Waiting to regain my balance

July 4, 2014

I sit here today, Independence Day in America, counting the days before I will temporarily lose a great deal of my own freedom of movement.  I am preparing for foot surgery in less than a week, followed by an extended period of discomfort and limited use of my left foot; no sudden turns or missteps that end in a loss of balance and a potential fall.  I've spent these days preparing my house and myself to adapt to new or different functions.  For the house, it has meant a new arrangement of spaces for work and sleep, meals and personal hygiene.  The purchase of an “on sale” twin bed with box spring and frame to stay on the main floor; moving furniture and throw rugs to assure open safe pathways to the bathroom, kitchen and front door; turning half the dining room into my home office; removing the annoying front screen door to avoid tripping.

I’ve gotten great advice from my visiting physical therapist about how to set up the kitchen for safe meal preparation; small closed plastic bottles to carry in the walker’s basket with water or juice; individual packets of snacks, fresh fruit near by.  Moving, turning, walking, standing up or sitting down, I will need to give them all complete undivided focus.  No multitasking, or impatient actions, as if this clearly logical behavior is at all doable all the time for some of us.  I look back on a day in the early 1980’s; I was hospitalized with a recurrence of my Crohn’s disease, and at 8 o’clock in the morning, I found myself simultaneously changing channels on the TV remote with one hand while raising the bed’s head board with the bed’s remote in my other hand.  A full 24 hours to pass, with no agenda, no “must do’s” and I was multitasking.  So no, I will learn from my past. 

Mail and newspapers are being brought to the house daily by great neighbors, since I cannot miss out on my daily addiction to crossword puzzles and news on broadsheets and not computer screens.The trash pails are being moved for pickup.   Family, friends and neighbors have begun to rally around, assuring me that I will not be abandoned indoors, bored, lonely or hungry.  I do worry that this regimen may end up with me regaining my lost ten pounds. 

The harder part of the process involves my getting in touch with my frustration, anger at my body once again betraying me, a sense of the loss of independence and balance so I can begin to reframe it as positively as I can.  A dear friend sent me a moving meditation on learning to separate ourselves from our bodies, holding to the wholeness of ourselves while allowing our bodies to heal.  My son suggested downloading a meditation called “simply being,” which I will do today. 

In 1973 I had a major medical crisis; after 4 years of successfully treating my Crohn’s disease with medication and diet, my small intestine ruptured.  I survived emergency surgery, and was told that I would have to fully heal, limit my activities and return for the rest of the surgery to finish the repair in 8 months.  How to fill that waiting time became my major challenge.  I quit my job, spent more time with my 5 year old daughter and we both joined the Y that fall; she to take ballet lessons, me to learn to weave.  Amazing!   In order to create a rug or a wall hanging, or any other woven item, you need to first line up each thread of the warp in perfectly tuned tension before threading the wool across and around each thread.  Rush, or be sloppy and the fabric will not be aligned.  I turn today to how I managed then to slow down, be at ease, and create.  

Having just written this, I have noticed that there is less tension in my shoulders, and I find myself smiling at a cardinal looking for seeds in my garden.           

The “new” prescription for R and R:

                                               

Repairing and recovering

An injury, an illness, a recurring pain, a fall or a misstep.  One minute age doesn’t matter; you move with ease, remember names, complete crossword puzzles with little help from Google. The next, you may be flat on your back in hospital, or nursing a torn ligament.  You may be in pain or have shortness of breathe without knowing how this happened to you. .  You can go from a healthy, agile senior to a patient in need of care or surgery or a cast in minutes.  So yes, I am still limping around, eying my winding staircase with dread each time I realize I forgot something upstairs, or downstairs. 

Suddenly, along with the pain or medical tests and treatments a wave of anxiety overtakes you.  Is this the beginning of old age? Is it the inevitable slippery slope downward towards disability?  Will I recover enough to regain lost skills, lost memories, the opportunity to eat whatever pleases me without thought of irritating an ulcer, or raising my blood sugar level to dangerous heights?  Am I ready to do less, to be less?  Words come to me, words I dread: being “confined”; or “resigning” myself to the inevitable.  No, this is way too depressing and may even become a self fulfilling prophecy:  I feel old, impaired; I can’t do much of what I enjoy most, like tai chi and long walks and dinners out.  ENOUGH!  There is an alternative between doing it all, and consigning myself to “sit out” the rest of my life.  So I offer my version of R and R: repairing and recovering.

