By Denise W., December 20, 2020 — I’m a member of Toastmasters and we have something in Toastmasters called Table Topics. One of the questions that I would ask, because I love to be the person to do Table Topics, I would ask the group, “How would you like to spend your elder years?” And then anyone that wants to respond to that question will.
What I miss in my life again, [is] … my schedule. [At] 8:00 in the morning I would arrive and I would use the walking gym. Just walking, and walking and walking and communing with my faith space. And hopefully losing weight because my son had a wedding coming up, and after all, I wanted to fit in this dress very well. That I did from 8 until 10. Usually, I would eat a hard-boiled egg too. At 10:00, I would go to another floor and I would get in the jacuzzi. And that would be for half an hour, which was great. Then water aerobics was at 10:30 and I loved water aerobics because we would do water aerobics to modern music. Once in a while she would have on classical Broadway tunes. It was just so much fun. The variations of music and the average person in this group was 60 to about 80. One man was 80, he did well and came every day. So that to me was very enjoyable. After that, [I’d] take a shower, and perhaps, I would spend some time in the steam room, which I had to get used to. The steam room and the sauna — I had to get used to both of those things, but the most important thing with those is that you drink a lot of water. Then shower again.
One memory I have that was very special, it was during Restaurant Week. I went to one of my favorite restaurants downtown, Butcher and Singer, and they have the best crab cakes. I remember just having a wonderful lunch and I would wrap up the day.
My routine had been that I would walk constantly. I would walk downtown; I lived in South Philadelphia. I would walk back home, which is quite a walk. But I love walking, I enjoy the freedom of it. Now [during the ] COVID-19 [pandemic], I think what I have to do, we’re going to have to listen the videos, the Zumba, well I don’t like Zumba, its too fast for me, but some sort of recreational video with music and I’m going to have to move to that. Right now, exercise to me is real important and I guess I took for granted that I would always be able to do these things. Or either go out to the King of Prussia Mall and just walk for hours and stop and glance at the stores and fun. But I have to re-adjust to the climate that we’re in, we’re in COVID-19 and we’re staying completely quarantined. Luckily, when it’s over we’ll have neighbors to speak to because they seem disturbed [along] with us.