Category: Life

 

 

Relaxing on top… pre-fall, pre-scar

I don’t like this hike, but keep returning… my scar attaches me to it…

 

 

With all the moss and so many trails that I hike looking like this, it’s surprising that I don’t have a roadmap of white-line scars on my legs

 

While resting during a hike yesterday, with my dirty and freshly scratched up legs stretched out in front of me, my eyes were drawn to the 4-inch scar on my right calf that seems to be pointing down to my foot… that would be the foot that slipped on a mossy rock while hiking and came down on a piece of sharp granite many years ago.  Now had that thin white line ended up on my forehead or cheek, the memory of how it came to be might not conjure up the smile that it did yesterday.  It’s a gentle reminder of a fun day on Rooster Comb mountain, the same mountain by the way where  several years later, my daughter would be proposed to by my now son-in-law.  It’s a hike I do not like, but for some reason, whenever I’m in the Adirondack mountains with my sister, Susan, we do it.  We were close to the bottom and in a shaded area where slippery mossy rocks are common when I fell.  My leg was a bit of a bloody mess and once back at the lodge where we were staying, Susan suggested that maybe I should go to the hospital for stitches.  I had no idea if there even was a hospital nearby, but even if there had been, I opted out and patched myself up with a lot of bandaids and Neosporin.  Had I gotten the suggested stitches, I’m sure there would be far less of a scar, if any, but honestly, I don’t mind it a bit.  It feels like a badge of courage to me now and an ever present reminder of how much fun I have hiking with Susan.

Author Chris Cleave, in his book, “Little Bee”, says,

“A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

Once again, I survived Rooster Comb Mountain.

I love that spin on scars and have a whole lot of surviving going on on my body.  I’ve got an 8 inch “zipper” on my right side that shows that I survived the removal of my right kidney when I was 21.  I remember sitting in the doctor’s  office with my Mom by my side when he told me that my kidney needed to be removed.  My response was, “What will the scar look like and will I still be able to wear a bikini?”  Seriously?  Not even a hint of how will this affect my life, my health, my overall well-being?  At age 21, I couldn’t look beyond the scar and honestly, I was devastated.  Not with the loss of a key body part, but at the thought of a scar wrapping its way around my mid right torso.  The removal of the diseased kidney left me healthier than I was with it, by the way, and has not affected my lifestyle, health or general well-being whatsoever.  It did bring on a question or two back in my bikini  days, which like the scar on my leg, always brought on a smile – a smile because my 21-year old self has grown up and feels no shame in showing the necessary trail of the surgeon’s scalpel.

The small scar duet, one just below my left brow and the other on the upper left side of my lip are easily forgotten until at a stop light on a sunny day and I catch my reflection in the rear view mirror, and then it’s,   “Oh yea…. I remember you guys.”  They found their way to my face during a car wreck with my best friend, Susie, in high school.  A car ran a stop sign and hit us from the side.  He wasn’t going fast or it could have been a lot worse, but had I fastened my seat belt, it would have been a lot better as my face probably wouldn’t have smashed into the windshield.  Lesson learned.  The hard way.  My biggest fear that time was not the scarring (this was 4 years before the kidney came out and my attention was in the immediate, not the future) but rather, my date’s reaction when he picked me up for the Black Oak Arkansas concert later on that evening.  Looking back, I probably should have given him a head’s up as he was certainly surprised by the sorry sight that greeted him at the door. My eye was black and puffy and freshly stitched and was nearly swollen shut and my lip, also freshly stitched was so swollen that my mouth wouldn’t close all the way.  I’m surprised he still wanted to take me, let alone be seen with me and more surprised that my parents let me go!

On the same leg as the hiking incident scar is a much smaller scar that is positioned just below my knee and is a straight up and down, one inch long white line.  It is my knelt down on an exacto knife scar while wall papering my soon to be 2nd baby’s room.  I was 8 months pregnant and although I should have had stitches,  I didn’t feel I had time to go to the hospital to get them.  I was mid-way into the wallpapering project and it’s not wise to pull a nesting mother from her project. So no stitches.  I mostly blame this round of bad judgement on the hormones.  I’m not sure where all of the braincells go when you’re pregnant (the baby?), but there is definitely a period of misfiring and the closer to delivery time, at least in my case, the worse it seemed to get.  This scenario happened again when I was 8 months pregnant with my 3rd child and I sliced my palm open on a tin can lid, while trying to extract it out of the can.  That time I did get stitches… a lot of them… and without an ounce of fat on the palm of your hand, that’s a painful experience that I hope never to go through again.  Then there was the whole situation of showing up in the ER, very pregnant, and trying to explain to the rushing around staff who had me in a wheelchair headed straight up to delivery,  to NOT take me to delivery but rather to the stitching up room of the ER.  That’s my scar that I’ve been told by more than one person, messed up any future palm reading on that hand.  Well shoot.  I missed that opportunity as I’ve never had my palm read. The scar did add an extra branch to my life line, though, which could come in handy someday.

With every one of my children’s entry into the world, or pre-entry, I’ve earned a scar.  With my first born, it is a 6 inch scar in my lower abdomen where he made his entry into the world during an emergency C-section due to an rapidly lowering heartbeat.  Rather than being stitched up that time,  staples were used to close the incision.  I never thought twice about the scar and would have welcomed one on my face if that was what it took to bring him into the world safely.  I saved the staples in a box along with my hospital bracelet (and his) as it seemed important at the time. Now it seems kind of creepy to save the staples, but I still have them, which either says they still hold importance, or I need to do more cleaning and clearing out.   I remember having a friend who saved her tonsils in a glass jar filled with water after they were removed when she was 5 and I thought that was pretty cool as I only had a sore throat and some cards after my tonsils were removed for my take home gift.  I didn’t want my kidney after it was removed (and am pretty sure that is against hospital policy now), but when they told me they had to take out a rib to get to the kidney, thoughts of making art or jewelry out of that rib made me wish they had saved it for me.  Today, the scar seems to be more than enough reminder to me, without needing to hold onto the rib, which is far creepier than an envelope of staples, right?

