lost

last week amid the much publicized deaths of michael jackson, farrah fawcett, and billy mays thousands of other mothers, fathers, sons and daughters quietly lost their lives. one of whom was a friend of my mom's, ken.

he lost consciousness and drove into a tree. perhaps a heart attack, perhaps a stroke - something that prevented him from touching the brakes. ken never woke up after the collision and today he passed away.

he had just retired a few months ago from a job that mom said sucked the life out of him. every year she said he looked grayer.. his skin in addition to his hair. he clung to a hope that he could make a difference and improve things in a broken and corrupt system, but in the end he gave it all away and the only thing changed was him. less creative, less happy, less fun, less alive.

i didn't know this man that my mom cried over this morning. but in another way i did. when she described the people for whom he worked, the unrecognized and ineffective efforts he made there and the way it drained him i saw myself.

myself over the past six to eight months.
myself blindly clinging to threads of hope.
myself losing respect for myself.

i'm sad for my mom and the people who were close to her friend ken. my heart breaks for his heart break and now theirs. but i choose to take his story and use it as a reminder that i was losing much more each and every day than i lost on friday, when i lost my job.

d: ken's creative energy redeployed.. in me
b: all is not lost.
g: i lost my job.

seed

a couple of years ago my mom expanded her house, off the front porch. there was a huge holly bush growing against the house that had to be cut down and removed. it was dug up and the roots sprayed with a weed killer. then an eight inch concrete slab was poured on top of it.

today we noticed a six inch sprig of holly that had pushed up between the slab and the house. there isn't a visible crack there and i can't imagine any sunlight permeating the eight inches of cement, but the holly bush is there nonetheless.

i finished the Inner Game of Tennis today, sitting by the pool. the last chapter was dedicated to applying the Inner Game principles to life off the court. i can't help but think that if you haven't already seen the applications by that point in the book, it's a lost cause. i've had self one making lists of things for self two to take over ever since chapter 1. after all, self one is good at lists.

i've found though that self two is really where the power is. not just for tennis, but for all sorts of things.. things as routine as cooking, where self one wants a recipe and self two can improvise and come up with something tasty; or working out, where self one wants a prescribed regimen and self two can push me harder and more thoroughly just by feel.

and of course in my writing... my journals are written by self one. here, self two writes. generally by the end of the day i have a couple of emails sitting in my inbox from self one. they say things like, 'guillain barre. tiptoe to heel.' or 'ladders'. just a couple of key words to jog a train of thought i had when not at my keyboard. and then i sit down and scroll through the emails from myself and self two picks the one that feels right.. and that's how it works for me.

so, today when i read about getting in the 'zone' i thought about the book i'm about to write. and i realized i don't have to know the entire story right when i start chapter one. i don't have to write a chronology or an outline. i don't have to lay out the characters' life stories in order to start their story. i can simply turn the project over to self two and let it flow. duh.

self two knows what to do. it has within it all the creativity and instinct and drive of that holly bush.

d: self two, it's story-time.
b: self one is stepping out of the way.
g: a seed of an idea pushing through the concrete.

up

I'm lucky
I'm lucky
I can walk under ladders
Yes I'm so lucky
That I'm as lucky as me...

~excerpted from I'm Lucky by joan armatrading

in high school i took several summer trips with my youth group to the appalachian mountains where we did construction work, insulating and weatherizing needy homes. one summer in west virginia we were hanging board and batten siding. we'd nail up two boards and then a narrow strip of wood on the seam. the house my group was working on was built on the side of a steep hill and i remember rigging up some elaborate scaffolding to then place our ladders on. looking back, i can't believe the chaperones let us do that, but maybe our cavalier teenage bravado rubbed off on them somehow. i spent the entire week up a precariously balanced ladder with a hammer in my hand.

in college, my friends and i found a ladder on a sidewalk behind some rarely used buildings. we propped it up on a single story building adjacent to the auditorium and climbed up on the flat-roofed building. from that building the auditorium roof's lower edge was level to the one we were on and only a 'few' feet away. with a short running start, we were able to clear the opening and land on the roof of the clay shingled auditorium. climbing to the center peak of that building then afforded a birds-eye view of the campus and starry sky.

one night we went in search of our ladder and didn't find it there. we opted to use the ladder-like venting on the side of the building instead. our improvised ladder still took us up.

when my house was just my house for the first time, after a long-term relationship ended, painting all the walls and buying new furniture became my number one priority. i hired painters to come in and paint the bulk of the walls because the main living spaces were over two stories high.

