Learning to Swim

I remember learning how to swim for the first time. Putting all the moves together. Age somewhere between four and six years old. I did it myself.

Our family, plus the high school kids in my dad’s choirs, had traveled by bus to a place in central Florida called Lake Ellen. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to locate a Lake Ellen in Florida again. It was beautiful and the lake was huge and fresh and clear. There was a sandy beach that sloped very gently into deeper water. A diving platform out in the deep water was popular with the teenagers. My brother and sister, David and Diane, were along on the trip, of course.

I was in love with that water. I wanted to get in it and just stay there – it was fresh (not salty like the Gulf) and really clear so you could see things. If I’d been allowed, I would have eaten my peanut butter and banana sandwich while sitting waist-deep in the lake.

I was experimenting with swimming a lot that day. I could already dog-paddle around and I’d watch big people to see how they swam. My mother had a very distinctive version of the crawl, the main purpose of it to never get her hair wet. She would pull each arm out of the water crisply with her elbows high and then kick vigorously so she could keep herself as high in the water as possible. I would occasionally try to copy her, but I couldn’t pull it off. Besides, I wanted to get my hair wet.

Most of my swimming was done underwater, and no dog-paddling. I was definitely doing the breaststroke with my arms. And trying hard to coordinate my leg movements with what I was doing with my arms. At one point, I brought both legs up toward my chest with knees bent and then pushed them out and back so they met and were straight again. At the same time, I was pulling back my arms in my well-practiced breaststroke. I realized I was really swimming and moving forward with what I learned much later was a frog-kick. The Whole Breaststroke. I knew I had mastered swimming.

I kept it up for a couple more coordinated strokes, ran out of air, then leaped up and shouted, “I can swim! I can swim!” I had to find my brother and show him.

Learning takes place like that for me. If I want to learn something – to do it, to just know it – I dive in and mess around with it myself until I do make some sense of it. Oh, I took swimming lessons later on. And I took piano lessons for years. I have taken a lot of writing classes and written together in groups. But it really depends on my heart, my passion, my curiosity, my energy to learn something new. I loved the water, I adored the piano and music, I crave writing and telling stories. And so that is what I have done.  

What is your heart telling you? Where does your passion lie? What are you truly curious about? What energizes you endlessly? I’d love to hear from you.

Showing Myself

I find it so difficult to write even a Facebook post sometimes. To reveal myself. Today I went for a long walk and I thought about this problem. Then I discovered thoughts of a good friend of mine, Adrienne, who reveals herself all the time. To the world. I'll never forget her showing off her tattoos while we were at work together in the Writing Center at Community College of Denver. And she pointed to a beauty on her ankle and said, in full voice (she never whispers), "I got that after I got my master's degree." In Medieval Literature, folks. She's everything and she tells it all. Once she came late to work and said she was at the doctor's office. "I love to go to the doctor. I get all the attention." She says stuff that we all think and hold close to our hearts, but wouldn't dare claim. Not Adrienne. She is out there. When she's happy, you know. When she's sad, you know about it.

Adrienne told me about having cancer 9 years ago in her hospital bed. She's a fighter. I didn't even blink. Adrienne's got this; but I told others in our tight little group to visit her and call her. She called me one night last week and said it was back. Nine fucking years. No one gets off when cancer has you in its sites. I hate cancer. And I don't want my very good friend Adrienne to have to go through all the crap she will have to in order to survive this shit again. She represents to so many people who we want to be like – ourselves, in the raw, naked, out there, saying exactly what she believes. We want our essences to be seen. Adrienne's essence – I saw it and heard it from the first time she opened her mouth and revealed her gigantic heart – is always set on True A.

I want to be known for me the way Adrienne is known for herself. And I want her around for a long, long, long time. She will because so many people love her the way I do, too. She's an atheist so don't pray for her. Send her light and humor and great gobs of healing energy. I love Adrienne.

Cat Crazies

Violet went crazy around 3:00 a.m. this morning. I'm not sure what set her off; I may have come up a notch or two toward the sleep-wake threshold. She came flying across my lightly sleeping body, murmured something near my face, then jumped off the bed and skittered into the living room. She returned to me before I fell asleep again as if to say she was sorry. She was already softer, slower, gentler. When I awoke an hour later with a headache, she was sympathetic and soothing, only barely touching me as she laid down beside me. Her black-and-white catness delights me, even in pain.

Checking In

I’ve been numb for some time now. Lately I have found myself making my day “busy” so that I don’t feel the pain of my existence. I don’t tend toward optimism, never have. I came out of the oven a sad cake – one that fell and mushed together in the middle.

