Hard things

 In the course of my life, I, like everyone, have done some hard things. Some are emotionally taxing, some require intense concentration and mental focus, some demand courage, some brute strength. In almost all cases, afterward, I've felt a sense of accomplishment, maybe tinged with relief, but overall a feeling that I have conquered the obstacle. Tired, but stronger. Drained, but confident.

You can do hard things.

I've now come across a hard thing that, while I could do, and did do, I did not come away unscathed.

I'm back from a week-long wilderness camping and canoeing trip, a venture I've undertaken a few times before. I went into the trip confident in my abilities, excited about the experience, and looking forward to the healing powers of the forest, lakes, and skies.

Instead, I now feel defeated. The trip was hard, physically and emotionally. I'm left feeling that I'm not that strong, not that able. I can't seem to find the sense of accomplishment that should come from getting through a difficult experience, not even a sense of relief. Instead, weeks later, I still find myself brooding, wondering what I could have done differently, trying to rewrite the story in a positive way. I want to find the light.

Maybe sometimes doing a hard thing doesn't make you stronger, it just makes you tired.

Bright Ideas

 My neighborhood requires that each home have a dusk to dawn light in front of the house. (Our HOA is pretty innocuous, so I don't mind the requirement.)  Since I moved in just over a year ago, my outdoor light has been on 24/7. I realized that the sensor was no longer working and needed to be replaced, but it wasn't high on my list of priorities. But, a few days ago I got around to making the repair. I'll have to say I was a bit proud of my ability to tackle this job alone, although to be honest it entailed only unclipping a plastic coupler and plugging in one attached to the new sensor. 

I thought at the same time I would replace the light bulb and came into the house to find one of the long life bulbs I had purchased about a week ago. I remembered buying them and looked in the pantry where I keep light bulbs. No new bulbs. Hmm, maybe I put them in the cupboard with cleaning supplies. No bulbs. In the garage? No. In the linen closet? No. Under the sink? No. No. No. (I have 3 sinks). I had purchased bird seed at the same time, so maybe I put them on the sun porch. No. 

I put the old bulb back in.    

                                                     

I have two laptops. I usually keep one at my office on campus and one at home. For the summer, I brought my school laptop home. I sometimes use it at home at my dining room table if I don't feel like sitting in my home office. However, my home laptop has the Adobe Pro software and my school one does not. About a month ago I was working at the dining room on my school laptop and realized I needed to edit a .pdf document. I grabbed my other laptop, put it on the table, and completed the edit. The next day, I came home from the gym and decided to do some work. I saw my home laptop on the table, but not my school laptop. I had the mouse. I had the power cord. I did not have the laptop. I looked in my home office. No laptop. I looked in my bedroom. No laptop. I looked on the sun porch. No laptop. My sinking feeling was that it had been stolen. The dining room opens to the sun porch and I'm not always careful to lock that door. Would someone actually come in and take the laptop but not the power cord and not the second laptop? Seemed odd, but I was resigned to the loss due to my own stupidity. I sat down at the other laptop, then realized...the second laptop was under it. I had merely put one on top of the other. The school laptop is pretty slim and exactly the same dimensions.  Now, I was amazed by my own stupidity.

Today, I decided to take a hike in the 90 degree weather. I pulled out my convertible hiking pants to wear because they have lots of pockets. As I was zipping off the lower leg pieces to make shorts I thought, "Every time I put these back together I fumble to get the legs on the correct side. I should mark these pieces so that it will be easier." Impressed with my thinking I turned over one of the lower leg pieces and noticed an "R" on the zipper pull.  I picked up the other piece, an "L" on the zipper pull....Who knew?? It reminded me of the time I realized my sheets had tags for "side" and "top."  Will the world ever cease to amaze me?? Does my stupidity have no bounds?

Shaking my head, dressed for my hike, I walked back into the dining room with a smile. I glanced over to the corner where the 5 gallon bucket I had purchased at the hardware store sat. Guess what was in it? 

A box of light bulbs.

In my studies of gerontology the mantra was, don't worry if you forget where you put your keys, worry if you don't remember what they are for. Or, if you find them in the freezer.

 Luckily, the light bulbs were not in the freezer.

(I need to point out, for some readers, that I had relayed the laptop story to my niece and her daughter when they stopped for a visit. The laptops were still on the table in the exact position I had left them. Before I reached the revelation, Ruby, without a beat, pointed out that they were on top of each other. I should have called her to look for my light bulbs! The difference nearly 60 years can make...)