there were ladders everywhere. huge ladders. ladders that were free-standing like an A frame, but then had a single projecting ladder up from the center. extension ladders on every available wall. ladders propped up over the staircase. i had to walk under two ladders to get from the front door to the kitchen and under another one to get to my bedroom. those ladders painted the way to my independence.

over the past three days, i've had the word ladder said to me at least three separate times and have run across imagery and actual ladders at least as many times over. makes me wonder...

ladders are tools.
ladders are transportation.
ladders are support.
ladders are promotion.

but really i see the ladder as a sign of hope. of certainty in something higher...
i see the ladder as a path up.
and up is where i'm going.

d: rungs upon rungs to take me up.
b: i am lucky, so lucky!
g: simple metaphors and simple messages.

tiptoe

a few days after my seventh birthday i woke up and didn't go into the kitchen for breakfast, despite the increasingly frustrated calls from mom requesting my presence. i didn't go in because when i put my feet on the floor, i couldn't walk. my legs simply gave out. mom suspected i was joking and was reasonably irritated and impatient. mornings are hectic enough without hijinks, i imagine she was thinking.

i wound up in the arkansas children's hospital where they poked and prodded and watched me like a lab rat in a maze trying to figure out why an otherwise healthy seven year old would wake up and suddenly be unable to walk. the general consensus was that it was an unusual autoimmune disorder, guillain-barre syndrome, which generally comes on fast and goes away slow. it causes paralysis starting at the feet and working its way up the body. the cause: usually unknown.

i remember 'pacing' the hall of the children's hospital for all the medical students and residents to scratch their heads. the way i walked with little to no strength in my legs was peculiar. instead of the usual heel to toe, i started my steps on my tiptoes. and then my heel set down weakly and awkwardly. the doctors would chide, 'heel to toe! heel to toe!' as though i had chosen to be deliberately contrary.

tiptoes: tentative

i find that i still go down stairs on my tiptoes. i don't think that everyone else does, but maybe they do. sometimes i find that it puts me off balance, precariously leaning down the stairs as i tread on them, imagining a headlong fall.

tiptoes: tottering

and i've always been one of those people who can't squat down flat-footed. i wind up on my toes when i get down to floor level. i'd be a terrible baseball catcher, landing on my butt with every catch i'm certain.

tiptoes: tenuous

today my calves are killing me. i worked them out hard on thursday night and the soreness has really caught up to me. i don't mind though. for some masochistic reason i enjoy those tiptoe exercises and find the tightness there to be very gratifying.

tiptoes: tighten

and when haley kisses me i usually reach up on my toes. it's not intentional and our height difference isn't that significant, but it just happens as i try to get closer to her.

tiptoes: trembling

with time as my healer, i eventually recovered from the childhood guillain-barre. the only remaining evidence of my brief paralysis is a permanent loss of my patellar reflex. no matter how many times i'm tapped on the knee with that rubber hammer, nothing happens. that's a rather inconsequential effect in my life, only noticed at annual physicals. but the awareness i have about my tiptoes is undoubtedly related.

today i am tiptoeing. i am trembling and teetering. i am tenuous and tentative. i am tightening and tottering. but i have experience with suddenly paralyzing mysteries and i know that my freshly pedicured tiptoes are stronger than they look.

d: heel-toe, heel-toe. in due time.
b: no knee-jerk reflexes for me.
g: tiptoeing produces strong calves.

200/20

i didn't get the job. but i did get an answer. and i think that's what i really wanted anyway.

there are lots of caveats and provisions and potentialities wrapped up in the closure, but at the end of the day, it's still closure.

lesson from mom many years ago: you don't have to be given closure by someone else, you can simply take it for yourself. doors close from both sides. and wouldn't you know, she was right. so why i waited and waited to get this closure on a job that has been growing less attractive day by day, i don't know.

the little voice in my head was getting louder.. pointing out the qualities on the perfect-job-list that this one would fall short of... pointing out the lack of respect i've been shown in the process.. pointing out the mad desire to escape i felt every day when i walked into the office.

but now, hindsight being 20/20 and all that, i am grateful that the little voice was there, creating some emotional distance from the idea even if i didn't consciously listen or acknowledge it. i know that is allowing me to keep my energy high and positive. i think i could count the number of minutes today that i've felt angry, disappointed or rejected on one hand. and i have that little voice to thank.

i don't know what's next. i'm relishing in the notion i only need to see 200 feet at a time and believe that the road will take me where i want to go.

relieved. liberated. excited!

