Closing Time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGytDsqkQY8

Argh. My 30s are over. This is something I've been obsessing/stressing/complaining about for some time now, with the obvious result being "time waits for no man - or woman." So here I am. 40. The big Four-Oh. A new check box, and if memory serves me, my max heart rate during cardio gets to be lower now. Whatever, like I'm not still going to kill it at the gym. Because I can. Which is a story in and of itself, and another post.

This song came out in 1999. Technically, it isn't part of my 30s, but it's one of those autobiographical diary nostalgia songs that reminds me of all things good. I was still living in Houston and was largely invincible. You know how that is. A good job and a little disposable income tends to turn health care professionals into drinky party freaks (and I laugh as I think that this blog links to Facebook and as such may be read by some of my fellow drinky party freaks from the late 1990s, you know who you are, you parked illegally in Rice Village to go to the Gingerman like the rest of us and hit up Solero and the Jones Bar and U-Gropa (ahem, Club Uropa) so go on and let's have a moment of silence for our collective lost youth, I can wait), and I have plenty of stories to tell. Good times, my friends. Good times.

  But I digress. Closing Time came on my iPod today while I was in the car and I started thinking about how much things have changed since the days I blasted Semisonic in the car, Saturday afternoons shopping with my best friend, sitting on her front porch with a bottle of wine...somehow, more was crammed into these past 10 years than in the previous 3 decades.

  I met my husband. Yes, at work. Yes, he is one of those people I invited to wax nostalgic with me earlier. We don't tend to marry outside the family. No one else gets the jokes. I think attorneys do the same thing. No, I couldn't pronounce his name properly at first, and in fact, refused to try. I remember just shoving a chart in his face and informing him I needed a note signed. He complied, and that was probably the beginning of a lifetime of me informing him things need to be done. LOL? From him, I've learned the value of prudency, of constancy, of steadfastness.

I left the city I thought I'd spend my life in, and followed The Man to Florida. A state I never thought I'd set foot in. So far, we're doing allright.

We got married and had Turkis Maximus. Possibly the most astounding thing I've ever done, and absolutely worth me no longer using that Master's degree I worked so hard to earn. From him, I've learned the joys of unconditional love, the beauty of those first-light moments wrapped in blankets, and the joy of sharing the way a child laughs with abandon and hugs with his whole body and loves with his whole spirit.

I've been on locked units and struggled mightily to maintain some semblance of sanity and a reasonable adult human weight. This remains some days more successful than others. On the whole, I try. From this, I've learned that I need not worry what others are thinking of me, mostly because they aren't. That beauty isn't about what's on the pages of a magazine. That we are all beautiful in our own right.

I stood with my hero as he took his last breath. From him, I learned more about bravery and selflessness and integrity and the brevity of life than I realized I needed to know. I experienced a grief that knocked me to my knees, and I am only now beginning to stand upright again, coherently.

I've watched my Mom struggle to navigate the ice-cold waters of widowhood. From her, I've learned - again - how a strong woman stands on her own, and how the bend is more advantageous than the complete break.

I've learned that - to paraphrase one of my favorite Pinterest pins - everything I've experienced in my life has brought me to the now, and that now is right on time. Goodbye, 30s. Forty is right on time.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Those Were The Days, My Friend....