I survived.  And the relics of those survivals are etched all over my body – my personal badges of strength, courage and maybe stupidity for not going to the hospital on some of them…

I’ve often wondered what it would be like if rather than tucked away in the depths of our heart, if we wore our emotional scars side by side to our physical scars.  Would it illicit kinder behavior to those who we don’t know but think we do when we see them yelling at their kid or throwing trash out of their car window or mistreating their animals?  If we saw the scars of all of their pain, would we act differently towards them?  Maybe it’s best they are tucked away and held where only we can feel them.  The emotional wounds do heal in time, but no doubt, they leave scars in the wake of their fading pain and every once in a while, I will get the gentle or maybe not so gentle reminder of their presence.

We’re all scarred, inside and out, but it’s in those telling marks that lies our history, our bumps in the road, our accidental lessons in life, but we survived, and no doubt, with a story to tell.

6 months work… to here…

 

Yep.  I have silver hair.  Gasp.

Not quite as dramatic from that back…but it’s in there!

 

Although I would hardly call myself brave, I do have a taste for adventure and seem to be able to find my way to it, whether looking or not, but what has many people making mention of my “bravery” has nothing to do with anything that would raise my pulse or the hair on the back of my neck. I have been called brave not for anything I’ve done, but rather for something I’ve neglected to do for the past 8 months.  I quit dying my hair and just as predicted, the tiny white line at my part has been growing into a large swath since last October.  Eight months in and I’m rocking a skunk do.  I’m flattered, surprised and somewhat amazed by people’s response to my “brave act.”  Is what I’m doing really all that brave?  I’m not sure, but I am surprised.  Who knew?  It wasn’t  a solo hike to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain or having to give a speech in class during my freshman year of college with hands shaking so much I had to set my notes down as they were becoming a distraction to myself and the class or anything to do with me and small airplanes and singing out loud to calm my nerves on my first few solo flights.  Nope.  None of that.  It was letting my hair go silver that has me earning my bravery badge.  (I do, by the way, call it silver as that sounds “younger” than gray… so maybe I’m not really all that brave after all…).

My monthly routine of sitting in a salon for a good hour and a half while my roots are painstakingly colored, followed by a wait time for the chemicals to do their work, is something I’ve been doing since I was 40 years old.  Every.  Single.  Month.  Which adds up to almost twenty years….twenty long years in the chair getting my roots painted to match the rest of my hair.  The only exceptions would be the times when I traveled for periods of time longer than a month, when creative cover ups and do it yourself kits would come into play, allowing me to buy a few weeks time before heading back into the salon for damage control.  Once, while on an extended stay in Lima, Perú, I closed myself in a tiny shared bathroom and sat on the toilet while impatiently waiting for the 20 minutes to pass, at which time I could stand under the tiny drizzle of cool water and rinse the dye out of my newly covered roots.  This was no easy feat, especially given that it was a bathroom shared by many.  I’m not sure why, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to fess up as to what was taking me so long in there and that it had nothing to do with traveler’s stomach.  I’m not sure which bothers me more today… the memory of my clandestine cover up in the small bathroom or the fact that I shrouded myself in such secrecy.  I went in with gray roots and came out with dark roots.  Seriously.  I wasn’t fooling anyone.

While at my 20 year high school reunion, 20 plus years ago,
OK, I’ve got to pause a minute here… it’s been over 20 years SINCE my 20 year high school reunion???  Holy cow.  Time flies, but hair grows slow.

Anyway, while at said reunion, one of my former male classmates made the comment to me that he was surprised that so many of the men were graying yet hardly any of the women were.  I looked at him in utter amazement and asked him if he really didn’t know that with the exception of  the few lucky ones whose hair just simply wasn’t going to go gray, most of the women in the room were dying their hair.  He looked confused and possibly disappointed and I realized then that I may have just let the proverbial dyed cat out of the bag.  It really is a secret that’s held within the sisterhood of women  who have passed their 40th birthday, otherwise, when going to the salon for my monthly procedure, I would have called it what it was, which was getting my roots dyed, rather than what I wanted people to think, which was getting my hair cut.  It’s like pulling up the dress to show everyone that your core strength has an assistant that’s helping with the flat stomach… an assistant called spanx. Coming clean, fessing up and going a la natural is a heck of a lot easier than having to fake your way through and like my hair stylist, Bill, says that when you go with your natural color, it ALWAYS will match your skin tone.  The gene pool color swatches were already in the works before you were even born and he’s right.  They do match because nature always gets it right, even if it wasn’t exactly what  you had planned on.

I’m finding myself stalking women at the grocery store who have the color of hair that I think I’m going to end up with,  simply for a visual aide for what my hair might end up like.  Sometimes I get too close and they’ll turn around and I swear they give me the tiniest nod of encouragement when they see what I’m growing on the top of my head.  OK, maybe I optimistically made that part up and they’re simply wondering who the creep is that has followed them from the produce aisle to the canned goods, but still, I’ve got to think there’s solidarity within the group for all of us who have let go of the covering up.

I’ve gotten mostly positive comments from friends and family, especially my sister, Robin, who went before me, but have had a handful of people commenting with the predictable,

“Aren’t you afraid it’s going to age you???”

I started getting gray hairs at age 35 and became a regular to the chair at age 40.  If this ages me back to 40, well, bring it on!  But seriously, put your glasses on.  The hair cannot take full responsibility for the aging component.  My face holds a road map of experiences in its lines and wrinkles, each and every one of them earned, although not all of them loved.

I’ve had dark hair for most of my almost 60 years (I went through a bald-headed Eisenhower look the first 6 months of my life),  so to begin to go light, is a pretty dang big deal – big enough that maybe it is an act of hair bravery.  This process still gives me a moment of having to catch my breath when I glance into the rear view mirror while driving and see nothing but silver and wonder who the hell is driving my car.  Exposed.  Vulnerable.  Real.  It’s the real part that’s giving me the nudge to stay with the game.  I wrote a blog post a while back about skiing naked, or at least feeling naked in a vulnerability sense.  This whole ordeal has me feeling slightly unclothed and a little bit stared at, but also kind of proud at the same time.  The slightly unclothed feeling has me texting my girl for confirmation that YES, it IS the right thing.  Thank you, Emery.