                                                        

Desire Paths

 The university where I teach has a very small student run newspaper. Published only once a week, it is usually four pages, two of which are sudoku puzzles and photographs. This is a tech school, so while we have some great writers, journalism is not strongly represented.  But, this week a cover story caught my eye. Grasswalkers: Illinois Institute of Technology and Desire Paths.

What is a desire path you might ask? According to Wikipedia, it is "an unplanned small trail created as a consequence of mechanical erosion."  It is a path people have made for convenience.  Think of the way we cut across a corner, or walk straight instead of following a curved sidewalk or path.

 In the 1990s the university constructed a new student center on a parcel of land that was vacant. In the design of the building the architects used the "desire paths" the students had created across the open field as the guide for the building's corridors. The result is a building that feels very confusing. The hallways seem to be at odd angles and intersect in sharp angles.  What worked for an open field doesn't seem as well-suited for a building.

And it makes sense, doesn't it?  A desire path is created to minimize travel time or maximize convenience. Once you plop a building down the old paths lose their advantage to some extent. The expectations we have for how a building corridor will function are different than those we hold for open fields.

 

(The student center is the rectangle in the middle of this plan and the orange lines show the "desire paths." Giving you an interior like the below.)

 

But, the whole thing got me thinking about desire paths. They are both rebellious and conformist at the same time. We are railing against the prescribed pathway, but doing so with everyone else. We aren't making our own unique path, we are following a crowd. A rebellious crowd, perhaps, but a crowd nonetheless. How often do we all desire the same thing?  Will there eventually be offshoots from the desire path, representing new desires?

It just so happened that at the same time I was mulling over desire paths, I came across a passage in a book I was reading (The Ten Thousand Doors of January). A young scholar was told he needed to "find a path." But he despaired over the two choices he had been offered. "But to Yule both paths were unspeakably bleak. Both of them would necessitate a narrowing of his boundless horizons, an end to his dreaming." 

Can we use desire paths outside of discussions of the built environment? What if your desire path doesn't fall along the beaten trail? 

More to come.....

   

It's been awhile....

 I think about things I might want to write, but somehow never get around to it. I think we alternate through phases of intensity and retreat. Maybe like the seasons.  I've been through a quiet winter, so maybe spring is around the corner.

I was listening to an audiobook today and a certain phrase stuck with me. This is not a direct quote, but it was something like...."there are still scars but I remind myself that means the bleeding has stopped."  I thought it was a good way to think about our scars, physical and psychological. They are there, no denying that. But we could look at them as places of healing, rather than places of hurt.

That's all for today.

Holding my breath

 

 

 

 My current medical situation requires that every three months I'm subjected to MRI scans. After a few years of this routine, I've become pretty accomplished with the procedure.  I have a favorite outfit with no metal pieces, although some techs still request that I change into a hospital gown.  I did, once, alter my bottom wear and, just as the scan was starting, realized that there was a small metal zipper on a pocket that I had completely forgotten about.  Believe me, reading about how the magnets in an MRI machine can toss a wheelchair across the room makes you VERY aware of any metal on your body as you slide into that tiny tube.  Luckily, I don't become claustrophobic, I close my eyes and try to think of anything but the fact that my body is basically in a casket. 

However, I do struggle with one aspect of the test....holding my breath.  Apparently research has shown that better images are achieved if breath is held on the exhale rather than the inhale. So a gentle female robot voice instructs me to, "breathe in, breathe out, hold your breath."  Then, HOURS later, commands that I "relax."  As if.  I'm starved for air, I'm in a tiny tube, I have an IV hooked up in one arm, an emergency button clutched tightly in one hand (but not TOO hard), and I haven't had anything to eat or drink for at least 4 hours. (I learned that this has nothing to do with the accuracy of the scan, but is to prevent you from needing to vomit while you are in there...pleasant). Sure, I'll "relax."

(Interestingly, during mammograms the instructions are "take a breath, stop breathing."   The hold is on the inhale, and the instruction is not to hold your breath but to STOP. )

In actuality, the breath holds are, at the longest, about 20 seconds. Something I could probably do without any qualms in normal situations.  At night, if I have trouble sleeping, one of my strategies is to do "box breathing."  Breathe in for a count of 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4, repeat. It works pretty well to distract my monkey mind and ease me into sleep. I can swim underwater a fair distance. I've warned the MRI techs that the breath holds are hard for me and they say they will try to keep them short. I know that if I fail and take a breath, the images will be distorted, making interpretation more difficult. (Although in my case, I doubt that would make much difference in the end.)  So, I do my best. I try counting, I grit my teeth, press my tongue to the roof of my mouth.  I've tried taking bigger or smaller inhales, bigger or smaller exhales, doesn't seem to help.  Being told "DO NOT BREATHE" is an admonition that makes me want to breathe even more.