my new 'job' is out there, waiting for me. it's being created at this very moment, just for me. it may not be a 'job'. it may not look like what i've done in the past. it may not feel like what i've done in the past. in fact, i hope it doesn't. i hope it's entirely new and different. more fulfilling. more expressive. more flexible. more fun. more nurturing. more me.

d: the perfect 'job' for me.
b: my vision is 200/20.
g: an opening disguised as closure.

grey

tonight, luke: mommy, if you didn't put that in your hair would you be all white?
pretty much, i admit while squirting the rest of the bottle of Loreal's soft black, the same color i've used for the past 12 years, into the mass of hair clipped on top of my head.
luke: what about ami? is her hair white too?
me: umm, yeah. though not as much as mine...

which makes me consider how we're evolving. if my mother is less grey than me, (and even if she'd debate that, she can't argue that she was as grey as i am at this age) then are we evolving to greyer haired generations? will the boys be grey before they finish high school? after all, i was buying this same box with the timeless brunette on it while i was in college. (god forbid they change the model - i'll have to call the help line.)

i know of several people my age who were born without wisdom teeth. so maybe we're evolving into a grey-haired toothless generation.

today the news has been laden with celebrity deaths. i'm a believer in a soul everlasting.. energy neither created nor destroyed. rather, redeployed, so to speak. i don't know how that manifests, but it's fun to imagine. haley and i joked once about how some signs in the zodiac seemed to possess less evolved persons and i said, 'maybe they are younger souls.. when they are reborn they'll come back as a better sign.' and she said not-so-modestly, 'like libra?' (apparently the libra ego is quite evolved.)

on a serious note though, evolve is one of my favorite words. it's almost a palindrome and though it falls short, i give it points for trying because it holds the word love gently within its two ve's. i attest there's a good reason for that.

it is with the safety and security of love..
it is with the vulnerability of love..
it is with the breaking down and building up of love..
it is with the connection and the compassion of love..

and mostly - it is by the grace and for the sake of love that we evolve! perhaps jack nicholson's Melvin in As Good As It Gets said it best: "You make me want to be a better man."

that being said, though i am striving every day to grow and be a better man, er woman, for the one i love (and the little ones sleeping upstairs too), i'm afraid that i'll be drawing the line at grey hair. because there's no love in this world that can come between me and that brunette on the soft black Loreal box.

d: evolution
b: limitation!
g: colorization.

more

today marks two years since i collapsed in the floor with pulmonary embolisms. acute chest pain and i couldn't catch my breath to speak, yet i didn't want to inconvenience anyone to take me to a hospital. i opted instead to get in bed and hope it would pass, a nagging feeling in the back of my head that it wouldn't and perhaps it was actually 'something'.

a sleepless night. drift off. wake up, gasping for air. drift off. wake up, scared. alone.

early morning. bright june sky, opening with light. my lungs, still closed and dark.

local doctors refused to see me, instead referring me immediately to the hospital. reluctantly, i agreed to go. a PA dropped me off on the sidewalk of rush university medical center and in no rush of my own, i queued for the emergency room.

dubious of the severity. irritated at the inopportune timing. curious as hell at the peculiarity. and alone.

that part didn't strike me as odd.

blood draws. stethoscope. ct scan. ekg. an hour of testing.
results in hand, urgent knocking. admitted to icu within minutes of radiology's report.

can i make a phone call? the ER walls annoyingly block cell signals.

that call was the hardest and the easiest to make. how do i tell the people who love me most that i didn't want to be a bother and as such, nearly choked in my sleep, but now i'm ok and in a hospital in chicago, no you don't have to come, but yes i'm alone and i really need you.

by nightfall my mother was there. she never left my side.

a year later, last june 24th, i ended my medical treatment for my PE. one year to the date. i remember i was sore from an intense workout, that night. it was nearly sleepless because of that back pain, made more intense on deep breath; and it triggered fear and memory of a similar, yet not at all similar, sleepless night with pain upon deep breath. but in that moment of darkness and fear, i drew upon the knowledge that my pain was from strength rather than weakness and i rested. alone.

tonight, i take a deep breath and let it out. no pain. another deep breath. let it out. i am stronger now than i was a year ago. i am happier now than i was a year ago. i am more aware. i am more open. i am more loving. i am more patient. i am more active. i am more creative. i am more outgoing. i am more connected. i am more compassionate.

i am more grateful. every single day.
and i am not alone.

d: in another year: more.
b: i would not hesitate to be a nuisance to someone for a ride to the hospital now.
g: a milestone of more.