Broad Shoulders
She always had broad shoulders, or so she thought. But in the last few years since retiring and at various times but not always she felt an old, deep and familiar anxiety, although she liked to deny it. Prior to that she was just too damn busy to notice. She was so good at just getting shit done. She worked, she worked out, she took classes, she taught classes, she did yoga, earned money, took care of her family. But, it became apparent during her first winter in Florida, the Sunshine State where you are supposed to happily retire, a state her brother called, God’s Graveyard, or maybe His Waiting Room, it was there that whatever was stirring became realized as a headache, a sometimes mind-numbing pain at the back of her head that made her nauseous. Other times she could literally swear that a pair of giant tongs was grabbing, pinching in on one side of her head and then the other, trying to grip and lift all 100 pounds of her, some giant hand connected to a giant body of unknown origin. A non stop headache, self-diagnosed and confirmed once back home, tension headache. Tension. For unknown reasons but not really.
And then it happened again when her husband, that very next summer, had heart “issues.” Ever the one with broad shoulders, you know helping everybody but herself, ever that soul, she was shaken not just a little bit, but a lot, deep into her bones. Heart surgery. That big strong tall man of hers that her mom referred to as the Tree. Her very own Viking she would often think at the same she could hear her brother howl with laughter or maybe cringe. Her own heart for the first time in years, began to palpitate oddly as she cared for him, waited in the hospital room overlooking the bay while a physician the age of her granddaughter poked around her beloved’s heart. Tension. Anxiety. She hated that side of herself, the side or part of her psyche she rarely revealed to anybody let alone herself. She, the most important person in terms of her happiness and well-being, was strikingly unaware, batting away at that side of her and all it meant, like you swat a fly, she tried to dismiss what she saw as completely unacceptable, uncontrollable but making itself known and demanding attention. “What the fuck do you think you are doing?” she would lament before taking another Advil and worrying about her blood pressure. Like her dog that wouldn’t stop barking at the slightest noise, on alert, vigilant that side of her was just like that.
And, then, as if there was some sort of plot against her own summer happiness, the very next summer her husband had his ankle completely roboticized with a fancy replacement joint inserted and literally bolted between his foot and tibia/fibula complex, those bones that hold your body up, anchored by your feet. She chuckled at the random fact, and she knew and loved random facts, those things she could depend and rely upon, but she did chuckle thinking about one’s big toe, or hallux, which it turns out is the most important toe on your foot. Keeps one balanced and steady. Little toe is important, but it’s the hallux that keeps you walking without toppling over. The clear plexiglass contraption/robo foot that the orthopedic doctor, a charming and actually caring guy, who she enjoyed chatting with a little too much, proudly wiggled it around, on their second visit, “See,” the doctor moved the foot around as the fake ankle free floated in such a way that it moved in all directions, “You should come out of this with all the rotation of a healthy ankle!” It looked just like a prop out of a science fiction movie, Terminator 4, Attack of the Raging Robo Foot, impressive and other-worldly but hopefully a cure for her husband’s trashed ankle.
And, although robo ankle was a good thing, no doubt, it became an entire summer of nursing a now prone husband and not prone for any fun but prone because his ankle would swell up the size of Montana. That was the challenge. She spent endless hours calling doctors, running to the pharmacy, worrying as he lay in the hospital bed in the middle of the living room for months with his foot elevated and an ice pack tied around the bloodstained dressing with a dishtowel. It was another lost summer but lost maybe and most importantly, to herself. Her body reacted again in an oddly familiar way and she dealt with it with her own doctor visits, heart recordings, more supplements, yoga, meditation. But, anxiety was right there and she hated it. And that was part of the problem.
Two winters went along with much incident, gratefully and curiously, living in a friend’s house caring for her geratric dog on the beaches of Alabama. But, that fourth winter away just as she was beginning to handle, cope in a positive way, with being away from family and friends for an extended period of time, like months, being away from her life and her home in Maine, just when she was getting her footing with photography and ceramics and even some friendships, nothing necessarily deep and meaningful, which she longed for, but creative nonetheless, it was right then that the president who couldn’t shut up and who she didn’t trust but then she didn’t trust much of anybody, right then that he called for a goddamn National Emergency. The covid pandemic, was it the flu or not the flu, whas it a bioweapon or the outcome of a nasty species jumping bat virus in a wet market in China, whatever was and will become, it was slowly encompassing the entire world in fear, illness, uncertainty.
