screwed

My box is small, weighs light, but to me - its high, this is heavy.
To you, I'm spastic, to me, I'm  practically elastic  - compared to where I was and who I was and how, back when.


I can remember Aaron saying he'd catch me if I fell, only a short, long year ago
I looked for him today to see if he would come back, stand there, catch me if I should happen to catch my foot as I hop up.  I have this overwhelming, not entirely irrational fear of breaking my teeth while I attempt box jumps, even on the itty bitty guy.  
He's nowhere in site, but obviously still in my head, so I do it, teeth breaking fear and all.
Each jump is a leap of faith for me at my age, 47, with, as I like to refer to it, my literally "screwed up" and screwed in leg.
I can't be flexible.  Ironically, physical inflexibility, being stiff and sore, left me little choice but to at least try to become, well, flexible.   And to do that, I had to and still have to continue to literally ignore, if not surpass my limitations, all of them, mind and body.
Though I'm not strong, I can't tell you the strength I have inside and how I push  myself to try to show up.  I can't express how hard of an exercise in self discipline it is for me just to walk in and partake of this amazing, exhilarating, exhausting, excruciating, most excellent form of incredible torture and exercise called Crossfit.


I hate to talk about it and I hate to use it/excuse it and myself for having it, but it's there and it's a pain, literally and figuratively.  It's ugly and it prevents me from being remotely graceful and there is no way around it.  I'm stuck with a fuc_ed up leg... but, on the bright side, it's not as bad as it used to be.
I feel better, stronger then I knew I could and because of that, I'll jump or more like thump my way up onto that smallest box.




...what I lack in range of motion, I make up for with my wide range of emotion...


Every time I make myself show up, I feel more unexpected gratitude, which leads to an emotional latitude, which in turn allows me to feel happier  and stronger in every conceivable, inconceivable way.
Its like love, at first leap/box-jump, which means that I apparently technically love the little guy; the tiny box and I do... 




Without the patience and the ever present assistance of the trainers and sometimes the well intentioned do-gooders/can't help but want to help ya do betters, who thrive at my gym,  I'd absolutely be lost and limping.   No doubt about it. So thank you, for sure.

memorization

Do not ask me how we land on these topics...
"God and Mary weren't married?" He asks with a mature incredulousness that I can totally relate to and resent both at the same time.
"Ehh... hmm.".  Throat clearing gives me pause for thought... and just where is a nail for biting when you need one?
Emaculate conception is hard to explain even for good Catholics, never mind bad ones like me.   And so how exactly do they, children of a bad Cath, even know to bother asking about this business?  I mean, who told them about the bizarre relationship between God and Jesus; his, "long haired, barefoot son" - because those are the things that stick out about God forsaken Jesus in my young son's eyes.  But girl, she wants me to go into great detail about how exactly genes from God got into his supposed son while he was housed inside of Mary, whom God never physically hung out with.
Atheists might be onto something.
Simplicity.
But I can't do simplicity well.
So, I deflect.  
I do this initial deflection by reciting the Our Father and then Hail Mary, but I change up words so that it all sounds nicer, makes more simple sense.   I pretty them up a bit.
Have I mentioned we don't attend church often?  Yup, we are very busy apparently.
My kids want to know why I know the words for those two rather unknowable prayers and why do I know them by heart when I can't seem to bother learning the street names and common routes home in the area where we now reside; after all, this is where we choose to live.  Good questions.
I tell them its sort of like learning the alphabet, but I know inside it's not remotely alphabetical....its philosophical.    It's not wrote - it is written and in truth I have no better understanding of it all then they do and I cannot explain it well ... and so instead I deflect again.  I simply say, "Oh man, oh man, how very much do I love you?  So, so very much is how much.  Come on, come on and close your eyes".
They do.
We are done, for now.  But I'm not done.   
I am on.
I'm on inside my head.


Someone logically tell me why and just how does the world keep turning and why can I get away with so much and so little?  How can I gamble with things like love and happiness, the future, security, friendship, good health or even just stupid Blackjack and why do I win, lose, win, lose, win more, then lose a bit but win again, just not enough to make a real difference?   Why do I tread so much endless water to only stay pleasantly, surprisingly afloat?  Why doesn't the tide just carry me away?  AND - What if it does someday?   What day might that be and why have I been so lucky and unfortunate and blessed, cursed, strong and weak, loved and lonely, lost and progressing all at the same time?
I'm not getting anywhere, but then again, look how far I have gone to get here?