My ankle, if I take special care, will heal: it will repair itself.  So how can I partner with my body to support this process?  Resting works, but used with meditation, and some basic biofeedback I may open myself up even more to healing.  Ice and a compression cast help too.  Ordering on line food delivery lets me stay off my feet needlessly wandering the supermarket aisles.  In a way, these are all forms of “assisted healing”.  Alternatively, frustration and anger and depression only add to the pain and slow down the repair needed to heal. My resistance may well act in a counter-intuitive way, creating more tension, anger and anxiety.  Not a good mix.

Recovery seems to require a different mind set.  Critical to full recovery is the body’s ability to heal and serve as a well tooled engine: ingesting food, digesting, managing healthy balances between satisfying hunger and remaining stable; moving more slowly and deliberately, especially up or down stairs and on uneven surfaces.  Ever notice how many parking spaces abut tree roots?  So, in spite of a natural tendency to do more, and do it more quickly, perhaps being only as active as your heart or your lungs or your energy allows offers a compromise.  And in the meantime, take a deep breathe, hold it, hold it, now slowly let go, breathe out, and then breathe again.  Now, curl up with a good book or a not-too challenging crossword puzzle and relax.  

Any other advise/ideas/solutions you have found that work?  Please share them.  We’re in this together.

I haven’t a leg to stand on.

There is no excuse for acting impulsively, climbing onto an airport shuttle with a deep (very deep) step up, not stopping to ask for help, not wanting to inconvenience the other passengers.  The driver had left me to stow my bag and prepare to drive off.  Clearly, pulling yourself up with all your weight on weakened tendons is not smart or safe.  No thought to ask for help, to call out for support or a step stool.  No thought at all.  And so, for the past week I have been encumbered by a severely stressed set of tendons, icing my foot often, relying on Tylenol extra strength, walking as little as possible. 

My last few days in Florida, needing to organize my papers, pack my bags (with help), prepare to drive to Sanford Florida to board the auto train home and I am hobbling around the house in frustration and remorse.  What is wrong with me? Why am I so unaware of potential hazards?  How can I be more aware without loosing my innate need for energy, for drive, for action?  I give up any planned beach walks which had become a regular routine for me every year, saying farewell to the birds, the surf, and the peacefulness of the gulf.  I attend fewer discussion sessions, trying to avoid extra walking, and can make only tentative plans for the few days I have left in St. Petersburg.  I’ll miss one last visit to the Saturday Market; one last walk around Coffee Pot Key, off a Tampa Bay inlet; one more opportunity to wander the downtown shops for last minute gifts for friends and family back home.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could devise a way to “program” our mind/body connections so that if we should begin at action (reaching too high for at item in the closet or supermarket; taking a shortcut that leads you down a dark, unknown street because traffic was stuck on the highway, and you just HAVE TO get home!) an inner voice would whisper: “whoops, slow down, be safe?

One of the main challenges we face is finding a way to stay healthy, stay “intact” and safe, without cowering before potential calamities and doing less and less of the things we most love.  We are in a constant state of balancing risk and opportunity, stability and safety with lost potential for growth, and fun and adventures.  For myself, I’d like that balance to be rich with new experiences, trying new opportunities for sharing ideas, concerts and theatre,  meals and beach walks, learning about the world through travel and books, mostly just being.   Given my past experiences, I also know that this approach will take a well planned ‘balancing act’: being more mindful of my body in space, avoiding distractions like phone beeps, giving up a small amount of spontaneity to lengthen independence.  So off to dance, but not for a few weeks, and not with high heels!

aging and ageism some issues and questions

Aging and Ageism: Some issues and questions

 

First the reality:  we are aging.  The alternative is not an option.  So we find ourselves at yet another developmental stage.  Yes, we have traveled that worn path from infancy to childhood, through adolescence; (not an easy one!), to young adulthood and, for many of us, marriage and parenting and working and exploring our world and ourselves. 

