Week #1:  Just a little back story ...

I've made my living as a writer for 40+ years, and I don't know how to begin this. I only know I should and I will.  All day long, I've been doing laundry, dishes, assembling thrift shop donations, you name it -- anything to avoid writing the first sentence.  Perfectly constructed thoughts come to me as I fall asleep or begin to awaken, but not in my full consciousness.

Maybe because I never wanted to be in a situation to write the first sentence of a blog like this.  Certainly, I could not imagine doing so a year ago, when I was the happiest girl alive.

And maybe because I've been through this rodeo once before, and thought it was behind me.

You see, several years ago -- the holidays of 2014, to be exact, I was going through what's called "a rough patch."  A convergence of events that bore down hard on my heart and soul.  The details aren't important now, other than that they involved a broken heart due to having developed deep feelings for someone with mental illness, a family rift created by a member who thrives on creating conflict, and some harsh criticism from a curmudgeonly old priest when I was doing my level best to provide "service with a smile" as the sole 'usherette' at an overwhelmingly crowded Midnight Mass. 

That was the final straw.  After all, hadn't I done what people are always advised to do when feeling low?  Pull your head out of our own proverbial behind and focus on others?  I could have taken my lonesome to the Virgin Islands for a week. But I spent that same money on half a dozen 'care packages' which I surprised friends with throughout the country.  People I thought could probably use a lift themselves. 

I had not asked anyone to rescue me.  I had sucked it up, showered, shampooed, dressed myself up, and taken on the daunting task of handling some 700 congregants with seating, the collection, and finally, getting them to receive Holy Eucharist in some semblance of order in the school cafeteria.  Meanwhile, there were at least a dozen male ushers over at the concomitantly held mass in the church, across the parking lot.  They had barely looked up from their jawing away with each other, when I asked, in vain, for a little assistance at the cafeteria mass.   And now, alone at Christmas for the first time in my life, I was chastised, for all to see and hear, by monsignor, because I wasn't gettin' 'er done to his liking. 

That was it.  Since the floor failed to swallow me up at that moment of humiliation, I grabbed my coat and purse, fled from mass, without even taking Communion myself, got into my car, and rushed home and under the covers of my bed.  I cried in the dark, praying for a sleep from which I would not awaken.  But I did wake up.  The next morning, and the morning after that.  And sometime during that dark Christmas week, I knew I had two choices.  I could stay in bed forever, or I could get up. 

What I needed was a plan.  Because in my youth, I might have heard something like: "Snap out of it. You're young.  You've got your whole life ahead of you." 

But what do you tell someone at 62?  You don't.  You can't. I had to figure it out myself. So I invented my own "boot camp" that addressed every facet of my life -- physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.  I had to start every day with a just-out-of-bed selfie to gauge my overall state of mind, body and spirit.  From there, I had to chart the specifics of my day --how I slept, what I ate, what I weighed, what I did, what I read, what I viewed, and what I learned. 

Christmas Eve 2014 - Not an easy photo to take
 

And wherever I found myself -- in unbearable Louisiana heat or a blinding Wisconsin blizzard, below sea level, or in the Virginia mountains, I had to walk a minimum of one hour a day, outdoors.  Sometimes by light of day, but later, quite regularly, well after dark, saying rosaries, "talking" to my dad, gazing at the night sky, and listening to nothing by cicadas, bullfrogs, and crickets.  Typically, about halfway into my trek, I would begin to cry in earnest.  I always marveled that by the end of those 60 minutes, I felt recomposed and cleansed.  I learned to trust the process.

I also decided, in the interests of maintaining optimal clarity, to forego any alcohol for the year.  I'm not much of one for hard liquor, except for a brandy on a cold winter evening, and the appeal of beer is pretty much a cold Corona with a lime during the dog days of summer. But not uncorking a nice dry red while stirring up dinner took a bit of getting used to.  Thankfully, I did discover a palatable non-alcohol wine, which the local wine mart special ordered for me on a regular basis (more on that later).

About a month into this routine, I happened upon a pair of Wolverine steel-toed boots at a local Marshall's.  For the heck of it, I tried them on.  They fit like they'd been cobbled for me, -- a Warrior Cinderella of sorts -- and became my trekking ware. 

Early on, I frequently doubted there being any meaning to my plan.  What was such a big achievement about getting up every day, earning a living as a contract legal analyst, keeping house, charting every facet of my relatively banal existence, and walking outdoors with no thought of distance or speed?  As the days passed, however, I realized that simply continuing to put one foot in front of the other was no small feat -- pun intended. 

