Who is Tom Stenklyft?
Never thought I’d get this old but, every morning I wake up and here I am. Again! Wide eyed.
Ideas are running wild inside my head. Often, I Wake up rewriting yesterday’s chapter or working on a new story line. I’m convinced the inside of my head is the most interesting place in town, at least, for me. Outside my head, not so much. When I get to the bathroom mirror, the face looking back at me clearly shows that the bloom has left the rose. It’s amazing to think anything fun could come out of this guy.
I don’t remember doing anything in particular to extend my life. I grew up healthy on a dairy farm where I baled hay, cultivated corn, milked cows, shoveled manure, butchered chickens as instructed, etc. When it came to things like repairing machinery, building things, animal husbandry, crop rotation, however, it was apparent I lacked the practical skills to run a farm. High school reenforced my impractical nature with the “Ds” I earned in Shop class.
College called, followed by a career in public relations and marketing that took me to all fifty states and foreign travel. In my sixties, with retirement in site, I started wondering how to best fill my leisure time without a job to go to? Golf and fishing were high on the list of activities I enjoyed in off hours. I added wood carving, teaching cribbage, making walking sticks, wine, and maple syrup. All these things were fine, but seemed more like ways to pass time than to be a foundation for a retirement career.
By the time of my retirement party, I had settled on a plan. I would volunteer, for my church and/or other organization. I would do things I had enjoyed while on salary, and avoid the things I had hated or found irritating. Carol and I decided to retire in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin where we both grew up. We chose Appleton for our retirement home, joined the First United Methodist Church, and had our stone installed at Highland Park Cemetery to make our location official.
Our five children are wonderful and their lives are progressing as we hoped they would. Seven grandchildren have miraculously appeared and two great grandchildren add to our wealth.
The first years of retirement had us running from pillar to post, wondering what happened to all that free time we worried about filling. Carol and I were both heavily involved with the church and I had fallen into a near full-time job with Literacy Education Services as board member and volunteer tutor of foreign-born adults. Long ago, I lost count of the number of students taught, tutors recruited and trained, presentations made, money raised and promotional materials conjured up. None of this activity brought on any regret. All of it was great, allowing me to use the skills from my working years that gave me satisfaction without irritation. The new problems I faced, were the peripheral time wasters getting in the way of my retirement hobbies.
I identified things eating up big gulps of time. The biggest appetite to contend with was sporting events on TV. When at home, I avoid allowing TV sports to steal time that I might otherwise devote to my hobbies. I watch the Packers football game every week. That is all. No switching from game to game. No baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc. This releases a vast amount of time now available to devote to the hobbies of my choice.
I like sports, and when entertaining guests, being entertained, or at a restaurant, I can enjoy whatever sport is on TV. When visiting or eating out, my attention is devoted to the social situation and whether time is spent in conversation, cards, board games, or communal TV watching, it is all the same to me. I love interacting with people. I just decided to stop TV sports from invading my home to dominate personal time available to spend on my hobbies.
At about age 55, my very skinny Minnesota doctor informed me that I had become pre-diabetic, a condition that would be with me forever. To contain the condition, he advised Carol and me to attend a class conducted by nurses and dieticians. “It is crucial” said he, “that Carol attend with you. Wives are in charge of the kitchen, and she can’t keep you from killing yourself unless she also knows what you can and can’t eat.” Class taught a way of life intended to keep me from having to take insulin, and has worked for more than thirty years. Then at age 85, I learned from my very young Wisconsin doctor that being tired all the time came from something called congestive heart failure. There is no class to help me with this, but he added a cardiologist to the team who has me on a regimen of self-checks that alert me to the need for testing or medication changes.
These doctors have served me well. The text book that came with diabetes class says a cocktail before dinner is good for me, provided I have a few chips or other carbohydrates with it. I have that book in safe keeping and will never give it up. My cardiologist won’t let me mow the lawn or shovel snow anymore. That is fine with me. I accused him of treating my heart in a way that will get me to die from something else. He reluctantly agreed. Getting me to die of something else is his goal. I informed my primary care physician of that, and asked about his goal for me. He says to get me to die from something other than diabetes. So, with death from heart and diabetic problems off the horizon, I should be pretty good to go for a while as a story teller.