Oh, my aching back!

My wife’s knees were bothering her the other day. She was on her feet much of the day and it was catching up to her. My back has been bothering me too. I joke that we’re getting older, but it’s more than that, we’ve earned our bruises the hard way. 

Here’s what I mean:

When our youngest son was four or five, he used to love to play street hockey. During the day, when I was working, he would grab his hockey stick and run outside to shoot his puck into the net. Now he wasn’t a very big guy, but my wife would inevitably feel sorry for him and go outside and play with him. She’d be running on the macadam, bending every which way and then some, trying to shoot the puck past him. He may have been small, but what he gave up in size, he made up in determination. My wife would find herself outside with him for hours.

Image by Tatiana Syrikova by Pexels.

It wasn’t just hockey.

When each of the kids were toddlers, I would play silly games with them with names like “Bumblebee,” “Sack of Potatoes,” and “Timber.” The games had their own little idiosyncrasies, but the gist of the games involved the same general rules: I would lift the kids up on my shoulders and “gently” throw them down on the sofa or bed or soft cushions sprawled out on the floor and, when I looked away, they would scamper away, and my job was to chase them down and start the game all over again.

It was all fun and games when the kids weighed less than a real sack of potatoes — heck it was a blast — but unfortunately they got bigger and bigger and I got older. And instead of moving to other games, they wanted to keep on playing many of the same ones. They wanted to continue to jump on and roll on top of dear old dad!

Uh-oh.

Image by Andrea Piacquadio by Pexels.

And now, as you guessed it, my wife and my back, joints and muscles hurt a little more than they should. Oh, we’re generally fine, but I definitely feel it when I wake up in the morning and there’s a bit of a chill in the air like there was last week.

In the grand scheme of things, those crazy times playing with each of my kids was worth it. Here’s how I know. If I could go back and hear their giggles and squeals again, I would do it all over in a heartbeat. Sign me up. You wouldn’t even have to ask me twice.

Yes, back ache and all!