During this entire time, I kept quite alone. I left Facebook (my only social media participation), did not contact anyone by any other means, and tended to my day-to-day existence.  The exception were my once-a-week forays into the local dance studio where I taught two back-to-back children's ballet classes. 



My and my gal pals ... We are always the same age inside

 

If I was going to be forced into the company of others, thank God it was with the innocent of heart.  Children and ballet are two of my great loves.  And when they come as a package deal, all the better.

 

I had otherwise pulled back from the world in order to reenter it in a, hopefully, renewed state.   
Somewhere, along the way, I did, in fact, rediscover the joy in life and the youth in my soul and heart.  It was not easy.  I had plenty thrown at me right off the bat, including what I 'affectionately' referred to as the brain-eating eye infection.  It apparently was not as dangerous as it looked, but it recurred half a dozen times in 6 months, in defiance of a battalion of eye drops. And no, I am NOT going to insert a photo of THAT.  You'll just have to ... 

And by early June 2015, this is how I emerged:



See?  Miracles do happen.  Even at 62.

It was right about this time that I thought it might be time to see if I could 'take my happiness on the road' -- that is, was I strong enough to leave my safe little world in Small Town Louisiana and mingle with the world a bit?  An old grad school friend was teaching a 6-week children's literature course on creating picture book biographies at our alma mater  This appealed to me a great deal because although I have written for children, I view myself primarily as a journalist.  And I'd long been searching for a structure for a biography I was interested in writing about Maureen Daly, the pioneer of the Young Adult genre of modern American literature.  Apparently, in recent decades, biographies written for children are not the dry stuff of old, but now have a scrapbook style to them, with photos, maps, and other visuals that break up the printed content.  Even better, such books have a crossover audience, in that they are equally appealing to advanced young readers as well as to adults. 

 

My plan was to audit the class and reconnect with my friend, with whom I would take long meandering walks in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, catching up on each other's lives over the past few years.  I brought along my trusty trekking boots, and the night I arrived in Chattanooga, better than halfway to Roanoke, I had a quick snack of peanut butter and stoned wheat crackers, then laced up and walked about the grounds of the Hampton Inn.  Two hours later, just about ready to turn in for the night, I became violently ill.  No details from me here.  Again, you will just have to: 

To say that was unnerving would be an understatement.  I have lived as a (relatively) confident single woman but I was shaken in the midst of that episode.  I wondered, in my exhausted and weakened state, what would happen if this did not abate soon.  What if I had to have the hotel call an ambulance?  Who would pack up my things for me in the hotel, so that I wasn't charged another $260 a night?  Who would get me back to the hotel from the hospital?  I wished at that moment for a husband, a significant other -- someone who loved me enough to drive 8 hours to take over in my hour of misery.  That thought stayed with me long after that -- that we aren't meant to suffer through such events alone.

 

My stomach eventually calmed down, and I got about three hours of anxious sleep.  The next morning, I had serious misgivings about proceeding to Roanoke, just five more hours away.  I called three girlfriends -- two in Louisiana, and one in Virginia, and left voicemails for each.  I just wanted to talk to a calming voice of reason.  I meanwhile reluctantly loaded the car up and drove almost an hour before I received a call back.  I pulled off the interstate and into a Taco Bell parking lot where I told my Virginia writer friend what happened the night before, that I no longer felt good or confident about my plans to stay on campus for the next six weeks.  All of a sudden, I did not relish the thought of eating out of a mini fridge in a dorm room, or hauling my dirty clothes across campus to the Laundromat.   I was also 'freaking' with the thought that I might have suddenly developed a peanut allergy which could reoccur.  Maybe my newfound confidence and joy were not as strong as I thought. 

 

In the next few minutes, my wonderful friend told me about a similar experience she had.  She had been so sure of attending something, somewhere, for some good reason.  And she also 'freaked' within hours of her arrival. All she knew was that she wanted her husband to come and get her ASAP.  She couldn't explain it.  She felt embarrassed and humiliated but she followed her feelings out of there.  And shortly after that, she wrote the fastest book she ever penned.  It would be great to see me again, she said, but she completely understood if I needed to turn the car around. 