 

Until our early sixties, aging was something our parents did.  We were there to help with the occasional crisis, in many cases taking over the care and decisions for an infirm parent widowed early. We often watched as their world shrank and trips to the supermarket became a complex chore rather than a quick stop on the way home. They had cared for us, now it was our turn to be caregiver, or at least care manager.  

 

The experience of living in our modern world has changed dramatically in our lifetime. Medical advances in the identification, diagnosis and treatment of countless diseases have been life extenders.  Groundbreaking research in biomedicine and the expansion of our worlds through new technologies that were unimaginable only a generation ago has become standard, though expensive, options to early death or disability.

 

We have moved from sharing a land line telephone with another customer, (Remember the ‘party line?”), to being virtually connected at all times and places.  It has even extended to having a chip implanted in our bodies to allow long distance monitoring of heart rates and blood pressure.  

 

Aging in today’s world looks markedly different than it did for our parents and grandparents.  In addition to the changes in health care, a wide variety of “self-help” options through exercise, dietary choices, yoga and Tai Chi act as both extenders to our lives as well as providing enhancements, so we can feel and look better.  We have more stamina and the ability to function independently longer.  Imagine:

• When our parents were our age, they were clearly old, or long gone.  My father died at age 54, my mother at 74 and I’m pushing 73 (and trying to lift weights too!)
• Many of us, especially women, broke glass ceilings, faced and faced down education and work barriers that were rare in our parents’ generation.
• There are fewer role models to learn from as we age and many more choices and decisions to make.  How long is it safe to live alone, or drive at night?  Do I really have to stop all work, or can I continue to consult, or volunteer to work with children, or the homeless; chair a Board or begin to take classes in life long learning programs?

 

As we move into the last phases of our lives we are facing an array of choices.  Even taking the vagaries of health and illness into account, we can find ways to affect our outcomes.  Are we beginning to face the discrimination, the denigration of aging? Jokes about memory loss and aging, even told by us, can feel demeaning.  Often Doctors or other health care professionals talk about us and our symptoms and wishes with our children, ignoring our presence in the room.  How does this make us feel?  Irritated, diminished, angry, or anxious?  And what of preferential treatment, such as senior discounts, a guaranteed seat on the bus or subway, a wise sage turned to for advice? 

 

Questions arise regularly as each of us manages this transition.  As you think of them, remember how you have made other transitions.  They may act as a guide for you as you plan your future. 

 

What drives your planning?

-With fear, a growing awareness of what you can’t do, rather than what you can? 

-Do you welcome this change with energy, enthusiasm, excitement, wonderment?

- Does planning make you anxious and thus avoiding the very idea of change?

 

Where do you fall on the independence vs. dependence scale? 

• Do you feel entitled to receive preferential and deferential treatment?  After all, you earned it, right? 
• Do you feel grateful for the outstretched hand, or, protecting your independence, do you react like a toddler pulling away and saying “I can do it myself!”
• Are you continuing to contribute; to families, communities, societies?
• Are you keeping up with the latest health/dietary/safety options? 
• Have you adapted to and adopted new ways of communication, like I phones and I Pads, texts and e-readers? Trust me, it may be complex and frustrating, but if you live far from family and grandchildren, a five minute ‘face time’ with them via computer or smart phone can make your day!
   
   Over the past few years, facing widowhood and illness, living alone and traveling I’ve learned to listen to my body, but let my mind and imagination and joy of learning grow unchained by fear of new experiences and opportunities. So I watch my step, hold onto banisters, eat reasonably healthy foods, while I explore art museums, mentor young children, finish crossword puzzles, learn about science, and health, and politics and poetry.  I share my ideas with others, and I write.   Happy graduation to a vibrant older you!
   

On February 5, 2008 I began living alone for the first time in my life.  My husband Ben died, after 47 years of marriage.

