My first formal exercise came in elementary school with a beloved teacher Mr. Graven. We had gym every day and had a little basket to keep our gym clothes and tennis shoes. Since all girls wore dresses we needed to change into shorts and blouses. We never knew what we would be doing  and waited to hear if he said we needed to “dress down” or not.

Mr. Graven was incredibly supportive to me, a tiny, underweight, not all that coordinated kid. In fact at our eighth grade graduation he awarded me a school letter purely for my unfailing effort. But in the early grades he spent a lot of time helping me learn to do a somersault and then, to my amazement, a backward somersault. I never mastered cartwheels, hesitant to take both of my feet off solid ground. Standing on my head seemed a similarly pointless exercise.

But gym class had days where we learned folk dances and square dances. I loved all the variety of music and dances, especially when we whirled around. We also got to dance to the Hokey-Pokey putting first a right foot in then out. Even the Farmer in the Dell delighted us, not yet cynical about “children’s ” music.

My primary advantage came when we formed a pyramid with four girls on the bottom row, then three on the next, then two on the next. As the littlest, I always got to be lifted high onto the top of the pyramid. Then when he signaled us to collapse, I never got squashed as we fell.

So exercise was fun, not that different from regular play at recess and after school. No one had to encourage us to do it, and we all trooped happily to the gym.

Dis-spirited by all the wonderful pictures of spring bulbs, green trees, walks in the country and reports of warmth, I took this photo out our back window this morning. Yes, after escaping significant snow for almost the entire winter, we got this 10″ of March snow. Here it cruelly covers our barbecue grill, picnic bench and porch swing, chastising us for our recent hopes of using those items.

I would say that I got a lot of exercise from shoveling this mess, but it would be a lie. My husband had a delayed work schedule and spent the morning with our super snow blowing machine clearing our walks along with the single mother’s on one side and the widow’s on the other. I did augment his diet, however, making him a batch of his favorite almond oatmeal granola, timed to come out of the oven just as he finished.

Now you can all know why we say “March comes in like a lion.” It remains to be seen if it will “go out like a lamb.”

Our first exercise comes quite naturally as we learn to move our bodies as infants. First we do push-ups. After a while we attempt the daredevil roll over. Then we try to learn how to roll back rather than get stranded like upside down turtles. Next we attempt the sit without the dreaded falling over. Eventually we will try to move forward on hands and knees, though we adopt many individual ways of doing this including scooting backwards while aiming to go forwards.

All of this activity comes without instructional videos or gym memberships. We are just designed to be active without any encouragement. In fact a lot of time in childhood seems to be spent being told to “sit still.” Of course contemporary sleeping directives designed to reduce infant deaths tell parents to put the baby “back to sleep.” This produces the unpleasant side effect of a flattened back of the head. So then parents are told to do “tummy time,” when they purposefully put the baby on her stomach to even her head out.

Not missing an opportunity to make money from activities that used to be free, corporations have invented Baby Gymnastics classes where you can pay to have your baby learn these things. Since there are no longer hordes of kids everywhere, these classes exist mainly, I think, to end the isolation of mothers with small children. That is a valid reason to exist as long as no one thinks a baby really needs instruction.

At any rate, I never needed to be encouraged to diet or to exercise in those lovely first months of life. And cod liver oil was the only “supplement” I was given.

My first meal was chosen for me since I was obviously too little to get it for myself. I relied on a ready, free, healthy supply from my mother–breast milk. She was bucking a trend toward formula already taking hold in 1947 and may have been rebelling against her mother’s urge to be “modern.” It was a rounded diet, giving me everything I needed to grow and develop and was my only food for a few months. Then, much to my disgust, I encountered Pablum, a recently marketed cereal for babies. Later we would feed Pablum to our litter of puppies. They seemed to enjoy it.

My siblings were also breast fed until they had the treat of rice cereal added to their meals. By then Gerber had the market on that first baby food and promoted it widely. I remember my mother occasionally leaving a bottle, a can of evaporated milk and instructions to prepare it for the baby sitter for my youngest sister. No commercial formula ever entered our house.

Babies were expected to be pudgy. I remember my mother telling me that when she was young in the 1920’s children were praised for being plump. It was considered insurance against succumbing to any of the childhood diseases still prevalent. The main goal for my diet was that it allowed me to gain weight. Those were the days!

Perhaps it is because people who watch the evening national news shows are generally older, the ads are nearly all aimed at various medical conditions. After a quick disclaimer along the lines of “when diet and exercise don’t work,” they tout yet another extremely expensive new drug to control blood sugar or cholesterol. The assumption seems always to be that “diet and exercise” won’t work because the people in the ads gain all their health after they take the drugs.

Having lived 71 years in the United States and watched the general population gain in girth and shrink in stamina, I have been exposed to countless diets and exercise plans. A women’s magazine doesn’t come out without a “quick weight loss” article or a “how to fit exercise into your insane schedule” tip sheet. Billboards advertise “weight loss surgery,” now available on a payment plan to fit your budget. The freeway touts various gym memberships for $10 a month.

I decided to take my readers on a tour of all the approaches to diet and exercise that have surrounded my life. But I begin with two photos highlighting my early total disregard for ads, billboards and magazines. In one I hold the produce from our garden. In the other I demonstrate my incredible hanging skill!

