeps adding zest and laughter to Dad's life. The other reason is his daily nap. Every day at 2 p.m., Dad and Bev stop what they're doing and take a nap for 45 minutes to an hour. At 3 p.m., they're up and at 'em for eight more hours of adventures and projects.

All I can say is that if I have one-half of Dad's good health, energy, smarts, good hearing, chutzpah, and flair for adventure when I'm his age, I will be happy. Until then, I'm just eternally grateful that good genes have such a big role in our health and life span.

Time for my nap. See, I'm already following in Dad's footsteps.

(Lorenz shares her art-of-living words at many professional speaking events and retreats. E-mail her at patricialorenz@juno.com.)