Hurrying, I grabbed the moving box containing bathroom toiletries and bounded up the staircase in our new house, two steps at a time. Undaunted by the effort, I immediately began to put them into a cupboard. At the moment, the house my husband Arnie and I had bought was a hollow shell. All the rooms were empty. None of them showed that they now belonged to us. Turning this house into a beloved, cozy home for our little family, was up to me.

With the recklessness of youth, I never questioned if I was able do something or not. In addition to being a homemaker, I worked outside of the home as a Certified Nursing Assistant. When male patients worried that I wasn’t big or strong enough to get them up for a walk after surgery, I’d laugh and say, “I’m a farm girl. I can carry two bales of hay the full length of a barn with no problem.” My busy, active life was all as easy as running up a staircase two steps at a time.

I started to get hints that I wouldn’t always be young and physically strong in my mid-thirty’s. Arthritis began to make my hands ache and after sitting for a while my feet and hips would be very stiff and sore. No problem. I just barreled through life ignoring these minor discomforts. If I had stopped to think about it, I would have recognized that my twinges and aches sounded very much like the twinges and aches my elderly mother had described. It was hard to take Mom seriously though. When she had a bad day, she just limped and laugh it off with a complaint of, “Oh, my aching pinfeathers!”

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