We just returned from a five day vacation with three generations together for fun and work(the middle generation.) A few squabbles, a few melt downs, a few low blood sugar moments, but lots and lots of fun. In the photo my husband and I pose for a picture taken by my daughter for her Instagram account. In it she thanked us for the two days we toured with the kids while she worked. I don’t post pictures of the kids, but rest assured that they truly enjoyed grandparent time, especially our tour of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

As I walked up to the first exhibit in the Space Center with my eleven year old granddaughter, I recalled my first encounter with the space program. I was eleven, standing in rural New York with my grandfather waiting to watch the first satellite cross over the night sky. I realized I had seen the expansion of our exploration in outer space for most of my life. The Center even had a prototype of a Mars Explorer designed for the future. The search goes on!

For you Harry Potter fans, I did get converted after reading the whole series in preparation for the trip. I was amply rewarded by immersing myself in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal Studios theme park. We walked through the wall at platform 9 and 3/4, rode the Hogwarts Express, drank butter beer, waved our wands to animate objects, rode through Hogwarts with Harry and parted with great sums of money at Diagon Alley. It’s a good thing that we had saved our money for this trip because we needed all of it!

I am glad to be back home and look forward to catching up with a week’s worth of posts from my friends here. March will feature posts on that oft recommended duo “Diet and Exercise.” Fun awaits.

I will be on vacation until next Wednesday being with people I love.

One of the earliest school games I remember was taking the petals off a daisy and repeating with each one “he loves me, he loves me not.” Of course we were hoping that we would end on “he loves me.” A similar game involved twisting the stem of an apple around in a circle. Each turn counted as a letter in the alphabet. When the stem finally fell off, the letter signified a boy’s name. It helped to long for a boy friend whose name was several letters in such as Fred or Gary. It was hopeless to get the stem to hang on until William!

We certainly found love to be a mystery, and I am not sure it ever became less of one as we grew into adulthood. We loved someone who didn’t love us back. Someone loved us who we didn’t love back. Two of us loved the same person. No one loved us. The angst went on and on it seems. Certainly pop music teems with stories of unrequited love. If all love was straightforward the musicians might have much less to sing about.

What pop music captures though is that sometimes the longing in unrequited love is nearly as satisfying as the desired reciprocity. Sometimes we could indulge in lengthy fantasies about someone without having to go through the actual ups and downs of a real relationship. This turmoil remains in my past. But here’s to the boys I longed for and never got and to the boys I passed over along the way.

Fifty years ago this coming June, I served as a bridesmaid for the marriage of my closest college friend. She and her fiance had met in college so I knew them both very well. The marriage was a time of rejoicing and, on my end, a little envy since I had yet to find a suitable match. They had two daughters two years older and two years younger than my daughter, but lost a son in between when he died in utero. They both had successful teaching careers, dedicating themselves to urban high schools and teacher preparation programs. They bought a lovely home and welcomed me into it many times when I was in their area to visit.

My friend’s mom had early onset Alzheimer’s and my friend and I tended to her one week while her dad took a well earned break. I witnessed a woman I knew losing speech, memory and eventually motor skills. It was sobering and I admired her husband for his devotion to his wife. Neither my friend nor I could imagine such a life for ourselves.

Fifteen years ago the troubling symptoms, mainly personality changes, appearing in my friend led to her diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s, now known to be genetically linked. For a number of years her husband was able to let her stay at home with family caretakers helping him. Eventually he found a safe home for her to live in and moved to the town near by. He visits her daily, loves her intensely, and remains faithful to her in all ways. He lives out the promise made before me and others all those years ago to be her “loving and faithful husband..in sickness and in health.”

We know so very little when we make those promises to each other, especially if we are young and healthy. When we said our vows I think many of us focused on the “plenty,” “joy,” and “health” conditions rather than the “want,” “sorrow,” and “sickness.” May we all have the strength and courage to remain true to our spouse no matter what. I look at my friend’s father and her husband and know it can be done.

Our hands joined above in a classic wedding photograph showing our two wedding bands, just exchanged in our ceremony, symbolize the three verbs above. Each word has a slightly different meaning, but taken together they convey strong commitments. The word “covenant” has a particular meaning in this religious ceremony since it is the same word for the promise that God makes to his people to always be present.

Rings and words are fine things, but living out all the promises takes a level of courage impossible for us without the support of our faith community and our God. In fact our minister stressed that God is the third in our marriage, the one holding it together when neither of the two of us has the ability. There has been something sustaining in this knowledge. Our marriage doesn’t just rely on two fragile, wounded, confused adults. You might say that we always knew and know that God “has our back.”

And we have had many opportunities to learn what happens when we reach the end of our capacity. Bringing children from two previous marriages together, along with the drama of one of the former marriages, put a strain on our relationship from the beginning. Fortunately, not only had we promised to stay faithful to each other, the congregation had also publicly vowed to be there for us. We spent many prayer times with fellow congregants working through the strains which came from our pasts.

I realize that in these posts about my marriage I am stressing the religious aspects. They are the underpinning for us. Perhaps “love never fails” in the abstract, but it certainly can falter in the real. For the many times when the feeling of love was absent, the deep reality of our love came back to us as we prayed with others for our marriage. For us the love of God is the constant we rely upon.