I was cleaning out my iPhone and I came across the photos that were taken the day of my Dad’s memorial. For as long as I live, I will never forget that brilliant sunset that streaked across the sky when Jen and I went for a walk that day. Perhaps I was just soaking in the energy of that day and my awareness was just heightened by a sense of loss, but I’m grateful for the gift of that masterpiece.
And how appropriate is it that I came across this poem that I wrote in junior high, while cleaning out my desk today:
I heard horror stories about physical therapy so I was kind of dreading the whole process after my ACL reconstruction surgery. The first visit went pleasantly enough. ”Oh, it’s not too bad,” I told my family and friends after the initial knee manipulation.
The second visit was a different story. I nearly jumped off the table when the therapist began massaging my incisions. One in particular was a bit swollen and extremely painful. “You shouldn’t be feeling this much pain,” the therapist said as she continued to press down on the incision. “Looks like you’re building up scar tissue. We have to work that out.” More pain. I held back a scream.
Then there was the famous “bending of the knee.” Despite repeated icing of the knee, mine remained swollen, making it even more difficult (and painful) to bend it. I was pretty darn proud of my 93 degree bend on the first visit.
And then I was introduced to the bike. You know that contraption– it requires more than a 90 degree bend to get those pedals going ’round and ’round. I pushed the first pedal down and tried to bend the knee to bring it back up.
Holy freaking moly! Pain! Worse than childbirth! (And I gave birth at home.)
I looked at the therapist and whimpered. ”I don’t think I can do this.”
“Just pedal slowly.” She set a timer on the bike stand. “Nine minutes.”
She stood there, watching me grimace in pain as I brought the pedal up. I felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to the knee every time I reached the top. I made it up and over, but not without shifting my hip up and riding on my other foot.
“Good! Do it again!”
There was no way out. I just closed my eyes and tried to get into that zone– the same zone that comes from hypnotherapy. The breathing. The visualization. The knee screamed with every pedal rotation. There was no way out of the pain– only through it.
Just two minutes into the physical torture on the bike, I noticed a big shift in the pain level. By the end of the nine minutes, the knee was moving ’round and ’round at a much more manageable pain level.
On the next visit, I had a friendly little competition going with the teenager on the table next to me. She had the same surgery a day before mine. So we gripped our green straps and pulled our knees back, trying not to grimace as our therapists measured our progress. I managed to reach 112 degrees, but the young one hit 115 degrees of bend.
After spending the entire weekend icing the knee, I figured I would hit those numbers easy at the next therapy session. ”107 degrees,” the therapist announced.
“You gotta be kidding me!” I said. “What number should I be at by now?”
“I’d like to see 120.”
“Fine, you want 120? I’ll give you 120.” It took several tries and a lot swearing inside my head, but I hit that magical number.
The body’s first instinct with pain is to react and withdraw. To get far away as possible from pain. To not have to feel it. But ironically, to heal from anything, to give birth to something new, pain is a necessary component to growth. This applies to just about anything in life.
Physical therapy is like life. The only way to heal, to rebirth, to move on– is by working through the pain that’s holding you back.
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” –Kenji Miyazawa
It was one of those weeks. Dishes piled high in the sink. Couch cushions skewed all over, with one of them on the floor. Paperwork in a heap in the corner of the kitchen counter. Somewhere in the middle of the paperwork pile sat three envelopes. School registrations, I reminded myself. Gotta get those school registrations sent in.
But first, I needed to jump in the shower and get myself dressed. The oldest kid had to be at football camp in 40 minutes. It was a 25 minute drive to his school. I quickly showered and headed off to the closet to grab some clothes. One look into the underwear drawer and I knew I was in trouble. All I could find were a large pile of bras, a misplaced sock and a bathing suit. My eyes turned to the laundry basket–it was over flowing. I was clearly out of underwear.
Scrounging through the drawer, I discovered bras that were past their prime. I kept them around for those painting projects that never seemed to materialize. You know, for those days where you don’t want to have a painting accident and mess up the pretty lace bras.
Digging through the underwires, my hand struck paydirt.
A thong.
Yes, a thong. A tiny scrap of material from my college days. I don’t think the hubby even remembered that I had one. Heck, I didn’t even remember that I had one.
Now keep in mind, I was zillions of pounds lighter in my college days. But here’s the thing, a thong is very forgiving of the flesh. Since there’s barely anything to cover, anyone of any size can get away with wearing them. Sure enough, I was able to slip the thing on and quickly got dressed.