Here are some things I don’t like. I’ve been sick for six-and-a-half years now. It doesn’t get easier and, in fact, more difficult and complicated – in all ways (physical, spiritual, financial). I got breast cancer on top of the liver disease. Now I’m taking medication that gives me hot flashes all night long to add to the night sweats I have anyway from liver disease.

Here are some things I like. Being vegan and proud of making that choice (even though I cheat sometimes and even ate a hamburger and fries recently). Living about half a block from Cherry Creek at one of its wildest spots as it meanders through Denver. Walking along the creek in the morning under the shade trees. Having friendly neighbors and living in a tree-lined, single-story brick community of about 100 people.  Violet the Cat is my little tuxedo treasure, even when she runs off on 20-minute-long adventures that frighten the hell out of me.

That middle part of the sad cake? It reminds me of pudding cake, where all the good, yummy, tasty, rich things fell.

Comfort

      Did you ever want about 10 seconds of comfort (ah, I'm sorry that happened to you)? And somehow what keeps arriving is advice on how to be better organized, how to handle such things in the future, etc., etc., etc. I'm strong, but I'm not that strong. Mostly I'm just human and can only conjure up human-sized strength. Oh, sometimes not even that. Also, I know how to find the silver lining in most situations. Really. I do. But sometimes the silver shines through the tears.

Change in Perception

     Yesterday I downloaded a scientific dissertation to read about fatigue and PSC, the lovely liver disease I have. I'm reading and reading and learning that more women than men experience the fatigue, that it comes with depression-like symptoms but doesn't respond to antidepressants and on interview with a psychiatrist doesn't add up to depression either. I also read that sleep for the fatigue is not "restorative." Now I snagged onto that idea and put some time and thought to it.
     My naps don't really make me feel better. It's not like I jump out of the nap-bed and think, "Oh, gee whiz, now I can do ..." or that I run out of the house and exercise or anything else that would indicate I really felt better after napping. Huh. So, last night finally I asked myself this whopper question, "Why nap?" It just subtracts from my waking hours and doesn't accomplish anything positive.
     Keep in mind also that I have trouble sleeping at night and that goes with what they term "daytime somnolence." Hmmm. I may nap now and then, but it's not part of my daily plan anymore.
     So what's the change in perception? I am no longer putting PSC at the center of my life anymore. There's no need to – now, and perhaps there never was a need. It's difficult to have a disease for which there is no treatment except for transplant. And to be eligible for transplant, you need to be really sick. It's easy to make the goal "oh boy, let's get sick!" But that proves to be a rotten way to live your days.
     It's daily life I am concerned about. The quality of each day is what adds up to a life. I want more creativity, more writing, more love, more fun, more happiness every single day. That's what I choose right now.

Working on Health

      I've been recuperating and have been absent from my blog. I have continued to write everyday, though, and made some decisions. About life, you know. I had been looking at a couple of writer's conferences to go to and had gotten really excited about the Woodstock Writer's Festival in April and the Taos Summer Writing Conference in July. I finally decided that I was putting the cart before the horse and had some other priorities to attend to first. I did discover two writing teachers and consultants that I plan to contact and try to work with them in the future, though.

     What I chose to focus on was my health. I want to improve it in any way that I can. It takes more than diet. Even my thoughts need inspection. I listened to a few minutes of Wayne Dyer on TV last night and he suggested a practice for the period of time between drowsiness and falling asleep at night. His advice included things like saying, "I am well, I am prosperous, I am happy." Whoa, that threw me. I realized how often I have a pre-sleep litany sounding more like this:  "I'm sick, I'm poor, I struggle to be happy." Oh brother, now I was wide awake.

      I went to bed anyway. After reading for awhile and getting drowsy, I tried out Dyer's suggested phrases. I woke up around 2:30 a.m. and thought it was time to get up. What happened, though, was that in the middle of the night, I was happy. That's usually the time I wake up from some new worry I had forgotten about during the day. This time, no worries. I was happy when I got up at 7 a.m., too. And life just felt better. I'm trying it again tonight.

      One aspect of my health I am working on for this year is my energy level. I want more energy. Much more! This means more exercise, starting with a lot more walking. Daily. I walked today for 20 minutes! It's not much but it's a start. Even if I only work up to 30 minutes every day, the regularity of it will help my energy level. I just know it will. I'm not interested in being an athlete, just in reversing some of the fatigue I feel.

     I need more energy to write. Writing does give me energy, so it remains part of my plan for health. But I need all the boosts I can get. So I'm using my mind to boost me out the door every day and walk now, and see what happens. I'm hoping! And I will keep you posted on my progress.