It's Just That This is How it Feels

I'm trying to maintain a more serene mindset and a healthier outlook, and I'm finding it helps me get through unpleasant but normal things when I accept that these things are just the way they are and though uncomfortable, they're being the way they should be, and that I am too.  

The other day, two snowflakes landed on my  

shoelaces in that very same parking

lot where just last month I pictured death 

stalking me in the cold. Photo: Teece Aronin.

Let me give you an example: I get out of my car at work and have a long walk ahead before reaching the building. It's cold, and I hate being cold, but when I remind myself that the cold is normal, and that this just happens to be how cold feels when it's doing it's thing, it's not as miserable anymore. 

I know what some of you are thinking; it was just last month, in this very blog, that I described myself shuffling across a parking lot in bitter cold, swearing the entire way and imagining Death shuffling behind me, unable to catch me only because he was just as cold. 

Well, I've grown since then, so let me have this! 

But seriously, stop and think. Would a Midwestern winter day with 70 degree temps be normal? No. It was the cold that was normal, just winter being winter. And given that I'm lucky enough to have a coat and gloves and a nice, warm building on the other side of the lot, I really should stop complaining. Winter is behaving as it will, and I knew the deal when I moved back to Michigan five years ago. 

Maybe this is a better example, or at least makes me look less mentally unstable: When my daughter was having surgery and dreaded the IV, I told her there's a difference between something hurting you and something harming you. The IV, I explained, would hurt, but it wouldn't harm her. The pain was part of a process intended to keep her safe.  

And lo and behold, I just now asked my daughter if what I'd said had helped her that day and as it turns out, it did. And I told her the truth was good no matter what because it would either prove my point here, or could be turned into a joke for the blog. It was a win for me either way, so I really wanted her to be honest. 

But I like this win better than the win I would have turned into a joke. It means I'd said something that helped by daughter through a tough situation, and maybe it will help you, or your child, or even me someday. 

Ripples, people, ripples. 

Swimming Toward the Christmas Lights

I'm writing this on Christmas Eve at the end of one of the most challenging years I can remember. 

My mother passed away in February, a friend died by suicide in September, another died the night before Thanksgiving, an old schoolmate lost her baby granddaughter to a rare genetic disorder, and another friend lost one sister only to have another nearly die in a car accident just weeks later.

And that wasn't all of it. There were other serious illnesses and even deaths among those close to me this year. 

Then, like wolves, arthritis took me down, and these days I use a cane on bad days.

Christmas has a way of stroking our cheeks with the faux fur of holiday stockings, then snapping our bare backsides with Santa's big belt. We find joy in how children wonder over Christmas and then grieve over our own memories of it and just about everything else - the sad, the sweet, the bittersweet. Those memories crystallize into something needle-like and pierce straight into us like thorns on mistletoe. 

A very wise woman once told me that something positive comes from everything that happens to us, no matter how tragic. After some introspection, I'm thinking she's right.

I challenge you to find at least one good thing to come from any memory haunting you this Christmas. Whether it's a lesson learned, a more compassionate self, a ripple effect that's touched others in positive ways, I believe you can find at least that one good thing and maybe more. 

Take me and my arthritis. I don't know how this'll all go down in the long run, but for now, I'm taking it as a scary, painful wake-up call to lose weight, eat better, and move more. I've joined my local Y and am reaping the benefits of swimming, including less pain, more flexibility and a bit more muscle definition in my back. And I'm learning that there are lots of treatment options available to me and that remission is a real possibility. 

I'm also looking at my cane with new eyes and finding that it almost cozies up the entryway. It leans against a table that holds candles and family photos. I think of my Aunt Izzy who lived not only with arthritis but a severe hand tremor. But those things didn't stop her from cooking and baking and lighting our lives with laughter and wit and fun well into her nineties. She's the one who smiled at her nieces and nephews just before she passed, telling them that she was having "such a wonderful death."

I'm choosing - and some days it's hard - to believe that having arthritis might ultimately boost my quality of life as well as my longevity because it's forcing me to make better choices about my health. 

And you? What light has come to you because of the dark? 

Whatever it is, may it guide you to a better Christmas - this year and for all the years to come. 

The Watched Pot of Winter

It’s been winter for weeks now and I’m still trying to catch up to the notion that winter is a good and natural thing, a thing needed by the earth, a time for nature in my part of the world to close its eyes and rest; a time for things to take stock and catch their breath before the bustle of spring returns.

Like his mother, Jon gets a  
little flaky in the winter. 

Winter never was my favorite thing, but years ago when I was about to drive from Michigan to Colorado, my view on winter took an uptick. It was January and someone remarked that it was a shame I wasn’t making the trip in a few months when the scenery would be prettier.

“But winter has its own colors,” a friend replied, “and they’re beautiful.”

On the trip I appreciated the landscape more than I would have had my friend not made that observation. Winter’s sepia and olive tones became nearly as appealing as the purples, greens, yellows and reds due to burst from the soil come April.  

Why then has winter become so unappealing to me again? Why can’t I think my way back to that long-ago road trip when winter was cold, bleak and barren, yet beautiful nonetheless; when it was something to love despite, or even because of its harsh embrace? Why can’t I get back there again?

It’s not as if I have no good memories of winter. My son was born in the winter, umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, his first cry the bleat of a newborn lamb, raspy, plaintive, yet raging, simultaneously helpless and furious. 

That little bleat told me my son had arrived and that he planned on staying, despite the scary start, and his grandmother’s first thought at the sight of him was that he should pick up a hammer and help the other elves. He was a minikin, but he was my minikin and he was healthy.

And one of the things I laughed at the hardest in this life would never have happened had it not been for winter.

One morning my mother landed on her fanny after slipping in the snow, her coat leaving a nubby-textured imprint next to a Nike-esque swoosh from where her boot had shot out from under her. If I’d seen her fall, I’d have been upset, but walking up on the plop and swoosh, and knowing she was fine, made me weep with laughter. Mean-sounding, I know, but she was laughing, too.

Maybe I'd feel better if I just stopped fighting winter and stopped staring at the calendar as though winter were the proverbial watched pot. Maybe I need to remember my son’s first wails, picture him as he was the other day, wind-whipped and thrilled, barreling down a hill on his sled. 

Maybe I should think about moments like those and stop fighting what is as inevitable and as necessary and as natural as death. At least winter is temporary and there will always be another spring. 

There will always be another spring, right?