 

Born in 1941, I had shared space and my bedroom with my sister and parents until my marriage on February 22, 1961.  47 years. The first apartment we lived in had one bedroom, one bath and I slept on a day bed in the hallway.  Today, I live alone in the house Ben and I bought in 1977; three stories, finished basement, four bedrooms and three baths, rooms once filled by us, our children, and various dogs and cats fully.  In winter, I transition to a much smaller space, a two bedroom condo in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

 

That smaller space provides me comfort and convenience. I can downsize, I’ve been experimenting with it for the past 10 years and it works.   I read articles and books on aging in place; I’ve even lectured on the subject to senior groups both in Florida and home in Maryland.  At a certain age, at a certain point in time, the space we inhabit changes from a place of support, filled with memories and memorabilia to an obstacle course, filled with potential dangers; managing the upkeep and repairs of household fixtures from light bulbs to water heaters to plumbing leaks; stairs to climb, empty rooms to keep heated in winter and cool in summer, cabinets built up to the ceiling and well above the 5 foot 2 inches of the only inhabitant left. 

 

What follows is a rollercoaster of emotions: I need to downsize!  Yes, but where would I put all the furniture, pottery, paintings, tables and couches and book shelves in less space?  Each painting or drawing has its own story; where it was found, what it meant to us, what memories in evokes.  I even have a full size painted carousel horse that has pride of place in my living room.  This house is too big, too expensive to keep up!  Recently the house needed repairs to the heating system, costing upwards of $1500 dollars and shattering my monthly budget.  More importantly, why I am heating so much space, when I barely use one quarter of it, and only for 8 months of the year?

 

But there are the memories filling up the spaces, housing footprints of holidays celebrated, favorite foods cooked, birthdays remembered, our 30^th wedding anniversary, our daughter’s Bat Mitzvah reception, the Halloween ritual of eating hotdogs on rolls so we could answer the constant peal of the doorbell. The basement is now totally devoted to a potpourri of storage items long unneeded; gift wrapping papers, excess bowls and dishware and unused bedding, even a queen sized bed not used for over 25 years since our daughter moved away for the last time.  I’ve found at least 100 old record albums, but no turntable to play them on.  And books, always and everywhere the books!  Some dusty and dog-eared, some probably never read, all vying for pride of place in the front row of deeper shelves.

 

We used to celebrate Christmas day playing an endless game of monopoly on the living room floor: cheese, salami, crackers and cider eaten while the fire roared and our dog, Hersey waiting till the game was almost over to lazily wander in and walk over the game board, knocking everything over. 

 

How does one carry all those memories, pack them up, consign them to new spaces, sell, donate or gift them others, without feeling an aching emptiness? 

 

I’m usually not the kind of person who holds onto things; Ben, my husband, was the saver: olds drafts of writing, magazines by the dozens, articles to be cut from newspapers and filed away, even socks with worn out heels.  I was always the one instigating periodic sprees of organization, discarding the unused, the old, and the “we’ll never need this again” criterion for disposal.  But suddenly I find myself holding onto files or books or scarves, concert programs or pieces of pottery, not wanting to discard them, not wanting to whittle down my stuff.

 

What I am realizing now is that I do want to downsize, but only my space, not my memories.  I may end up in a smaller house or rental apartment but I am sure the walls will be covered with my collections of art work, the tops of surfaces filled with pottery, an antique mosaic tile from Spain and of course, the carousel horse. 

 

What will be missing is the companionship, the shared experiences and the stories a house well-lived in collects.  These I will keep inside.

 

Downsizing spaces, not memories

Downsizing Spaces, not memories

Or

TCHOTCHKA memories

 

 

The decision has finally been made after a costly repair to my heat pump and excessively high electric bills while it was running on electricity for almost a month.  I will move to a smaller space, a rental apartment without the angst of home ownership.  37 years living in the same house, watching the children grow and then outgrow their family home, moving on to their own futures; school, spouses, children, careers, homes of their own.