By the time I dropped the kid off at school, I remembered why the tiny scrap of material went unused. It’s like having a permenant wedgie when you’re wearing it.
I went home and did laundry. The underwear drawer was quickly filled.
The thong went in the garbage.
This post originally appeared on the Chicago Moms Blog.
So, before we get into today’s post, go mosey on over to Bad Words and read Tulpen’s post: Either Way. Then come on back over and let’s talk.
Tulpen’s son, Owen, told his mom, “Don’t want to be Deaf. Want to be Hearing.”
I can relate. That’s pretty much how I felt– from the time I first began losing my hearing in elementary school until I became deaf. I can remember being able to hear–I would crawl into bed and listen to my dad tell me the story of Scamp and Tiny– two dogs that went on adventures all over town. I can also remember the day that I stopped crawling into bed– I could no longer understand what my dad was saying in the dark. I had become sick with a high fever for nearly a week and shortly after that, I had the “hard of hearing” label tacked on. I was never able to use the phone after that. The words that entered my brain were pretty much scrambled and I resorted to lipreading.
I hated the hearing aid. Hated the daily struggle to access communication. I often wished that I had normal hearing. I held back on life, thinking that “if only I had normal hearing I would do this.” Or that.
In elementary school, the kids on the bus teased me, sometimes mercilessly. I kept my eyes straight ahead or I sometimes buried myself in a book on the rides home. My best friend, Pattie, defended me on the bus. Twelve years ago, I received a letter out of the blue from one of my tormenters, asking forgiveness. He had become a born-again Christian and the teasing had weighed heavily on him over the years.
I had long ago forgiven, I just didn’t know it. The forgiveness came from the journey to acceptance– in the form of a severe whack on the head when I tripped on a wake while barefoot water skiing. I was nineteen. I could no longer hear anything without a hearing aid perched in my ears. But it turned out to be the very best thing to happen to me. I finally, after years and years of battling, finally accepted the whole me. I embraced the new journey and my world filled up with new deaf and hard of hearing friends and American Sign Language became a part of life. As for me– I was deaf– and it was okay.
Then one by one, my kids started collecting audiograms. David was nearly three, Lauren was four, and Steven was two– and then we started killing more trees and collecting IEP paperwork. And like Owen, each one of my kids has had their days when they wished they had hearing in the normal range. And when they expressed that, my heart always did a little blip. More often than not, it was a cycle– a season in their life– where they became more self-aware, or they matured, or a struggle of some kind would trigger it. The rest of the time, all was well–they would settle back into being comfortable and happy with life again.
And it might surprise some of you to know that I even have moments of self-pity when I wish I could hear. I had one of those moments while sitting at a banquet after a tournament this summer– and tears started to fall. My friend Sharon was my interpreter that night and I told her what I was feeling. I was reflecting over the whole summer of tournaments. “I wish I could hear the announcements, the conversations that flow around me, the jokes that get told on the boat– I miss out on all that stuff. And sometimes I can’t lipread some of the folks I meet…” I whined. Yes, I whined.
We are human. In moments of humaness (is that even a word?) all of us wish for something else. Thinner, taller, younger, smarter, richer–whatever it is, that darn grass is always greener somewhere else. But ultimately, we have to cultivate that little patch of green we’re standing on. We have to bloom where we are planted. Corny–yes–but it’s something I live by.
Oh, and those announcements that I wished I could hear? Well, at one of the tournaments, another barefooter said to me, “You’re lucky you can’t hear Dave (the announcer) – he goes on and on and on– sometimes I wish I could turn my ears off.”
Check out the current issue of Ability magazine, featuring “Standing on Her Own Two Feet,” which chronicles my return to barefoot water skiing. The story also features Keith St. Onge, but unfortunately, they left out Judy Myers! It was the hubby who found the link to the Today show segment that lead me to Judy Myers, who lead me to Keith and the World Barefoot Center. Life did a 180! Thank you, Keith, Judy and Joe– for turning it all around.
About a year ago, I heard about Vibram Five Fingers shoes from a couple of runners on Twitter. I was curious to see how those shoes would fit because I have extra-wide feet with bunions, and finding shoes is a nightmare for me. I picked up a pair at the Naperville Running Company and they fit– literally–like a glove. I pretty much do everything and anything in my Vibrams. Steven, my youngest kiddo, took to stealing my Vibrams every now and then and he wore them for track during the spring. When I dropped him off at camp today, I saw that he once again claimed my Vibrams on his feet.