We thought they'd never end..... I haven't visited my own blog since the last post I wrote. Mostly for not knowing where to begin, and now for not knowing where to end. It's been a long, frightening, hopeful, tearful, draining, angry year. Full of sad. Full of more emotion than I ever thought I'd be called upon to experience all at once. On November 16, 2011, the bottom fell out of my life. My Dad called to give us the news that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with metastases to the liver and lungs. Later, this was corrected to cholangiocarcinoma, which is bile duct cancer, with questionable pancreatic disease and lung metastases. We were on speakerphone. I fell to the floor, screaming into my arm. I put on my running shoes at 10:15 at night and ran, sobbing, down the street. Away from cancer. Away from the shock, from what we knew was the inevitability of his death. His mortality. My own. Sweet boy had a stomach virus that night. I was up anyway. How could I sleep, my God, my Dad, dying. I didn't sleep for 48 hours, and then was afraid to sleep because every sleeping moment was consumed by nightmares of plane crashes and death and pain. We soldiered through. I ran. I didn't run. I pulled out of races because the wheels came off my body. They gave us hope, the doctors, yet we knew there wasn't any, really. The holidays were good ones. We made memories and took pictures and interviewed Dad on camera. He knew we were interviewing him because he was dying, and that I needed him on video to show my son. My commitment is to never let his grandson forget him. In April, Dad's condition began to decline rapidly. He could no longer tolerate the chemo. He was ready. I booked tickets home for June, to spend part of Fathers' Day weekend with him. To share my son and my love for him, one more time. In June, there were no more chances. We spent 3 days at his hospital bedside. I said the words I had always wanted to say. Needed to say. I sang to him. I held his hand. One of my cherished memories is of him being the first person to reach me at the finish line of the Jazz Half. I was with him at his finish line, as he was with me at mine. My Mom, sister, and I were privileged and blessed to be with him on June 15, 2012, as he took his last breath. My birthday is Monday. The first birthday without my Dad. To him, I will always be 39. To me, he will always be as he was on November 15, 2011. Healthy. Happy. Whole. I love you, Dad. I love you forever. Best Dad Ever.

Trusting the Process...Still.

God Almighty. I need someone to come over here and grab me by the hair and shake me around until my head is cleared of the notion that cleaning out my closet is An Okay Thing To Do during PMS week. The bulk of the clothes have been examined, tried on, cursed at, and separated into piles: dry cleaning; sigh, may as well keep this another year; thank you thank you thank you that you still fit; and get the actual fuck out of my house.

The last pile is the largest, just so you know.

While I was cursing myself, my obstetrician, carbohydrates, skinny jeans, and life in general, I thought about all the blogs and articles I read about recovery. Specifically, full recovery. The notion that full recovery is possible versus the thought that someone with an eating disorder can, at best, hope for a lifetime of management. It's complicated.

Eating disorder expert Sarah Ravin, PhD. defines full recovery in this way:

"…is weight-restored, does not engage in any ED behaviors, has realistic thoughts and behaviors surrounding food, has a realistic body image and accepts her body (even though she may not like it), practices good self-care, engages in proactive relapse prevention, and does not struggle with ED cognitions or emotions. She is cognizant of her underlying predisposition and thus must avoid dieting, fasting, high-stress environments, etc. She may have a better body image, better eating habits, and better psychological functioning than her peers as a result of her treatment." (from an interview with Margarita Tartakovsky, MS)

This is all very good, and plausible, except for that last sentence. Better body image than her peers? I'm going to beg to differ with this to the point of saying it's abject bullshit. Common knowledge in the world of ED treatment is that the body image distortions are the last to go. You dutifully stick to your meal plan until eating doesn't feel so unnatural. You exercise moderately, in a way that honors your body (or at the very least doesn't beat the bejeezus out of it because dammit, you deserve to crawl out of the gym). You ship the itty bitty low rise jeans - or the shapeless, oversized flannely things, pick your poison - off to the thrift shop and replace them with things that both fit and flatter your healthy self. You learn to put yourself out there, you as real and authentic. But in the heat of battle, when you're awake in the middle of the night after making one mistake after the other all day, or when you desperately want to make a good impression, or when you're cleaning out your closet...

You will remember. You will remember your stick-thin arms. You will remember the thighs that didn't touch. That number on that scale. The way people looked at you when you asked the salesgirl for THAT size. No matter that you've forgotten falling down every time you stood up, the complete demise of all your relationships, the weeks locked away. You will put on your rose-colored glasses, and for a while, you will magically grow, rather like Alice in Wonderland. Eat me. Yeah. Because you still aren't capable of seeing what's really there with any consistency. There's no middle ground. Fat or thin, small or large.

But then again, now my body image is supposed to be better than that of my peers.

I prefer Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb's definition of recovery, and you can read more about it in their book, 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder: Effective Strategies from Therapeutic Practice and Personal Experience. In this resource, recovery is defined as this:

Being recovered is when the person can accept his or her natural body size and shape and no longer has a self-destructive relationship with food or exercise. When you are recovered, food and weight take a proper perspective in your life, and what you weigh is not more important than who you are; in fact, actual numbers are of little or no importance at all. When recovered, you will not compromise your health or betray your soul to look a certain way, wear a certain size, or reach a certain number on the scale. When you are recovered, you do not use eating disorder behaviors to deal with, distract from, or cope with other problems.