 

I walk through the rooms of my house, many fully furnished but rarely used anymore. First the living room, still used daily and lived in.  The couch, swivel chair, rocking chair and book case in good condition.  They move with me…check.  Easy decision.  The coffee table, shaped like the uneven bark of a tree, knotholes and all.  Of course it stays with me.  I can still remember the entire weekend we spent, Ben and I and two New York friends in New Hope, Pa., visiting a wood working studio.  I wanted the carefully sculpted three piece wooden screen/room divider, with eye holes that cast a subtle light onto the table.  It would never fit our small one bedroom apartment, but the table, its uneven edges, only minimally smoothed surfaces, it has served us well in apartment after apartment, house after house.  Looking at it today, the last day of another year without Ben, I can still hear our laughter as we tried to tie this bulky, weighty table on top of our car with taut ropes.  Ok, that stays with me, it holds more than books and old New Yorker magazines and coffee cups and remote controls. It holds the past.

 

The ancient stereo system, large cabinet still filled with old LP albums; jazz, opera, Broadway musicals, classical music, some classic folk rock.  It stands between two out-sized speakers, products of the early 60’s.  They haven’t been used for over 15 years, so they go. No difficult decision there.  But the albums?  Sell them? Even though I no longer have any way to play them?  Ok, they can go too.    

 

The table that is really a slab of marble atop an ancient sewing machine base, all wrought iron and ornate, that is also precious.  The day was warm, we were browsing in Ellicott City Maryland after the hurricane Agnes flooding.  It had survived and is now covered with pictures of the kids and grandkids on carousels. So yes, it also stays. 

 

Carousels?  I’ve always loved them, spent much of my childhood summers riding them, collecting gold rings, even a boyfriend for a while whose Dad owned the amusement park section with the skee-ball machines and the wonderful painted carousel.  One late August day Ben and I had lunch in Ellicott City and walked toward our car.  In the window of Taylor’s antiques we saw a full size brown, brightly painted carousel horse.  For sale.  For a price we could afford.  For ME!  His name is now Sylvester Stallion, and he lives in our house, wearing an old ascot of Ben’s, an Obama for President hat, ridden by a Barbie doll with pink ribbons in her hair.  Sylvester will stay with me.

 

Pictures on walls display the artist’s creation, but also the stories of where they were purchased or found, or given as gifts to us from artist friends; each has a back story.  A pen and ink drawing of a New Orleans strummer and musician, holding an umbrella and dancing in a parade; Ben was taken by it and purchased it.  It was almost ruined when he set it next to him in an old Oyster Bar in the French Quarter, where water flowed through a trench under the seats (an old fashioned spittoon).  He rescued it just in time.  The photograph of Thelonius Monk, looking down at the piano keys, which are reflected in his sunglasses, has special meaning too.  It was taken by a gifted photographer during the 1960’s in Greenwich Village. I purchased it the year after Ben died. When you look at the photograph, it’s as if Monk was playing just for you.  In a way, he was.  On our first date, November 1961, Ben and I went to hear Monk live at the Jazz Gallery in the Village.  And we sat in the audience and Monk wore sunglasses and he looked down at the keyboard.  I pass the picture daily, and I can still feel the night and the music and the beginning of love.  It stays with me.

 

My professional life, too, is recalled in photos and framed diplomas.  Pictures of the hospital I worked in for 15 years, helping to transform it from a convalescent home for children, aptly named  “Happy Hills Home”, to a state of the art pediatric rehabilitation hospital;  photographs of both the old and new hospital, framed, hang in my home office, a parting gift of thanks to me by the Board.  Photos of legislative bill signings, a Governor’s citation on my retirement working in the Governor’s office for six years; a pen and ink drawing of a child peering over a wall created by a fifteen year old African-American boy working as a summer intern with me in a County Executive’s office.  

 

And of course, the Tchotchkas (trinkets, or inexpensive toys; stuff).  The dented cup my uncle used during World War II in his mess kit ;the brass mortar and pestle that sat on my grandparent’s fireplace mantle; the cut glass vase and pitcher that went from my grandmother to my mother to me, used maybe once yearly;  a plate with Egyptian Cyrillic  symbols we picked up at an antique shop the day we purchased our first house in Baltimore, which hangs on the brick side of the fireplace; a mosaic tile reclaimed from a box in Toledo, Spain; extras from the renovation of a small temple. All have back stories, none that I am willing to part with yet.  