Besides the huge savings of time and money, the simple act of leaving the hair dye off the hair has become far more of a freeing gesture than I anticipated.  I’m claiming my age and the side effects that go along with the number, both good and according to some cultural norms, maybe not so good.  That being said,   I have of course reserved my right to a full reversal if the results aren’t what I anticipated, but am doubtful it will come to that, especially after the time I have invested. Unfortunately, for impatient me, this is not a TAH DUH I decided to go silver moment, but rather, is an arduously slow process and even though my hair does grow fast compared to the average, there are times I swear it is growing back into my scalp and will this project ever come to fruition?

So, slowly but surely, I’m transitioning into one more layer of authenticity at the rate of 3/4 of an inch per month.  This I know because I’ve stood at my bathroom mirror with a tape measure in one hand,  an outstretched lock in the other and a calculator doing its magic.  I’ve invested 8 months in this project and probably have another 8 months of two-toned hair before all is said and done and silver.  Call it what you want, but if calling it brave makes this whole process more exciting and please oh please a tad bit faster, than so be it….  I’m a two-toned brave girl.

A big ole thanks to Bill Harding, my supportive, encouraging, wise, and has done this before, stylist.  You got me over the transitional hump.

To be continued…

There was usually a cat tucked in there somewhere…

Although it’s been over 50 years since my grandma taught me how to knit, I can still feel her presence every time I pick up my needles.  I’m right back on her scratchy, bumpy couch, tucked in tightly under her arm while she’d guide me through the process of moving the yarn from one red plastic needle to the other.  It was magic to me; long pieces of yarn growing into something I could hold in my hands and maybe even wear on my head.  Grandma was left-handed and I was right-handed so the whole learning process was backwards and terribly confusing until I gave up on trying to learn right-handed from a left-handed teacher and simply learned the way my Grandma taught me.  Left-handed.

Last year I wrote a blog post about hands and how they are the keepers of so much of our history.   Knitting is the ultimate in hand thinking.  In their callouses, scars and imperfections lie the very rich history of creating,  which only becomes richer with experience.   Grandma’s arthritic fingers moved my young hands through a process that has become refined over many years with a lot of trial and error with things I’ve created and am very proud of and a host of projects that went the other direction and are still shoved into the back of the closet waiting for me to fix them.

It wasn’t always cool to be a knitter and the patterns available were proof as most of the end products were nothing you’d ever want to wear.  Thankfully, it has become hip and yarn stores and pattern choices are much more readily available.  Much to my surprise, there is a knit in public day in April, or KIP for those in the know, a knitting awareness week in October and a national knitting night in November as well as societies for right handed knitters, left handed knitters and a day set aside for those who love yarn.  Yea, I know… and no, I’m not a member, of any, but you’ve got to love a serious knitter.

My knitting skills started off with long strips that were made into headbands and graduated over the years to a constant stream of sweaters for my babies and toddlers.  After sitting out for several years, when I did pick up my needles again in my late twenties, I re-taught myself to knit right handed, which was much easier and far less complicated when trying to follow right handed instructions.

It has always been nurturing for me and maybe that’s because of who taught me more than what she taught me.  Seriously, I would have learned algebra at age 8 if it meant getting to be squished together on a scratchy couch with my grandma leading the lesson.  Although the hopeful outcome of a wearable woolen is what gets me to the yarn store in the first place, it truly is more of a process than product situation for me.  I’ve ended up with a lot of almost finished projects that were either way off on size or simply didn’t end up to be the project I had in my mind.  The only exception were the many baby and kid sweaters I knitted, which always ended up being the right size, at one point or another because my kids did grow and if it started out too small, there was a younger one waiting in the wings.  When my oldest was 4 or 5 he asked me when he could stop wearing the sweaters I knitted and start wearing sweatshirts like all the other kids.  And that was the end of that.  All energies then went to the daughter, who hung in there a long time with my hand knitted sweaters for her.

Everyone who knits has a story and usually those stories are about projects, both the success and the failures.  Sadly, my story is one about how my own knitting caused me tremendous public embarrassment and taught me the lesson on the importance of keeping your knitting supplies, ie yarn, a bit more organized. I know when you drag toilet paper on your shoe when you come out of a bathroom it’s called a tile comet, but what’s it called when you unknowingly drag yarn from a knitting project from your car, all the way down the sidewalk, about 3 feet high, unknowingly setting up a makeshift boundary line that’s not crossable?  And to add to the fun,  there was a sidewalk sale going on so cautious shoppers were mindful of the boundary that I unknowingly put into place while I went into a bakery to get a sandwich. Of course I, also, was being respectful of the “roped off area” as I returned to my car, until I realized it was coming from my car…and this was no short piece of yarn.  Unfortunately, the yarn boundary ran the better part of the south side of Corinth shopping center.  I’m a messy knitter who learned her lesson through embarrassment.

This meditative movement of slipping stitches made of yarn from one needle to another, hopefully yielding something wearable, is far more about the history that connected me to it in the first place than anything else and that was my Grandma, and the many hours spent next to her learning.  I didn’t care if what we were knitting was wearable or not as in my 8 year-old eyes, we were knitting love.  Plain and simple.

I finished the making the book for my friend from Ecuador yesterday.  Well almost and not quite.  Upon what I thought was the  completion, I ordered just one copy to check for mistakes then took it over for Marta to check it as well before ordering the 12 books that she wanted.  I was very pleased with the end result but given the history thus far on the project, knew not to relax just yet, a hunch that was totally correct.

