Sandwiched
Last fall, my husband John and I stopped at Walgreen’s to pick up a few items for my mom and us. We had just had dinner with Mom and it was a beautiful, cool day, so we left her in the car while we ran into the store.
We quickly paid for our things, walked out the door, and stopped in surprise.
“Oh my gosh, where is she?” I asked, horrified that I didn’t see Mom sitting in John’s Ford.
Then we laughed. The reason we couldn’t see her is because Mom’s … um… height-challenged. Okay, she’s short. She’s so short that we couldn’t even see her over the dashboard from our point of view.
Mom was never tall to begin with. I remember her claiming she was five foot two when I was younger, but most of us pegged her as even shorter.
When she moved down here from Mishawaka a couple of years ago and started going to my stylist for her weekly hair appointment, the ladies in the salon were rather surprised about her height.
“You’re so tall and she’s … not … so tall,” they said. I’m five foot eight and also adopted.
My nephew’s son, Trevor, has always gotten a kick out of having his picture taken beside her through the years, as he’s a growing teen. Needless to say, he surpassed her a long time ago.
And aging hasn’t helped the situation. Mom, like many older adults, has shrunk even more. I recently wondered why this happens and found out that there are three reasons.
Apparently as we age, the discs between our vertebrates lose fluid and flatten a bit, causing our spines to shrink a little. The arches of our feet flatten and we also lose muscle mass, especially in our stomach area, leading to poor posture and the appearance of being shorter. Oh, boy.
There is hope – sometimes we can prevent this with, you guessed it, diet and exercise.
When I last accompanied Mom to the doctor’s office, she was four foot 11 inches. I remember my grandfather, her dad, also shrunk a bit in his later years. I think it was just bound to happen for Mom.
I thought about all of this last Sunday as John pulled into our driveway after picking up Mom to join us for Easter dinner. Thanks to me standing on our deck, I could barely see her pretty white hair in the passenger seat.
She may be height-challenged, but as the saying goes, good things come in small packages. And I wouldn’t trade this four foot 11 lady for the world.