At first she was fine. Just fine. But once home, because they raced home the day after the state of national emergency was announced, driving for 15 hours each for two days to get home, once home she was on autopilot. A familiar state of mind. So much to do. She obsessively watched the news on Fox, NBC, CNN, BBC for any information on the virus; read about the virus on every random website she could find; stocked up on paper products because others were and who knows what the future held for toilet paper; read the news again; double check the supposed facts on Fox, NBC, CNN, BBC, stocked up on various and seemingly random other items as they become irrationally scarce, this time yeast and flour. She found two different types of yeast at the local farm and bought them. Her friend went on an early morning BJ’s run to buy a few groceries, finding 2 pounds of Fleischmann’s yeast, for $4.99. They split it for $2.50 each. One pound of Fleischmann’s yeast, in fact what looked like the very same package, was being sold for $34 on eBay; two pounds for $60. A price surge of 12 times the price. “Fucking price gougers. Isn’t that illegal?” she mumbled to herself as the pain in her neck made her move her head back and forth from side to side as she took a long, deep breath in and out. She was vigilant and aware, finding food here and there. Fortunately, she had some masks, surgical and even a couple of those coveted albeit used N95 masks from her renovation projects with her husband, from her art projects started, incomplete, complete, already being used as bowls or waiting to be hung as sculpture on the wall.
And, it’s about then that she had an epiphany, possibly life changing epiphany in the middle of a mother fucking pandemic. Of surprise to her but probably not her husband, therapist or brother, but she really felt in her bones that she was living with anxiety every time something happened out of the norm, which was a lot of the time. Her husband, maybe lovingly and maybe not so, sometimes referred to her and her bio family as a bunch of squirrels, zipping around frantically much of the time. That did fit the profile but she moaned, hated that. Life was not normal, really ever and probably never. It was then that she knew that batting away at whatever this was, whatever made her miserable on occasion, whatever made her more unhappy than she should given all she had at this point in life, whatever made her body ache and dance to a weird rhythm to which seemed to have no control, whatever that was, would no longer work for her.
And with those thoughts on a beautiful spring morning on a day after the rain had cleared up and moved on, and because she was just plain damn tired of her head hurting, her arm feeling cramped and achy, and her heart rambling in a weird and random rhythm, she went upstairs. She entered and closed the door to that wonderful room on the second floor. That room of her own overlooking the yard which was lime green in the fall and summer, those seasons that would come, that room with white wood floors, blue like the sky walls, wood trim, yoga and gym equipment. That room where she could write and read, think and stare out the window. The place where many of her beloved books were shelved away, where her yoga therapy certificate was framed and hung next to her doctoral degree.
She put the headphones into her ears, those little ones that magically stay put in your ear canal, well not always but generally. She found the Spotify app on her iPhone and searched for “yoga” music. She tapped on the selection, Awakening which was listed among other songs that she may play later or maybe never. Calm Waters, The Light of Day and Moment of Clarity might all be in her future.
And in that room, on that afternoon as she lay on her favorite midnight blue Manduka yoga mat, rolling on a bright pink trigger point foam roller, practicing yoga as it healed and fed her body, listening to Awakening, she remembered what she knew and so often forgot. She let gentle tears flow. She allowed her scapular muscles all tight around those odd free-floating bones in her upper back shoulder to lengthen and rest. She breathed away the headache with slow steady breathing to the count of 1, 2, 3. And all the while she realized why she’d regularly completely forget about all these practices she knew well and was certified to help others with. She knew that to really feel, be relaxed, even happy was to open wide. To really feel and cry and have pain was to be vulnerable and that was not safe on the deepest levels of her soul.
And she hated it, but that was all about to change.