Marta was standing at her front window waiting for me when I arrived, a gesture that I’ve become quite fond of, and has me on my punctual toes each time I visit.  Her living room looked like she was expecting company as she had moved all of her kitchen chairs into the room, and each chair held one of her original paintings as well as stacked, and paper clipped papers of text.  There was a system here and I knew not to question although I was somewhat  surprised as I had already reassured her multiple times that I had the paintings and the text pages in the proper order.  I thought we had already jumped that hurdle.

Inhale.  Exhale.  Patience.  Or paciencia, in Español.

She loved my “sample” hard copy book, much to my delight, yet still walked around the living room checking my page order with the stacks of paper on each chair.   She did find a couple of small mistakes, errors in her spelling on some of the Spanish text and I agreed that I would keep the book with the mistakes as my own, would make the necessary corrections then would order the 12 books she wanted.  She wanted to pay me right then and there,  but I insisted we wait until she had all 12 books in her hands and was pleased with them. We agreed to meet for lunch once she received the books and she could pay me then.  So last week, as agreed, we met at a neighborhood restaurant that she liked that ironically happened to be French and enjoyed  the lovely French cuisine while conversing in Spanish the entire time.   The language section of my brain, opened up then got confused, as I was “merci-ing”  in the middle of a totally Spanish conversation.  I felt very European.

That was last week.  Since then, my friend has found things in the book she wants to change, which means another order and unfortunately, a big expense for her.  I tried to talk her out of it as the books are not cheap, but she insists that they be perfect and said she will only publish one book in her lifetime and this was it so it just had to be perfect.  She apologized for having pushed me to get them done so quickly but said she was nervous she wouldn’t make it to her 80th birthday, a comment that I have argued more than once with her.  When the book was finished she told me she was relieved and will not worry about dying before December.  I don’t know how to say “stop over thinking the dying stuff” in Spanish but gave her a smile that communicated my thoughts and she smiled back.  I’m starting to understand her humor and she mine.

That was a few weeks ago and the same process of ordering, proofreading, correcting and re-ordering has now happened, twice.  Last week, I think we finally reached a point where we’re both satisfied, but my fingers remain crossed and my breath held.

This has been far more of an ordeal than I ever thought it would be when I signed on, but it has been about so much more than a book of paintings and text.  Last week I spent 2 hours conversing in Spanish with my new friend and felt so comfortable with it that at one point I actually forgot that I was slogging through a language that wasn’t my mother tongue.  

As I was driving home from that last visit,  I realized that the many trips to her house to do and re-do were far less about the book that we were jointly creating and far more about the friendship that was developing.  I think about Marta and I smile.  It’s been a synchronistic connection that I think we both needed and the timing was impeccable.

The book, by the way, is a lovely story which showcases Marta’s love for her children as well as her love for trees.  She represents each of her 6 children as golondrinas, a bird that is common to Ecuador, who one by one leave the nest and find their tree to begin their lives as adults.  Many different trees are represented, including a saguaro cactus, which represents her son who lives in Arizona.  One of the paintings shows one of the birds returning to the mother with the text “trata otra vez” (he tried again).  I was that kid.  I get it.  No doubt her children will be very touched by the paintings and the story that accompanies them, especially given that they haven’t yet learned that she know how to paint! 

Sometimes getting to the prize at the end of the proverbial tunnel isn’t what you thought it would be.  I’ve got a new book to add to my growing collection of books I’ve made, but the gain here is not in the pages of that book but rather was the added gift of an unexpected friendship. There is always a purpose behind our chance meetings with people and some of those  relationships continue as they are needed in one way or another, while others fall away.  I’m hopeful that the friendship I’ve found with Marta will continue far beyond the pages of a book. 

Quito, Ecuador and my friend, Marta’s home town

Last night,  over a pizza with extra mushrooms and pepperoni, I carefully listened to the life stories told to me in Spanish by a woman from Ecuador, who at the tender age of 20, moved to Kansas City with her Ecuadorian, soon to be doctor, husband.  After having 7 children with him,  she divorced and raised the children as a single mom, remaining in Kansas City.   She’d only interject with English when she’d see my head tilt and brows knit in confusion over a word or a phrase, then seamlessly, would fall right back into her native tongue.  When the waitress came over to our table to see if we needed anything and I quickly responded in Spanish, my immediate reality hit me and I had to marvel at the beauty of sharing these moments, with this women, in Spanish, in Leawood,  KS and over a pizza.

I met this lovely women a few years ago as she was my teacher at an evening Spanish class I was taking. After the 3rd class, she called me at home and told me she thought I was too advanced for the class and would I rather come to her house and just converse once a week?  Of course I would! I’d much rather speak Spanish while sitting on someone’s couch than at a desk with a notebook in front of me! And that’s how I got to know Marta.  After a few months of weekly Spanish at her house, I ended up taking a trip to her native Ecuador with her and 3 other students.   It was interesting  getting to see the country through her native eyes and frustrating at the same time as they were 78 year-old eyes and we didn’t exactly share the same philosophies on travel and adventure and how many more museums to we have to, I mean get to go to today??  But that’s another story.

I didn’t hear from her after the trip until a month ago when she emailed me and asked for my help with a project she was working on.  Her children are throwing her an 80th birthday party in December and to thank them, she was in the process of putting together a  short story of her life told in paintings and brief text that she wanted to make into books and could I please offer up the tiniest bit of help with the project?  I hesitated, and with good cause, but hung onto the words tiny or “muy pequito” more specifically.  I really didn’t know Marta well as she was fiercely private so was both surprised and flattered with her request.  Flattery won.

