An e-mail showed up in my inbox the other day with the title "Topsy Turvey Pop". In it Flo, my step-mom, told the 3 of us kids not to worry (which makes you start worrying immediately) but that Pop had broken his arm in a fall off the neighbor's boat. My dad is a very healthy, active 66-year old. You'd think he was in his early 50's easily. He has been talking about selling everything, buying a sailboat, and cruising the oceans for many years. Flo likes sailing, but hadn't quite gotten to the point that she embraced the same ideas. She's picked up sailing over the years and recently took a captain's class, but her claustrophobia has gotten the best of her for long trips. That is, until last year.
In April, they chartered a bare sailboat for a month and sailed the Caribbean. After they came back, the house was on the market, the power boat they had in the canal behind the house was sold and they are ready to go. If they get the right price on the house, they're gone.
But all of this scares the crap out of me. I love so much that they're enthusiastic about their sailing adventures and that they're so full of life (still sickeningly like newlyweds after 26+ years of marriage). But I worry that he's starting to get to the point that there may only be 2 or 3 years left where he'll be spry enough to do this sort of adventure.
So while he was helping his neighbor on their boat, he went to step off the boat onto the dock. The boat moved back just a bit and he missed the dock. Only a few weeks before, he lost a cell phone and wallet to water damage (there's probably a good bar story there) so he was worried about it again. He wrenched around to catch the boat and ended up bashing his shoulder into the dock. He heard a lot of crackling. As it turns out, he crushed the top part of his humerus and tore some tendons. He'll be down for about 8 weeks.
It's these sort of things that are scaring me when he talks about running away on a boat like that. Surely he'll probably do fine, but will something like this happen while they're at some obscure island? Or worse, when they're at sea and in a squall? I worry that it takes so much time to heal once he gets older.
Is it wrong to worry so much or should we just encourage the dream? Or secretly hope the house doesn't sell?
1 comment:
Kari,
I can relate, I was talking to my mom one day and she was telling me how sore my dad was, I asked what he was doing. She said, "oh he fell off the roof a couple of days ago". Like it was nothing. Parents??? what are you going to do??
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