Costin and Grabb highlight the importance of acceptance. My favorite piece of their definition is the idea that, once recovered, you will not betray what you have given blood, sweat, and tears to achieve something superficial. The ED isn't what you do when all hell breaks loose. You are more important to yourself.


So back to the question: is full recovery possible? Costin and Grabb give me better odds of saying yes, because most days, their description of someone who is fully recovered fits me fairly well. I still can't bring myself to say it, though. For me, I think it's a process, and it's a process I have to trust, even now. It would be easy today to make another pot of coffee, skip my lunch, and show myself no mercy on the treadmill. All because I'm angry at some shapeless pieces of fabric. The truth is, whether you want to use the words "fully recovered" or "in recovery" doesn't matter.

And because I wanted to say at least one thing about running....what matters, just like in running, is what you do when the road starts heading uphill. Anybody can run when the road's flat and easy. You learn what you're made of when it isn't.

Clean At Your Own Risk

*I think most of you knew I've been blogging over at BeliefNet.com for the past month as part of a contest. I missed my home here tonight, and since I know you didn't have an opportunity to see this entry (I won't know anything about contest results for another few weeks, by the way), I wanted to share it with you. Be on the lookout for more of my regular craziness in a day or two....*



You've got one. At least one.
I have more than one.

That closet...you know, THAT closet. The one stuffed so full of things you don't even remember you have. Baby gear, Christmas decorations, extension cords, and boxes of things My Better Half refuses to throw away (just so you know, these boxes haven't been opened since 2 states ago, ahem.). The cleaning bug has bitten me lately - or, more aptly, the organizing bug - and one of those closets has its magnetic force field beaming right at me.

The last time those doors were opened, I was treated to a tumbling cascade of cloth diapers, long-since-outgrown toys, extra tiny hangers for those extra tiny clothes, and mementos that haven't quite made it into The Boy's two-year box. He is about to make the much-anticipated move into his Big Boy Bed. What better time than to clean out his closets and make room for more Big Boy accessories?

So why am I balking? Yes, he's going to play with everything as it gets strewn haphazardly across his bedroom floor. Yes, I'm going to be nostalgic and misty remembering the times I snapped his precious teensy tushie into those soft, cozy cloth diapers. I can hang. I do well with nostalgia and occasional chaos. What's hard for me about letting go of these memories, these tiny treasures, is that there will be nothing to replace them. The decision has been made, largely for health reasons on my part, that our family is now complete. We are three. It's a decision that still brings me to tears, although I know it's for the best.

If I said I am not dreading saying goodbye to the idea of ever again having some small person filling up such small things in such a big way, I'd be lying. Cleaning out that closet is my final goodbye to babyhood. My acceptance of the way things need to be. It makes every moment with the Turkey bittersweet, and reminds me to store my memories away so carefully. I dread the tidal wave of tears.

It's so hard to say goodbye to material posessions anyway. We hoard them and cling to them like they're people we're afraid of losing. It's even harder when letting them go means letting go of one dream - one that was shared by two people, much younger than we are now - and accepting another reality. There are some things I've packed away to keep forever. The rest of it, though, needs to be cleared away.

I can't grow emotionally until I clear it away.

Here's a Thought

Hmmm.
She's got nice abs. No denying this. In the not-all-that-distant-yet-most-assuredly-pre-preggo past, I pranced around the gym in similar getup. Before you start thinking I'm posting about this picture, which is making the rounds of Facebook and making me want to spork somebody's eyes out, because I gots mad envy...let me assure you that's not my problem with it.

Stop looking at the picture. Read the words. Once you're done with that, how about you take a minute to ponder a few ideas:

What was the first thing you thought when you saw the picture? Hmmmm. If you're like a lot of people (women) who've commented on FB, you're not feeling all that saucy about your own abs right now. This picture made you not like yourself - or at least the way you look - for a minute. You think you need to get back in the gym ASAP. You think this woman (who, if I may be so bold as to suggest it, may be a little *gasp* airbrushed) is the ideal to which you, normal non-freak-of-nature-or-photoshop woman, must immediately aspire.