I agreed to meet her at her house, a short 10 minutes from mine, where she would show me what she was working on and how I could help.  In my mind, I thought it would be a giving an opinion on fonts or text placement kind of thing,  which I was more than happy to help with.  I’ve got to add that when I returned from Ecuador, I made a book of photos from the trip with some text and gave a copy to Marta, so any hopes of saying I didn’t know how were lost on that piece of history.   When I got there, she took me to her spare bedroom/office where she had 20 8 1/2 by 11 sized paintings carefully laid out on the sofa bed, all of them with the similar theme of trees, birds and a lot of blue sky.  They were quite lovely and all hand painted by Marta, who told me she taught herself to paint on the heels of this project.  Inhale.  Exhale.  It was far more than an opinion she wanted and I was in too deep to walk away.  She begged, she pleaded, she insisted on paying me for the work, which at that point, seeing the size of the project, I already had a number in my mind to charge her.  I looked at her standing proudly in front of the 20 paintings that depicted her life, carefully placed on the bed as a display for me and wondered how in the world I could say anything but yes.  Yes, of course I will help you.

She was so excited that I said yes and  began to explain how she wanted the book by showing me her handwritten copies of stapled and stacked papers, far more confusing than it needed to be, then explained how she learned to paint, again, far more explanation that I needed, but I was committed at that point,  so let go of my need to grab the explanation and be on my way, and  allowed myself to be present in a moment that was not just about me making a book.  There was something else in the makings here, and although not quite sure what that something was, I was willing to stay the course and find out.

I knew I’d be there until next Tuesday if I didn’t tell her I had to be somewhere else, so with the paintings and the papers, all organized into two folders,  we said our goodbyes and I almost made my exit when Marta came running out the front door and stopped me and handed me a lucite in-box from her desk, insisting that I put the paintings, the paintings that were safely tucked into a folder, into the box for the drive to my house.  She said they’d be safer that way.

While driving home, I glanced over at the clear lucite box that contained a 79 year-old woman from Ecuador’s life story, told in paintings and brief text, that was riding shot gun in my car and knew I had made the right decision.  This gift, created for her children and to be given to them on her 80th birthday celebration,  no doubt was going to be a gift for me as well, and to that, both out loud and to myself, I said gracias.

My first task at hand was to photograph the paintings, which had given me the most angst about the project as I didn’t want to lose one brushstroke in the copying process, but they turned out beautifully and I began the process of digitally putting them into the book format, along with her pages of text.  The ease of the project ended quickly when I got an email from Marta saying she wanted all of the paintings back because she wanted to make the birds darker, which were in every painting and represented important pieces of her life.  I knew there was no arguing with her so told her I’d be over “around noon” on the following day.  I pulled into her driveway at 12:10 and noticed her standing at the front window waiting.  My irritation with her request that seemed unfounded, melted at the sight of her anxiously waiting for me.  It made me think of my grandparents who would drive an hour to see me dance in a 10 minute half-time performance in my high school gym.  They always looked little and vulnerable and more excited than anyone else in the room to see me.  I found myself more than willing to hear Marta’s explanations of the small changes she wanted to make and how she was going to make the birds darker in all 20 of the paintings.  I’m finding my Spanish again with each visit and she’s finding someone to use her Spanish with and I think in the process, we’re both unexpectedly finding a friendship. 

After about a week of working on the book,  and two more trips to her house with worries and suggestions, I brought over the final copy via my computer for her to look at before ordering.  She was thrilled!  Well… mostly.  There was one painting that she wanted to tweak just a little bit and then I could come back the next day and get it.  Or, I suggested, the tweaks could be done as I waited then I could carry the wet painting home in my car, oh so carefully.  She hesitated and said she’d do it now and I could take it home with me and in the meantime, would I like to go eat pizza with her tonite at a pizza place nearby that she liked?  My first thought was to say no, I have to go, but then thoughts of her sitting by herself at a trendy and likely busy pizza parlor came to mind and I graciously said yes, of course yes.  It was over pizza that I heard about Marta and her seven children and both her happiness with being here and the longing for her Ecuador.  I am both blessed and honored to be a very small part of the celebration of this dear woman’s 80th birthday.

The warmth of such an interesting and delightful evening quickly faded when Marta emailed me later that night and said she wanted all of the text size changed as larger text is just nicer to read.  She didn’t seem to understand that the actual book would be larger than my computer screen but that didn’t matter.  She wanted it changed and needed me to come by her house, at my convenience, of course, ASAP,  so she could explain.  She ended the email telling me that because she had shared her history and her family’s history with me, “we are now friends.”

Marta (on the right) with her childhood friend and me in Cuenca, Ecuador

 And so, with my new friend directing me, I continue to work on this project, that in reality was completed a while ago, while realizing that this is less about the book and far more about what is going on between Marta and I during the process of making this book.  These really are the moments,  wrapped up in a package so cleverly disguised that it hardly seemed like a gift, let alone one I’d want to unwrap.  It has been the unexpected treasure of friendship inside wrappings of frustration and annoyance,  that I never saw coming.  For that, I am grateful and say gracias,  muchas gracias mi amiga, Marta.

To be continued…

My front yard has become a construction zone and I should really wear a hard hat when going to my car, which as of yesterday, and until further notice, is parked several houses down the street from my house.  My driveway is no longer accessible and with that, I lost my garage.  Mail delivery is iffy and my overly full recycle bin was finally returned to my garage in the same position that I hauled it out in as I got tired of waiting for it to be emptied.  I can hardly blame either the mail truck or the recycle truck for not making their way down my street.  It takes a brave soul.  This is what happens to homeowners when their old neighborhood gets a below the surface facelift and it’s out with the old pipes and in with the new.  That alone, is helping me stay positive about the whole mess of a situation, but when trying to get to my house yesterday and having to quickly change from drive to reverse because a fire truck was backing down the street just feet in front of me, my  positivity started to wane.

I asked the fireman, who was headed to my car, what was going on and was everyone OK and am I really going to have to back down the street to the busy road I just turned off of?

“A major gas line was broken a block from here… down there on the corner… sure does take patience to live on this street these days, huh?  And no, we’ll move the truck so you can get by.”

Thank you, fireman.  Yes, it does and I sure did appreciate the acknowledgement of that.

