We are in the winter of our lives now, and things are different. One of us seems to be healthier than the other, and that seems to be me; except for the fact I am losing more words every day, I seem to be pretty healthy for an eighty-year-old. Somehow I've gotten back to walking outside, which I didn't think would ever happen.
Cliff, on the other hand, has to sleep on the couch. Just night before last he tried to sleep in bed with me, but at midnight he was back on his side of the couch laying back at half-mast with his feet up. His lungs are bad, I believe because of a job he had for about five years in the 1960's that had him breathing poison at a metal plating place; eight hours every workday he was putting caustic acid in his lungs. He smoked Camel cigarettes when I married him, but quit smoking, for the most part, in his twenties. I'm pretty sure I can lift more than he can, and I don't want him going out in the cold trying to get his breath. If the sidewalks need the snow removed, I do it.
He goes to sleep a lot, day or night. He has aches and pains in shoulders and hips and hands and can't feel the bottom of his feet when he wakes up. You will usually find him on the couch, and it isn't that he's lazy. He makes himself get on the recumbent bike almost every day, just because it's about the only way he can get any exercise.
But with the right tractor and our oldest grandson, he usually starts to get a little excited.
He doesn't want to buy tractors any more, although he looks at the ads for old tractors on Facebook Marketplace every day, mumbling things like "this guy is crazy; he'll never get that much money for that thing", or "good luck with that".
It's expensive to fix those old tractors, and if they are just parked all the time stored in a barn, eventually they won't start again even if they were fixed. It's a matter of use it or lose it. However, I think the real reason he doesn't buy them any more is the cost of fixing them.
Last fall our next-door neighbor, Randy, who is a farmer and a lover of International Farmall Tractors, came over and talked to Cliff and the grandson about maybe helping him get an old tractor going. He and his dad bought it because this particular tractor was only built for one year, 1956... so it's a rare find. It wasn't running when they bought it; in fact, the engine was stuck. Cliff is too weak these days to work on dead tractors, and that's where the grandson comes in. Of course, Randy can help with lifting too; he's middle-aged, but young enough to still have willing muscles. And if anybody spends money for parts, it will be him.
There is heat in the shop, and Cliff is finally interested in something that's going on out there.
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