Why is she ideal, and not you? Just because of her abs? Is there anything in this picture that confirms that the rest of her life isn't one big hot mess? But hey, she's got THOSE ABS so it can't be all bad. I've had the abs, as I've said, and let me offer the guarantee that abs do not a perfect life make. Granted, if you make your living as a fitness model, then you'll probably get more work with the abs...but I'm assuming that's not what's going on here so I digress.

Every second of every day? Really? EVERY? This is what I need to do to be somebody? Spend every second of every effing day to get me some brand-new abbadabbas? Been there, done that, got the sports bra. Taking that approach was pretty much my grand-scale fail at life. I'd gladly introduce you to several people I know who have had the same experience.

Going back and reading, it's sounding like Bitter, Party of One. Nah. Not really. Here's the thing, though: I've learned something. In my thirtysomethingsomething years, I've learned something, and while I occasionally have to work EXCEEDINGLY hard to remember it, it's stuck. Because it's important.

Here it is.
Right here.
Still here? Good.

It's this, and it's fairly simple: you may not like the way you look all the time, and you may spend inordinate amounts of time comparing yourself to people like the model in the picture, and you may think that if you could just get rid of those last 5 pounds/that gobbler/the end of the baby weight/your mommy flap (for those of us who have had c-sections that there ain't no crunches or pilates to help)/your what-the-hell-ever you don't like, your life would be shiny and glossy and sparkle like the mothereffing SUN.

Revisit this. It won't. Because changing those things won't change YOU. And why in the world aren't you enough for the people who love you, just as you are? My son couldn't care less that mommy's 6-pack is missing some cans. My husband hasn't left me because I don't look like that woman in the picture. I cry sometimes because I get sucked in, usually in times of stress, to thinking that "if I only had that body back"....yeah. The one I almost died to get. The one I never appreciated. The one that there is no end to the craziness to maintain. I mentioned death already.

I have this body. It's closer to 40 than I want it to be. It has been starved, and refed, lather rinse repeat ad nauseam. It has forgiven me. It carried my child. It nursed my child. It has run HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of miles. It has folded itself into the corners of friends' hot tubs, sweated in pain and come back for more on a Spin bike, walked through vacation cities, and been stronger than I ever knew I'd need it to be. I have no right not to love it.

What has your body - your REAL, normal, unique body - done for YOU? I promise you, the life it's carried you through is worth more than just a mirror full of abs.

Go be beautiful.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Wow. Hello, blog. Plenty of things going on, not sure where to begin. Hold nose tightly, jump right in.

We think we send our children off to adults to be taught. Occasionally, though, you have to wonder who's actually doing the teaching. I've learned more about life over the past two months than I have in a long time. Maybe it was a refresher course as much as anything, but still. I had the honor of being taught (or reminded) what it means to put faith into action, and my teacher was a terminally ill seventeen-month-old boy. We were given the opportunity, rather unexpectedly, to open our home to him and his family, who are our dear friends, for several days while he was hospitalized here (unexpectedly). At that point, in the middle of the night, driving a car filled with suitcases and the broken promises of a trip gone awry, there's nothing more to say. Seeing them, younger than we are and experiencing the end of their baby boy's life, hurting in a way we can't begin to understand...well, you don't talk anymore. You just DO. You stop asking, and start acting. I've heard it said that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness; well, given that cursing wasn't going to change a damn thing, we did our best to keep the candle lit. Supposedly this is something we were doing for them, because that's what friends do. I didn't realize until recently the depth of the blessing I received from being able to offer what I had to give. It will do me well to remember what I learned about friendship that week, and to show my son by example that friends give. You don't say pretty words, and pat people on the head. Get in there. Hurt with someone. Listen. Light your damn candle already. Shine a little light into a very, very dark night. You never know. Expect nothing - but do it anyway.

I'm sad to tell you that my sweet teacher's battle with cancer ended a few weeks ago. We look at the pictures from their stay often. Small boy loves them mightily. As do I. There is a beautiful orange gerbera daisy blooming, and it's a reminder to remember the beauty of his life, of all life. Because I know that's what he's asking us to do.

I want to tell you about the adventure run I'm doing a week from tonight. I want to tell you I'm running two half-marathons in the near future (November and February). I want to tell you about some crazy obstacle course nonsense I seem to be getting myself into. I want to tell you that suddenly I run a lot faster, and this bemuses and pleases me. But somehow it doesn't fit this post. This is why I haven't written for a while. Nothing seemed to flow.

