Page 71 - Mind Games The Aging Brain and How to Keep it Healthy

The Intelligent Mind • 55

Photo courtesy of Winfield Leitzer

Older and Wiser

After raising three children and working 16 years as a dry
cleaner, Doris Waller, 53, looked for a change of pace. She had
always enjoyed housekeeping, so she took on a job with a maid
service. After a highly successful first year, Doris struck out on
her own. Now she is president of her own housekeeping service,
D&W Cleaning, Inc., which serves professional offices and pri-
vate homes. Doris has kept busy learning entrepreneurial skills
for her expanding business. Her current task is mastering the
computer so that she will be able to manage her own business
matters.
A proud grandmother of six, Doris loves to keep active by
dancing and taking long nature walks. An avid reader, she
loves mysteries—and keeps sharp by trying to figure out the
mystery herself. She’ll put the book down and rerun the action
in her mind until she has a solution to the situation.
“It helps,” she says, “to think. I like to visualize into the dis-
tance what the place in the story looks like.”
Doris prefers reading to watching stories on television, be-
cause she finds TV boring. “It’s all mapped out for you. There’s
little to think about!”