As I was making my way through the tight squeeze around the fire truck,  I realized that “a block from here and down there on the corner” was, of course, my house.  Sometimes all you can do is shake your head, be grateful that the firetruck was called and leave candle lighting on my porch for another time.  I’m still scared (although they said it was fixed and I couldn’t smell gas).  The whole gas line breakage has resulted in a hole the size of a swimming pool in the front corner of my yard.  I’m not even sure it could still be called a hole.  A trench, perhaps?  Whatever it is, there’s a deep end that could certainly support a high dive as it was a few feet deeper than any of the men working in it – my estimates from my kitchen window said 10 feet and once all the workers had left and the coast was clear, I stood on the edge of the pit and without scaling my way down, 10 feet deep seemed about right.

 

THIS is the corner of my yard…

 

No worries… there’s a plastic net fence around it for safety.  This would be a pretty ugly fall in the dark of night…

Patience.  I’m trying to find it, keep it, put it into action.

The initial work involved replacing the 75 year old gas lines to my house, which meant there was a pretty steady stream of workmen traipsing through my house and into my basement to do the work, have their work checked, and light my hot water heater, followed by a few rounds of shutting the gas off and relighting the heater.  They were in my house often enough that I felt like I should at least offer them a cup of coffee or maybe a piece of toast.   Only thoughts.  The good news is that the work has totally moved away from the inside of my house so the workers are no longer in and out,  but the bad news is that my yard seems to be the headquarters and where all of the really big machinery seems to be hanging out.

I know having to back up those big huge machines to the nearest side street so that anyone who lives in this chaos zone can make their way to their houses has got to be frustrating for the workers and has me being a whole lot more thoughtful about how many times I leave my house, knowing that I’ll have to weave my way through the mess to get home.  Three weeks ago I was making eye contact, followed by a quick nod and a smile.  I figured it was the least I could do to offer my encouragement for no doubt a difficult job.  I quit that last Monday when at 7 a.m. my house was shaking so hard from the concrete smashing that was going on in front of my house,  that I was sure photos were going to start falling off the walls.  That, along with the noise and the dust that has enveloped my house and has left all horizontal surfaces in my house coated so thick that you could write your name on it,  has my smile waning a bit.  Just as well to keep eye contact out of it.  I don’t want to be “that” person who is in continual complaining mode but given what my front yard looks like, I truly feel like I’m taking one for the team here and feel totally justified.  Still, best to just keep on moving and keep my facial expressions out of it.

Most people have friend’s cars parked in front of their house… not me!  I’ve got KOMAT’SU parked in front of my house!

 

The pipes have to be stored somewhere while digging the trenches where they’ll eventually be… my side yard seemed to be the best choice…

 

Just random stuff in my yard…

Throughout this whole process, I do have to think of how much worse it could be.  My neighbor has a 9 month-old baby, who probably hasn’t had a decent daytime nap for 3 weeks (the noise is a constant).  Then there’s the danger element… if ANY of my kids were of “that” age, it would sure be hard to keep them out of that enticing canyon that seems to be growing in my front yard, let alone any curious pets.  For that, I’m grateful, as the flimsy plastic fence hardly acts as a barrier.

Every time I see this, I want to steal it.  I’m not sure why.

I suppose the clincher to all of this should be that a short 3 months ago, I had  my old and very crumbling driveway replaced with a brand sparkling new one, something that I’ve put off since I moved to this house 4 years ago because driveways are not cheap, nor a fun way to spend your money.  It was removed to the first joint this morning, as was everyone else’s on my side of the street.  I couldn’t watch.  I’ve been assured multiple times (because that’s how often I’ve asked) that the section will be replaced with a driveway of the same or better quality.  For now, I’m believing them until I see otherwise.  It’s keeping me sane and a whole lot calmer than I could be given the situation.

Patience.  Inhale.  Exhale. (being mindful on the inhale as I live in a cloud of dust right now…).  This will end up good and I truly believe that.  Besides, who gets to actually see what lives 8 or 9 feet under their street?  There’s a whole other world under there!  That’s a start…

 

I fell in the mud two weeks ago and have been wallowing in it ever since. Sometimes you have to step back a few feet to gain perspective and then again, sometimes it’s simply just best not to look.  This would be one of those times.  I got a glance,  and it wasn’t pretty.

When your day starts with 2 hours of binging on Breaking Bad before the coffee pot’s even emptied… well it’s a pretty good indicator as to the direction the rest of the day is going to go.  I think I need about 4 hours of a PBS or maybe a Brady Bunch cleanse to counteract the effects of Breaking Bad. The show truly makes me feel like I need sunshine, some fresh fruit and maybe a long bath.

And then there’s the whole shirt thing.  Today is day 12 wearing the same shirt that I was wearing when I went shoulder first into the mud.  I’m teetering between being totally disgusted with the rate at which my personal standards have gone south and how easily I’ve adapted to the whole decline. Something about it makes me sad… or is it proud?  I may not be physically up to the challenge of a multi-day backpacking trip… yet…but I feel I’ve made a lot of headway in other areas that will come in handy on multiple days on the trail.  I’m over the hygiene hump.  I crested it about last Friday.

That was my morning, but it got better, even with my wallowing in the mud in an overly worn shirt and with too much Breaking Bad in my system for that early in the day… but I digress…

I spent a big chunk of my day in the KU orthopedic lobby (thanks, Robin) waiting to hear if all of the not moving my shoulder by leaving both my shoulder AND my shirt in tact, fearing still, that one false move and I’m back to square one, has been a fruitful commitment. I’m very happy to say that the doctor told me that things looked very good, no surgery necessary,  and I could downgrade to a simple sling and,

“You can change your shirt…”
(it may have come up in the conversation that the shirt had been worn for a “few” days, or more accurately, longer than the length of most yoghurt’s sell by dates.

He (he being the Dr.) did ask me quickly in between his transcribing two nurses who stood behind rolling computers, how I had broken my shoulder.  I was SO glad to be able to tell him something that in my opinion is legit….

I fell in the mud while hiking.

Where?

Colorado…Frisco, to be exact.

Oh. nice… at least you had a nice view.

