Dad often says to me that I need to learn to take care of myself and honestly assesses that I don’t always do a good job of that. Every morning he hands me my vitamins and Lipitor (to reduce my soaring cholesterol) and wonders when I will actually do that on my own. It is his constant influence that keeps me going to the gym every morning. Though I love that freshness that fills and revitalizes my body when I’ve exercised, the great temptation is to jump to work every morning to “get more done.” He says to me regularly, “I want you to live and live and live and live.” This is a takeoff of something his great, great grandmother Amanda Hagle Sweeten used to say to his great, great grandfather, Robert Sweeten. She thought he was not industrious enough and that she had to take up some of the slack, and so she said to him, “When I die, Robert Sweeten, I hope you live and you live and you live and you live.” (She did and he did.) I assume this was because she thought it would be helpful for him to have to take care of himself.
Of course, Dad’s take off, from this statement is just the reverse. He wants me to live and be healthy to be with him, and I want to as well. The challenge is making a life-giving routine for my body because it takes time and patience. It is easy for me to be diligent about work—to bore in like a heat-seeking missile toward a job that needs to be done. It is much harder to inculcate a healthy routine into every day, because routines demand time and dedication and some mind share and my mind is already entirely infatuated with the fun projects I am about. It is really hard for me to drink enough water and hard for me to be self-disciplined about my eating habits because I’m really preoccupied with a thousand other things that are far more interesting to me, and things that are shouting out, “Do me now.”
But Dad never gives up, and today as I am finished dressing and ready to run to do something I think is vital, he will stop me and hand me a fistful of supplements and bring me a glass of water and say, “I want you to live and live and live.”
Of course, Dad’s take off, from this statement is just the reverse. He wants me to live and be healthy to be with him, and I want to as well. The challenge is making a life-giving routine for my body because it takes time and patience. It is easy for me to be diligent about work—to bore in like a heat-seeking missile toward a job that needs to be done. It is much harder to inculcate a healthy routine into every day, because routines demand time and dedication and some mind share and my mind is already entirely infatuated with the fun projects I am about. It is really hard for me to drink enough water and hard for me to be self-disciplined about my eating habits because I’m really preoccupied with a thousand other things that are far more interesting to me, and things that are shouting out, “Do me now.”
But Dad never gives up, and today as I am finished dressing and ready to run to do something I think is vital, he will stop me and hand me a fistful of supplements and bring me a glass of water and say, “I want you to live and live and live.”
4 comments:
I am glad that he is there with those supplements. I love to eexercise, but it is definitely a more intriguing proposition when you ahve someone fun to go with!
I want you to live and live too, so keep taking those vitamins when dad hands them to you!
it is nice to have someone take care of you, that really wants you to be around for a long long time:)
One comment more (this is Dad): Amanda Hagle Sweeten died in 1903 (a very untimely death) and her husband she had wanted to "live and live and live and live" did live another 33 years! It's one of the great stories of our family. And, with all my heart, I want Mom to live and live and live and live WELL, healthy, strong, vibrant, full of life--living life to its fullest.
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