 

I have not mentioned the photographs; all the pictures in collages and frames and on the refrigerator, in scrap books and boxes and computer and smart phone “galleries”. Luckily, they are easily transportable and easy to store for they will not ever be discarded; they are the stuff of memories.

 

downsizing

Down-sizing/right-sizing

Sizing up my options           

 

 

On February 5, 2008 I began living alone for the first time in my life.  My husband Ben died, after 47 years of marriage.

 

Born in 1942, I had shared space and my bedroom with my sister and parents until my marriage on February 22, 1961.  47 years. The first apartment we lived in had one bedroom, one bath and I slept on a day bed in the hallway.  Today, I live alone in the house Ben and I bought in 1977; three stories, finished basement, four bedrooms and three baths, rooms once filled by us, our children, and various dogs and cats fully.  In winter, I transition to a much smaller space, a two bedroom condo in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

 

That smaller space provides me comfort and convenience. I can downsize, I’ve been experimenting with it for the past 10 years and it works.   I read articles and books on aging in place; I’ve even lectured on the subject to senior groups both in Florida and home in Maryland.  At a certain age, at a certain point in time, the space we inhabit changes from a place of support, filled with memories and memorabilia to an obstacle course, filled with potential dangers; managing the upkeep and repairs of household fixtures from light bulbs to water heaters to plumbing leaks; stairs to climb, empty rooms to keep heated in winter and cool in summer, cabinets built up to the ceiling and well above the 5 foot 2 inches of the only inhabitant left. 

 

What follows is a rollercoaster of emotions: I need to downsize!  Yes, but where would I put all the furniture, pottery, paintings, tables and couches and book shelves in less space?  Each painting or drawing has its own story; where it was found, what it meant to us, what memories in evokes.  I even have a full size painted carousel horse that has pride of place in my living room.  This house is too big, too expensive to keep up!  Recently the house needed repairs to the heating system, costing upwards of $1500 dollars and shattering my monthly budget.  More importantly, why I am heating so much space, when I barely use one quarter of it, and only for 8 months of the year?

 

But there are the memories filling up the spaces, housing footprints of holidays celebrated, favorite foods cooked, birthdays remembered, our 30^th wedding anniversary, our daughter’s Bat Mitzvah reception, the Halloween ritual of eating hotdogs on rolls so we could answer the constant peal of the doorbell. The basement is now totally devoted to a potpourri of storage items long unneeded; gift wrapping papers, excess bowls and dishware and unused bedding, even a queen sized bed not used for over 25 years since our daughter moved away for the last time.  I’ve found at least 100 old record albums, but no turntable to play them on.  And books, always and everywhere the books!  Some dusty and dog-eared, some probably never read, all vying for pride of place in the front row of deeper shelves.

 

We used to celebrate Christmas day playing an endless game of monopoly on the living room floor: cheese, salami, crackers and cider eaten while the fire roared and our dog, Hersey waiting till the game was almost over to lazily wander in and walk over the game board, knocking everything over. 

 

How does one carry all those memories, pack them up, consign them to new spaces, sell, donate or gift them others, without feeling an aching emptiness? 

 

I’m usually not the kind of person who holds onto things; Ben, my husband, was the saver: olds drafts of writing, magazines by the dozens, articles to be cut from newspapers and filed away, even socks with worn out heels.  I was always the one instigating periodic sprees of organization, discarding the unused, the old, and the “we’ll never need this again” criterion for disposal.  But suddenly I find myself holding onto files or books or scarves, concert programs or pieces of pottery, not wanting to discard them, not wanting to whittle down my stuff.

 

What I am realizing now is that I do want to downsize, but only my space, not my memories.  I may end up in a smaller house or rental apartment but I am sure the walls will be covered with my collections of art work, the tops of surfaces filled with pottery, an antique mosaic tile from Spain and of course, the carousel horse. 

 

What will be missing is the companionship, the shared experiences and the stories a house well-lived in collects.  These I will keep inside.