I’m so glad I didn’t have to tell him I fell off of a small ladder perched on top of a leather ottoman so I would have the height I needed to hang some art work.  Sadly, I know this from experience, but it was in Frisco, so I did have a nice window view.  I swear by a smelly black shirt that’s heaped in the corner of my closet, that those days are over.  Really.

So..my wallowing in the mud time is over and I’ve climbed out of my hole, have put on a clean shirt and am on my way to happier days.  I’m not quite ready to find my gratitude or the silver lining in all of this as my shoulder still hurts too much to find my resolve there, but soon, I’m sure.  In the meantime,  I have found a new appreciation for shoulders that work in full range and are far more awed by seeing a shoulder in motion these days than I am by lean runner legs, chiseled abs or cut arms as a working shoulder is a far more useful goal for me right now.  Oh to do a down dog again….

But for now, just one more Breaking Bad…it’s an open bag of chips and I can’t seem to keep my hand out of the bag… then I’ll do some PBS or Brady Bunch counteracting.

New shirt, new sling, new attitude… the hair still needs some work though…

Oh yea and the truth on where I ended up on the black shirt lies somewhere between Emery’s worries of our separation anxiety and Robin thinking I should burn it.  It will be washed, twice, then hung in the back of my closet for posterity, or something like that…

Today is day 7 of my broken shoulder, which without doing any math, adds up to 7 days of wearing the black tee shirt.  My daughter, Emery, is worried about separation anxiety when the two of us eventually will go our separate ways, and my sister, Robin, insists that I will never want to see, let alone wear, the shirt again and will likely lay it to rest in the garbage can.  The truth, I’m guessing,  lays somewhere in between.  Out of pure exasperation, on around day 4, I did take scissors to my sports bra that had been along for the ride since day one,  and was able to make enough one-handed cuts to pull it out my right sleeve.  If this is too much information, I’m sorry.  My life kind of feels like a too much information situation these days.  I need to vent.

Before any judgements are made, and I would hardly blame you, I have been washing my shirt right along side all my other parts, as I’m still wearing it as much as I’m wearing my left arm, which I now wish I could have dropped off at the emergency room and picked up when it was healed.  I guess you could say my shirt has become a part of me.  Would it help if I added that it is a quick dry shirt and people who backpack, the Colorado Trail for example, would wear the same shirt for a whole lot longer?  Isn’t that right, Lexi Schmidt??  In truth, my justifications here are much more directed to myself than they are to my audience.  I came to that realization while sitting in a bank lobby yesterday morning.  It was there, while seated on the other side of of a highly polished, mahogany desk, that I realized I had mustard on my four times bathed shirt and it’s possible that I did not smell petal fresh.  OK, it’s more than possible.  An odor that might be similar to day 4 or 5 on the trail comes to mind, but I’ve not gotten confirmation on that.  Robin did lean in pretty closely though and assured me that I didn’t stink, but that was 3 days ago.  She did, however, tell me that the fingernails on my left hand still looked kind of muddy, which sadly is true.  Thank goodness for sisters, who will tell you what you need to hear and will wipe your tears afterwards. She must not have noticed the mustard.

How is it that the mustard stain didn’t show up in the mountains of CO, which is where the consumption took place, but did show up in the lobby of Commerce Bank two days post consumption?  Did the two storied windows, high ceilings, large commercial art installations and hushed tones bring an awareness that simply went unnoticed while in the more rugged, rough and tumble mountain environment?  Of course once you notice something then try to ignore it, not look at it, pretend it’s not there, it seems to explode, right before your very eyes.  I wanted the neatly, unstained banker to ask about my injury, so I could give some credibility to the contraption that seemed to be wearing me, but he didn’t and I didn’t want to be THAT girl who couldn’t wait to share my tale of woe.  I was asked by everyone I passed in CO, or so it seemed, what had happened to my arm, or more specifically, which sport played a role in the injury?  A slinged arm, a braced knee or a supportive crutch are common sight in my neck of the mountains and the curious asking is as much about gleaning information on trail conditions as it is to offer empathy.  Given the bruised visual aide, perhaps the banker was simply being professional and even thoughtful to avoid the subject, which could have just as easily been the result of an angry boyfriend, drunk brother-in-law or any anger-fueled ruckus as far as he was concerned..

I’m feeling vulnerable.  I can’t tie my shoes, button or zip my jeans (at least donning yoga pants makes me feel a little post-workout”ish”) and I can’t pull my hair back into a ponytail by myself.  My long, curly hair in this current KS post rain humidity is …well it’s not pretty, or small and although asking for help is not an easy task for me, asking someone to tie back my hair is such a necessity right now.  It’s been a day at a time situation that I’ve lucked out on so far with friends or family who have dropped by (thank you, Rhonda…).  But if/when luck doesn’t show up, I’m all in for waiting for my mailman (who is a woman) and will ask her.  My pride is waning.  So is my ego.

Still…

As far as the black tee shirt goes, frankly, I’m afraid to take it off.  My physical therapist friends have given me the instructions on removal, which is bad arm through the sleeve first…or was it good arm first?  Whichever way, I’m obviously not ready for the task.  Besides, the immobilizing sling would have to come off first, which scares me even more.  I’m a good patient to the point of flirting with being a bit neurotic, and if the ER doc told me to keep it immobilized, well then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.  He didn’t tell me to shower daily, change out of that black tee and quit eating stuff with mustard on it, or that’s exactly what I would be doing.

I know this could have been a lot worse and I did declare on my last post that I only needed another 24 hours or so of complaining, which was at least 4 days ago.  I think compromised hygiene in the burbs simply isn’t as acceptable as it is in the mountains, when assumptions of “just off the trail” could be made, and will therefore blame my current rants to hygiene issues, or lack thereof. A little shirt scrubbing in the shower and a tie back on this unruly hair and I’ll be as good as new.  Well… kind of.

This is probably a creepy addition to my post, but my friend, Rhonda thought the colors were beautiful and snapped this photo.  Sadly, the lighting hardly does it justice,  An unexpected silver, I mean purplish black, lining.