The usual procedure for washing Vibram Five Fingers is to simply toss them in the washing machine with some towels and they come out spanking clean again. I took my Vibrams to the river with me last week and found another way to wash ‘em:
The tears were streaming down my face when I finally banged the clamp off of the old battery. The boat wouldn’t start and the old battery had somehow overheated last summer and needed to be replaced. I had a feeling that the problem wasn’t the battery– I suspected it was the starter– but I wasn’t sure. And the one person that I always counted on to help me, was no longer here.
The kids looked at me in surprise. ”What’s wrong, Mom?”
“I’m just thinking about Dad,” I explained. ”Every time there was something wrong with the boat, he was the one to fix it or to tell me what was wrong with it. I’m just missing him.”
This week, there’s been one thing after another wrong with the boat. The battery clamp broke off and I had to run to town to buy a new one. The starter was indeed the problem, and I ended up writing a check to the mechanic for that one. “Oh by the way, Mom, the gas gauge doesn’t work,” David informed me just before pulling me for a run earlier in the week. I fixed that. “Mom, the water pump isn’t working and the boat has some water in it,” he told me tonight after another barefoot run. Joe fixed the broken wire and got the pump running again.
Lately, I’ve been missing Dad a lot. The house seems empty without him. If you recall my earlier post about seeing a red-winged blackbird, then you know the story of that connection with my Dad. Last week Friday, I was doing a clinic up at the Blue Moo Lake and I was feeling a little bit anxious about being able to put together a trick run. I had struggled on the water earlier in the week at Cedar Lake and had not yet even practiced a trick run. I was floating in the water, waiting for the boat to return and a lone bird landed on the bank. I turned to take a closer look and saw that it was a…
It has been a long, cold, drawn-out spring in Chicago, so when a beautiful, warm day arrived, I decided to runwalk on the prairie path in Naperville. I didn’t get very far with running– there was a heaviness inside that I couldn’t shake. I slowed to a walk and soaked in the beauty around me. I tried to figure out why I was feeling so weighed down. I recognized that heaviness– it was the familiar feeling of stress. So many changes had occurred in such a short time. The countless trips to Michigan and the loss of my dad. The change from full time employment to part time. The additional projects I had taken on.
Out of nowhere, I started to cry. At first, I didn’t even know why I was crying. I was thankful for sunglasses and the mostly deserted path. I struggled to sort out the jumble of thoughts that were racing through my mind. The one that stood out was this: I missed my dad. I hadn’t slowed down enough in the last several weeks to allow myself to feel the loss.
A bird landed right in front of the path I was walking. When I saw the bird, I started to laugh. It was a red-winged blackbird. Because you see, up in Michigan, we had a red-winged blackbird that used to dive toward Dad’s head whenever he was out in the yard near the shore. And in all of my years in Illinois, I had never noticed a red-winged blackbird around me.
At the moment, I’m in a cranky mood. I’ve just gotten off the boat at the World Barefoot Center, hung up my wetsuit and sat down to stew a bit. Just a few hours earlier, I was pumped up, looking forward to some backward barefooting– wanting that feeling of skimming backward on the water on my feet– like I did several weeks ago.
But this is how I spent my afternoon:
Did I mention that I was a bit cranky?
I’m juggling the feelings of frustration that resulted from an afternoon of trying, trying, trying to accomplish the backward deep water start to no avail. Swampy finally pulled me off the water– there would be no more barefooting until we did some dry land practice. I grumbled, but I knew he was right– insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It was time to go back to the basics and learn again from the beginning.
“I’ve had days like that,” said Ben Groen, a skier from New Zealand. ”One day I can do my turns– and then I’ll go out there and I can’t do them.”
I’m learning some lessons on the water, and they’re not just about barefoot water skiing, they’re about life. No matter where you are with your skills, you’re going to have some days where everything lines up– and days when nothing seems to work. The gals–Kim, Judy and Claudia– remind me to have patience, that the learning curve is a steep one. Two steps forward, and sometimes twenty steps back. “You have to remember where you are in the process,” said Kim. ”You can’t compare yourself to someone who is far ahead and expect the same results. It’s a process to get there.”
Tomorrow is another day– another day to apply new lessons and develop new skills. I’ve already shifted my attitude as I ponder the day and put it in the proper perspective– because a bad day on the water– surrounded by friends on a beautiful, sunny Florida day– is a good day indeed.
Bill Shafer and cameraman, Jason Morrow from Growing Bolder TV did a great job capturing the story of how I met Judy Myers and Keith St. Onge at the World Barefoot Center. You can see my very first, sort-of-official backward barefoot start (with no shoes!)– but don’t blink, or you’ll miss me keeling right over two seconds later.
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