And so I did.  I spent two weeks back in Louisiana, during which I also underwent allergy testing to assuage any concerns I had about peanuts or any other substance, and after that breather, I did make the trip to campus, spending four completely wonderful weeks there.  The meandering walks I'd yearned to take with my friend turned out to be solitary treks, as her schedule did not allow for her to accompany me, but her class was well worth the trip. 

 

About 10 year ago, I made a new rule for myself.  No more driving on the interstate after dark.  As pleasant as it may sometimes be to drive at night, without glaring sun or heavy traffic, I had defied  the odds for too long, and it just wasn't smart to travel alone during the late hours.  And I had kept this rule.  But coming back to Louisiana from Virginia, I found night falling with perhaps an hour and a half to get home.  After all, it wasn't actually LATE.  It wasn't yet 10 p.m.  I wasn't sleepy.  I wanted to be in my own bed that night.  And I did not want to spend the money on a hotel room so close to my destination. 

 

The "Bumblebee" Before Its Encounter with Hwy 59

I didn't factor into my decision that dark is dark, whether it's 9:30 p.m. or 3:00 a.m.  And it's especially dark on a particular stretch of I-59 in southern Mississippi.   It began to rain, not hard, but that did not help with the already poor visibility.  I will never know what happened on that road.  I was tooling along in my adorable little yellow Honda Fit -- the first new car I ever had, and which I had affectionately termed the "bumblebee."  Happy to be getting home after a productive and enjoyable time. 

 

Suddenly, I heard and felt an enormous BOOM!  I was stunned.  I expected the car to come to an abrupt halt, or for every warning light to appear on the dash panel.  I had never seen anything on the road in front of me.  A glance to the side revealed a truck and several vehicles pulled onto the shoulder.  I  continued to grip the steering wheel in shock, my foot still on the gas pedal.  It never occurred to me to pull over and stop.  It was late, dark, and raining.  I wasn't sleepy but I was tired. It would have been foolish to alight from my car and retrace the last mile on foot to try to ascertain what had impacted my car.  I would not have been able to see anything without entering the roadway on foot.  I could have been hit, abducted, God knows what.  And maybe my car would not have restarted. 

 

So I continued driving and pulled into my driveway close shortly before 11 p.m.  I felt shaken but did what I'd trained myself to do.  Laced up my boots and trekked, finishing my requisite hour by midnight -- just under the gun.  In the next three weeks, I began to experience increasingly horrific pain back pain that began to travel down the back of my legs.  It so happened that I had undergone a lumbar MRI 10 months earlier after tweaking my back while teaching ballet.  So I had a baseline study to compare to a new one, which was a disaster.  My sports medicine doctor shook his head and actually used the word "hanging" to describe my bottom disc. 

 

I can only attribute that "boom" and resultant injury to what must have been the mother of all sinkholes on that highway -- perhaps in an unmarked construction zone.  Subsequently, any plans I had for continuing my journey "back into the world" were now on hold.  I could not drive anywhere. Certainly not to Wisconsin for my high school class reunion or for book research in Maureen Daly's home town.  I had to stay put. 

 

As disappointing -- heck, devastating -- as that was, I had more fortitude than expected.  My previous months of disciplined living had paid off.  I kept up my spirits and my trekking.  At first, those hourly walks were intensely painful and slow.  I did a credible version of FDR's gait, laboriously swinging one leg straight leg forward at a time. 

 

Christmas Card Featuring the Trusty Trekking Boots
 

Not long after this unfortunate event, my mother -- also a lifetime impassioned walker -- was run over, literally, at the age of 88, by a neighbor backing out of her driveway.  That she even survived was miraculous.  Many broken bones in her face and body, including a partially fractured hip.  But no organ damage or head injury.  After an extensive hospital stay, she was to have been transferred from the hospital to at least a year in rehab.  But less than three months from the date of the accident, she was home (now living with a sister), and dancing in the kitchen on Christmas Eve.  She said that she had survived the Great Depression and World War II, and she was not about to let this accident take her out.  So while she was inside, toasting in the New Year, I was outside, trekking faithfully, through unplowed snow.   And later into 2016, nine months after my own accident, I surprised my doctor with a nearly normal lumbar MRI.  

 

If you have read this far, I hope you know that I have relayed all of this to demonstrate that I know a bit about adversity and discipline and conscious happiness.  And that you can find your way out of the whale and back into the world, with your Jonah days behind you, if you have a clean heart, a committed trust in God, and a well worn pair of trekkers.   

 

At least that's what I thought ...