*check out this segue! sometimes I am sofa king fantastic*

Amazingly, this post is coming full circle right now. Speaking of flow, today was the day of reckoning - the day I got around to doing something that's been on the to-do list for quite some time. I found myself in a yoga class today, for the first time in (just a guess here) 3 years. Let's do a quick Things I Have Learned:

1. I'm no spring chicken.
2. Which doesn't matter a hell of a lot when half the rest of the class isn't either.
3. Which matters less when the lights are turned WAAAAAAY down.
4. For someone who more or less is locked into cardio, I'm weirdly strong. Don't be thinking I'm Miss Yoga USA, though, keep reading.
5. My balance sucks. One minute I'm being told my Warrior 2 is "beautiful" and the next minute my Tree is toppling over like there's hurricane-force winds. Shit.
6. Running immediately before yoga isn't necessarily the greatest idea. One, I stunk to high heaven (sorry, yoga neighbors), and two, my cranky hip was CRANKY.

The thing that shocked me the most was that by the end of the class, my mind was actually mostly clear. We did our srivasana (Lord help, that's probably wrong, but I'm not opening another window to check) in the dark, and as we're lying there supine on our mats, the instructor said something that resonated very deeply with me:

The to-do list will be there. Just not now.

Suddenly, it was clear just how much time I do not spend in the moment. And just as clear how grateful I am for all the moments I've been given, even though as the mom of a preschooler I've developed multitasking to an art form and as such, miss half of them.

We sat up, slowly, and as I moved my hands into prayer position, a tear slid down my cheek. What matters most is here now. The to-do list can wait, you know? No one will care that I forgot to unload the dishwasher, or that the towels were all folded by 6pm. I will care, though, and deeply, if I let my life pass me by. Haven't I done enough of that? I've been given another chance to get this right, and the to-do list will be there. This two-and-a-half summer, this family time, this summer afternoon outside at the art museum, wine in hand, with a friend and our boys won't be. These moments are too beautiful not to soak up. So if it takes weekly reminders via yoga, so be it.

This morning, what I wanted was to stretch out my hammies and get Jennifer Aniston arms. What I got was a gentle push back into my life.

If you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

The Catalyst

Which just happens to be the name of the song. Which saves me from having to think of a blog title. Which is excellent, since this morning's Spin class beat me to pieces and I'm sitting limply at the laptop, nursing this latte. A great thing, when you leave so much on the bike that you just want to sit for a bit when you're done.

Speaking of how great it is to bring all you've got, and leave it all out there and then some...I'm ready. I'm ready to run again. I've been fiddling around outside a couple of mornings a week, and suddenly that's not enough. It's not giving me the opportunity to see what I'm made of, to find my limits again and give them the finger. Summer's just around the corner, and this feels like another summer of early mornings bonding with my iPod and feeling my feet hit the pavement.

There aren't words for how delighted I am by this. If I needed confirmation that it's okay to call myself a runner (because sometimes the 13.1 isn't enough), the confirmation has arrived. I feel like a little kid ready to go play. Last summer, I was trudging through workouts, into the unknown, running for fun but terrified of failure. Not now. This summer, the fear's not there. There IS no failure in running. There's only the failure that comes from denying myself the experience. Where's the fun in that?

I just finished Kristin Armstrong's fantastic book, Mile Markers. Moms who run, you need to run right over to Amazon, or to your bookstore, or to your Kindle or whatever you use to read, and get this book. She writes so beautifully about the intersections of running and motherhood, of running and friendship, of running and gratitude. One thing that stuck out for me comes near the end of the book, as she details how she changes negative thoughts into positive action by reframing them. "I HAVE to" becomes "I GET to". As in, not "I HAVE to run five miles this morning in the heat", but "I GET to run five miles this morning in the heat." I GET to do things. I GET to take care of this little person who loves me with his whole heart, even though he's just peepeed on the floor and is whining because his mouth hurts. I GET to straighten up this house, because I'm blessed to live in it and because I'm one whose mental state takes cues from her external environment. I GET to run, because I can and so many people can't. It's all about the attitude.

Enjoy my new favorite running song, while you're at it.
Happy weekend, everybody.....with love.