Think of all the times we hold our breath, wait with bated breath, or have the wind knocked out of us (literally or figuratively).  We do it in anticipation of good and bad, happy and sad. We do it when we are scared, when we are being sneaky, when we are excited, or when we are hurt.  Breathing is life and being asked to NOT breath goes against our basest instincts. 

I'm not sure I'll ever get better at breath holding for an MRI, but I've heard that, with practice, you can improve.  I'll test that out in three months.

 I sometimes feel I spent many years holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall, walking on eggshells, not daring to disturb the very delicate currents of air that circulated through my life. Only in the past 10 years or so have I felt that I could breath more easily, more freely.  I don't want to hold my breath!

Traffic and Roosters

 

 Growing up one of our favorite childhood games was "traffic." A very simple game, it involved me and my siblings riding our bikes in circles around our driveway.  We had a gas station by the front steps, a train crossing, a pedestrian crossing, and a garage in, naturally, the garage.  We would ride in circles, stopping to pick up passengers, waiting for people to cross, and getting our tires repaired. Our most memorable traffic accident involved putting my youngest brother's tricycle into the wagon, with him on top, and pulling him around...until he fell off and broke his collarbone. We had traffic lights, police, and, when feeling like a long journey we would exit the driveway and ride up and down our dead end street.

I'm just home from a few days with my grandchildren and while there spent some time playing traffic with my 4 year old grandson. He invented much the same game on the sidewalk in front of his house.  With chalk he designated the gas station, drew a traffic light, and put in a rail crossing. He would ride his bike and I served as the gas station attendant. We even got his younger sister involved, riding in her Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. It was made for playing traffic, it even has a gas cap! I wonder if children around the world play this game?  Before cars did kids play cattle drive?  or herding sheep?

I was also reminded of our strange obsession with teaching young children animal sounds.  My 1.5 year old granddaughter has the cow down pat, and is working on horses and chickens. One would think we would focus on more important vocabulary. How often in your life are you called upon to make an animal sound, other than playing or reading with young kids? So many children's books focus on farm animals. I have a satisfactory knowledge of the appropriate sounds (although there are the cluck/bawk/cheep, woof/bow wow/ ruff/arf dilemmas) and can even venture into monkeys or elephants. But what do we do with fish? giraffes? penguins? turtles? We have painted ourselves into a corner.

I don't think my grandson has ever seen a rooster, but when we play pretend games he always signifies morning and time to wake up with the sound of a rooster, "cock a doodle do," not an alarm clock. Where does that come from? I know that animal sounds differ round the world, so we don't even have a common base for what animals sound like, let alone how they are named.  Do roosters really sound different in Germany?  Kikireki? Most children in the US do not live on, or even near, a working farm. Why do we focus on animal sounds?  What makes them relatable to children?  I'm sure someone has written a doctoral thesis on this topic and I am now off to search for it. 

Redbuds

 

 

I recently moved back to my hometown area. I feel comfortable here.

In my yard I have a beautiful redbud tree (not the one above, my poor photo of my redbud is at the bottom.)  They seem to be everywhere I look.  The blooms start in April, before there are many leaves on trees, so the colors really stand out.  I've always wondered why they are called "redbuds" when the flowers are more pink or purple in color. I know we had redbuds in central NY, but it seems there are even more here. At least I notice them more.

My sister Martha died in an April many years ago and I remember my dad telling me of driving home from the funeral, looking out the car window, and seeing the woods full of redbud trees in bloom. Ever since then, he said, seeing the redbud trees in April reminded him of Martha. When my mother passed away, he had a redbud tree planted by the history museum where they had both volunteered.

One of my favorite things about the trees is how the blossoms can come right out of the trunk, not only sprouting from the branches.  It's as if the plant can't contain its excitement about the coming spring weather. It's bursting at the seams.

For me, the redbuds carry all of these stories--my sister, my mother, my father, and, now, my new home and new beginnings. I'm starting to think I might need to plant another