I'll deflect and admit that I am kinda succeeding at getting nowhere and admit also that I don't actually begrudge the journey.
Hell, I know the alphabet...
"Hail Mary, full of grace" ...

Deflecting...

"Give us this day."

More deflection... 
He must know we're worth it -

it was the nearness of you...

They call them "feel good" movies for a reason.


Not so much before, but definitely during and also for a while after, we felt good,  good in a way that none of us had all day long.   We watched a movie together.  During the film we morphed our positioning.  We'd started clumped, the three of us on the couch, my hand absentmindedly, tenderly scratching their narrow backs.   Then there were just two of us, him literally laying on me, as if I was the sofa.  At some point we were each alone in spaces throughout the room, but in the end, it was them together with the big dog, at a distance from me.  I watched them, while the movie ended and I was moved to tiny tears, partly because the film touched me and partly because my life touches me and maybe a little in part due to the big, beautiful full moon that was now visible from one of the high, pointless windows near the top of the house.   I think about these windows.  Too high to cover, letting in all the light that is lovely, but brings extra heat and a feeling of openness that sometimes seems like too much exposure.  However, they come in handy during the full moon, I realized.
In the film, the feel good movie, a person asked, "which would you choose, people or animals"?   
Ironically I was looking at my kids and dogs lying together in perfect harmony on the floor, just as this question was posed.   I looked at the moon then; bright, giving, mysterious, familiar, unchanging, alive, cold, distant, comforting and I thought to myself; I don't have to choose between people and animals.  I have no choices there.  I am stuck happily with them both.  This is the burden/commitment of being a parent and pet owner, though you chose them, once chosen, unlike lovers, they are yours for the duration.  
So what choices can I make?
Many.
Last night I chose to love the moon and if I could have, I would have touched it.
Today I choose to spend quality time with the sea... and I'm awfully curious about what my moon might have done to that ocean.
...this brings me to my point, the point I never realize I have when I begin to write anything; isn't it amazing that we can have both?  Isn't it amazing that we don't have to just choose to love only one, not the other.

I am forever amazed by the way the things I can not help but love seem to move one another, morph together...

might as well...jump

I reached far to pat myself on the back.

Remembering to show up to.... get this... sharpen pencils today at the school office for next week's state testing, though they'd already been sharpened by some other willing parent by the time I arrived, felt rather significant to me.  I've been overloaded by the newness/nothing-is-at-all-familiarness of my recent days, to the point where actually showing up when I'd been asked to felt like an accomplishment.   I'd followed through, whoop-dee-do.  I'm back.  Kinda, sorta back.  "Thank you so much though", she said anyhow, even though I'd done nothing other then actually attempt to do what I said I would.   I smiled as I walked away, "You are very fu_king welcome and might I add that it would have been my great pleasure, in fact", I thought to just myself.  

I never get tired of watching my kids have fun.   My little guy bounces and jumps and rolls exactly like the 70 some odd other boys at this public trampoline, but his face is a beacon to me.  I focus on it.  I find it instantly in the crowd.  "Watch this", he screams.  It looks like every bounce before, but maybe it feels different to him.  Maybe to him, that latest hop felt like a big, giant, scary leap of faith.... and so I watch carefully and call to him, filled with wild enthusiasm that springs from somewhere inside of me, a place not covered in yellow, sticky, remind me to remember, post it notes.  I say, "You are awesome!!"... and I mean it.   He eats this up.  For every big bop of his, there is an equal or greater reaction from me.  "You're incredible.  You're a star.  Wow, you went so high that I could barely see you!"  None of it is true, but it's all true as hell at the very same time.  He is a star, he goes so high that I can hardly see him, he's incredible, awesomeness personified.  I'm positively dazzled. Just jumping is more then enough.  It's everything.

Surprised by the magnitude of energy it requires to adjust myself to simple, necessary changes in my daily life, I realize that everything, E V E R Y T H I N G is a jump, everything is a leap, no matter how natural, necessary or mundane our tasks seem, when they involve others and when we take care with those tasks, when we come through, then those things are actually "something".    And wouldn't it be nice if some person called out, "YOU are awesome!" for each of these efforts we make to propel ourselves forward?  For each attempt to hurl ahead there should be an equal or greater reaction.  And so, because the effort alone is something,  I echo to you, yes you Reader; "You are a star, I can barely see you from here, simply awesome."

Let me close with a, "YOU are incredible... just for showing up and trying."