Celebrating Henry Yoder's 84th Birthday (my dad)

Celebrating Dad’s 84th birthday in Sarasota Florida.
I had another first. A Pioneer Line 21 hour trip to Florida. I left from McDonalds in Middlebury at 2:45 pm, Wednesday, January 16. We made a stop at a Subway Truck Stop at midnight and another stop at Cracker Barrel at 6:00 AM for breakfast. We arrived in Pinecraft at 12:30 pm on Thursday. The Tourist Church Parking lot was filled with anticipating viewers to see who had arrived on the bus.


Mom and Dad were supposed to help cut pies for the Gospel Echo banquet, so after a warm lunch and a foot treatment for Dad, I went along to assist the pie cutting tradition. Mahlon and Delores and Wayne and Thelma Weaver were also helping them. It has become a tradition for the three couples to volunteer for cutting and serving pies. Mahlon and Dad were assigned to place the 300 pies on the tables. After a couple rows Dad became quickly worn out and had to take a break. It seems that even at 80 the old men compete and Mahlon had out walked Dad. I took his place and couldn’t quite understand why the pace was quite as rapid as it was. Within 45 minutes they had cut and placed 300 pies. We then tasted a few left overs with ice cream. We played a few games of “I’m not Smarter than a 5th Grader. By that time we checked Dad’s blood pressure raging at 174/92 with a pulse of 50. We attended the Gospel Echo banquet in the evening and they nearly froze us out with their air conditioning.

A typical morning for Mom is to get up at 4:00 am and take her thyroid pill. She gets up officially around 5:30 and does her stretching exercises and then takes a walk around the block. It was hard for her to wait until 8:00 to go walking with me, but the morning being so cold helped a little. Dad rode his bike around the block. On Friday was Dad’s birthday, so I took them to Yoders Restaurant. I also looked up Betty Yoder, a diet client of mine from home. The waitresses sang Happy Birthday and gave him a complimentary sweet roll with a candle. We then headed home to shuffle in the 70 degree weather. Mom beat Dad and I after 5 games. The weather was perfect to give the foot treatments outside. The weather never exceeded 75 in the 5 days I was in Sarasota. All of the children called to wish Dad a Happy 84th birthday, but he commented to each one that he received no cards in the mail today. Flat Stanley had arrived from Darla’s child the day before requesting an Adventure in Florida, so we showed Flat Stanley the kumquat tree, we took him on a ride down the shuffleboard and took him along to Dad’s favorite place to eat in Florida, Sugar and Spice. Dad had his usual birthday dinner of chicken breast, sweet potato and broccoli salad. We finished off the evening with a game of Florida golf with Skipbo cards. Mahlon and Delores came over around 8:00 pm with their granddaughter and we played some more. Dad’s blood pressure was 151/90 and 61 pulse after the golf game so I asked him to take his Atenolol and calcium and vasotensin. He had eaten quite a bit of salty foods today. I discovered he had quit taking his Orthomolecular essential vitamins last week


Mom and I decided to walk up to the Goodwill store for our morning walk. Dad was not going with us because we were still trying to control his blood pressure. After breakfast his blood pressure was 161/96 and pulse 60. He took his cardioplus, cataplexy, osteo citrate and vasotensin and it went down to 113/67 with a pulse of 60 after playing shuffleboard.

On 1/20/08 after a foot treatment that was less tender, his blood pressure was 147/65 and pulse 57. Later in the day, his blood pressure was 134/80 and pulse 62. He tried not to get too worked up over his competitive shuffling games and Florida Golf. On Saturday evening we went to Mahlon and Delores house and played Florida golf with Skipbo cards and George with Rook cards.

It was windy and cold on my morning walk on Sunday. I attended the Baptist church with Bruce and Wilma. It seems that Bruce isn’t quite satisfied with the “rock worship music” of this modern day music. I on the other hand felt quite at home. The service was well orchestrated and the sermon on Leadership was very well crafted. He spoke of the models that Moses and Barnabas were of encouragement and delegation. He said delegation is not dumping jobs we don’t want to do. Rather, it is delegating and training mentees to do what we are best at because we can reach people more effectively through delegation. Larry Chupp recently said: “people learn best by inspection, not expectation.”

It was cold and rainy all day today. We did not go out all day and the furnace was running. Bruce and Wilma Glasener had just returned from a Caribbean cruise on Saturday, so they came over for lunch. We played “I’m not Smarter than a 5th Grader . Around 3:00 pm Larry and Pat Yoder joined us for Florida Golf and George. Mom and Dad went off to Palm Grove Evening service to hear Walter Beachy preach. I gave Pat Yoder a late evening foot treatment while we caught up with the latest news. Mom and Dad came home after every one else left and played a card game before retiring.

We took another cold morning walk on Monday morning. Dad went to Troyers for his morning fix with the men. I went to Wilma’s house to check out her latest remodeling at their house next door. I gave her a foot treatment and arrived home shortly before noon. We went to Pad Thai for lunch to celebrate my birthday and their anniversary. We came home and I gave them both foot treatments and then it was time for me to go home on the bus again. The bus left the Tourist church at 4:00 pm. Most of the riders were from Ohio. Only 4 of us were from Indiana. We stopped at Lexington Ky at 6:00 AM for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel. We then switched buses at Cincinnati OH and our bus only had 4 occupants. We dropped one off at Fort Wayne, me at Middlebury, one at Goshen Walmart and one at Nappanee. The bus driver returned to Middlebury Chiropractic for his first treatment at our office.

One thing I learned is that when Dad raises his voice and it startles all of us, Mom hardly notices the loud voice because she is hard of hearing. She does very well if she reads his lips, but you want to face her when you talk to her. Dad got off on his “we need to pray to Jesus instead of our Father" passion again. He even talked with Walter Beachy about it. I told him he may want to check with Tim since he is so caught up on what is in the original Greek. I noticed that when it was just the three of us, he seemed less stressed. Today my analytical mind has come to the conclusion that are struggles into our 80's are similar to our struggles in our 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's, 60's, and 70's. If we struggle with acceptance and our spouses irritate us, we will probably struggle even more as their bodies age. Maybe it is particularly scary to me since I am celebrating my 58th birthday today. When I retire I want to board the Scat bus in Florida to Siesta Key Beach where I can sit on the white sand and watch the water lapping onto the shore while watching my grandchildren build sand castles for their children.