Homeschool Spanish Lessons - Online Learning

As we visited my parents for my dad’s 80th birthday not long ago, it left me wondering what more I could do to try and give a little back to my dad. He has certainly always been there for us, with a supportive word and a helping hand whenever we needed it.  Now he finds himself in an era of life that is not easy for many people – la tercera edad, or the twilight years, when many people find it harder and harder to stay animated and positive about life. My dad seems to have good days and bad days. Health wise he’s in good shape for the shape he’s in, with a pacemaker/defibrillator and a regime of meds to help out. But I don’t think it’s so much the physical limitations that get him down. My dad has always been a big believer in the future; an optimist; somebody who always argued that time is on your side and that through hard work and patience you’ll eventually get to where you’re going.  So now he appears to be struggling with the fact that he just doesn’t have the same amount of time to look forward to. For some people, they might be inclined to make their “bucket list” like in the movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. But for others it’s a slow road to an inevitable end, one they think about all too much before it comes.  It doesn’t help that many of his contemporaries are gone – or that they live in a largely senior community where many people are indeed facing illness that comes with age. But as my mom has pointed out, she has neighbors in their 80s who seem to be pretty happy just to live each day, and she wonders why my dad can’t be more like this. 

Part of the problem is that he is an Alaskan through and through. He came up here in his 20s, and lived most of his adult life here, or commuting to here from Seattle. Being down in a retirement community in California doesn’t exactly fit him to a tee.  He’s probably more comfortable sitting at a bar on the Homer Spit than one in Rancho Mirage.

So I know that even though the weather down there is more agreeable with him, his heart will always be a little more here – which gave me an idea. Why not send him a postcard every day? How much trouble could that really be? It’s no big deal to buy 30 or 40 of them at a time, and it doesn’t exactly take a gargantuan effort to put a stamp on the thing and mail it each day.  But thinking up something clever to say each day, well honestly that could become enough work that I would end up procrastinating it. And with my new “NO PROCRASTINATION” effort still underway, I don’t want to set myself up for failure here.  So I came up with another idea: why not get an adventure ebook (in this case “Arctic Drift by Clive Cussler” – and print a page of that out each day? I have a great thermal printer which does large size labels – and you can get about a page and a half onto each postcard that way. I put the address and stamp on the front, which the Post Office said was fine – and left a little room for a super pithy note each day. Usually just “WE LOVE YOU!!” or something to that effect.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ve done the first couple of weeks, and he should get the first one today. Will this help my dad any? Will he look forward to getting those cards each day? I dunno. I do know that people of his generation do seem to love mail. I watch our 85 year old next door neighbor go to that mailbox every day even when it’s 20 below outside. I know that my dad does the same. I think the mail used to be a bigger deal than it is now. My mom gets exasperated that he even wants to see the JUNK mail :) So the idea is that 1 postcard a day is supposed to do 3 things: remind him of Alaska and make him feel in touch with its beauty; give him an interesting page to read; and let him know how much we love him.

It may be that after a few months he starts wondering if I could please just take a break from all the dang postcards! But maybe not. Maybe it will give him just the small boost he may need to get up each day and think “hmm I wonder what that postcard will have on it today?”