 

I bought a necklace a few summers ago while visiting in Frisco – a silver disc with tree branches on it.  I liked the simple lines.  The paperwork inside the box said the charm represented resiliency.  It could have stood for a whole lot of other things – love, courage or hope, but I was glad it was resiliency as that seemed to resonate with me.  It reminded me of the swaying tree branches in the strong Kansas winds and how it’s the winds that develop the tree’s strong lateral root system. The following summer, I found a charm of similar size with a small piece of turquoise in the center and the words “protect this woman”  encircling it.  I figured that given  the amount of time I was spending alone on the trails,  the silver talisman couldn’t hurt. For the last year these two charms have dangled around my neck, offering me both protection and resilience, or so I like to think.

 

My resiliency has been challenged after a bad fall I took while hiking a few days ago.   I fell in the mud.  Just typing that makes me want to laugh for some reason.  I mean really…  falling in the mud?  I broke the fall with my shoulder and am now wishing my wrist would have done the breaking,  as I’d be in less pain, but I really had no say in the matter.  A week earlier, a friend had told me that being able to get up without using your arms was a good indicator of overall strength and progression of aging.  I thought about that while laying in the mud and contemplating my transition to vertical.  Either my core strength with the possible help of one arm was going to get the job done or I was going to be the woman “who had fallen and couldn’t get up.”  I didn’t linger long on that decision and drug myself out of the mud and onto upright via my core, a small victory that was desperately needed.

the calm before the storm…

the “storm”

I also pulled my phone and sunglasses out of the mud and cleaned them off best as I could with my hands as my clothes were covered in mud.  To my children who make fun of my phone because it has not one but TWO protective coverings on it, this is why.  I did make myself sit down on a nearby log to collect my wits, survey the damage and take a few minutes to put my head in my muddy lap and cry before making the two mile journey home.  I’m not sure what concerned me more….what I had done to my shoulder?  or how quickly my plans for the rest of the day, the rest of the week and possibly the rest of the summer had changed in one quick slip of the foot. I was a walking mud mess that couldn’t make eye contact out of my mud smeared sunglasses with the couple of people who passed me on bikes.  I just hoped they had make the assumption that I had just participated in a Tough Mudder Run.  Probably not, but it made me feel better.

By the time I got home, I was in quite a bit of pain, and the only way I could hold my arm was across my chest,  with my hand on my heart, as if I was pledging allegiance.  And I did.  To never hike in mud again.

My fear was as great as my pain…what had I done to my shoulder?  Was my summer ruined?  How was I going to manage? I thought about a woman who I was standing behind in line at the Gap a few weeks earlier who was wearing a heavy duty sling on her arm and was sharing her horror stories of pain with the man who was ringing her up who had experienced the same injury and had worn the same sling.   I remember more of their shared words of pain than what I purchased that day.  Certainly ice and a couple of Tylenol would put me back together again, wouldn’t it?

Webster online dictionary defines resilient as:

“Being able to become strong, healthy or successful again after something bad happens; being able to return to original form after being pulled, stretched or compressed”

I know, because for some odd reason, looking up that definition was the second thing I did when I got home. The first thing I did was take a bath,  leaving my shirt on, as I had no idea how it was going to come off without scissors, which I was not going to attempt one handed.  Besides, just thinking about maneuvering my arm out of the sleeve was painful.  It got washed right along side my muddy legs and arms.  The sports bra, I figured I’d just wear for the rest of my life or until this, whatever this was, was healed.

To Webster’s definition of pulled, stretched or compressed, I’m going to take liberties and add broken, because that’s what the doctor in the ER later told me.  I fell in the mud and broke my humerus, or my funny bone. As soon as this stops hurting, I’m really going to laugh about that.

This experience has tested my patience, exposed my vulnerability and has pushed me to do things that I’m very uncomfortable with, mainly asking for help (thank you, Karen and Lisa for stepping in before I had to ask ).  It has also given me appreciation for the very simplest of tasks that I clearly took for granted before.  Who would have thought to be grateful for being able to put deodorant on or file fingernails on both hands and not just the injured hand?  I miss being able to perform the simple task of changing my shirt  (yep, still donning my accident shirt and of course the sports bra that I will wear forever. )  I’m pushing the boundaries here with my camping hygene, less the tent or campfire, but have no immediate plans to venture out in public at this point so feel justified.   I miss typing with two hands and am finding that this solo-handed hunt and peck method feels like a foot on the brakes to my stream of consciousness, not to mention the whole two-step capitalization process.  I miss being able to tie my hair back…a few more days and I’m going to look like the dark-haired version of Emery and Miles dog, Olive, who is about as close to a dog with dreads as I’ve ever seen.  I’m tired of wearing yoga pants because I can’t get my jeans on and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to zip them.  Oh yea, and I miss yoga.

My necklace with the resilient and protection charms, is in my purse where the nurse put it before my x-rays,  no doubt with a new tangle or two,  which I wouldn’t be able to untangle anyway and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to fasten the clasp, so in my bag it will stay.   One thing that a broken shoulder doesn’t seem to have affected is my ability to whine.  Sorry, but I feel like I’ve got at least another 24 hours of stomping my feet and saying,

“Dammit I want to climb a mountain, zip up jeans, ride my bike, tie my hair back and carve out a piece of watermelon to eat.”

I cried this morning when I realized that I had to add putting on deodorant to my growing list of “no can do’s.”  Sometimes you’ve just gotta cry.

Just 24 hours… then I will be ready to back up and look at the big picture, think about the lesson and move on with the healing.

One of my friends compared me to a bird with a broken wing, which is exactly how I feel while perched in my bed with a blue-skyed mountain vista that seems to be beckoning.   Now is my “lay me in a shoebox with a Kleenex blanket to heal my broken wing” time.

just like the woman at the Gap was wearing…

Resilient?  I’m not sure.  I think I’ll have to wait and see what my return to original form after being fractured looks like for my answer.