Category: The Journey …

December 24, 2014: It’s that time of the year again. New Year’s Resolutions are just around the corner! Many people hate them … many are ambivalent, and many more avoid them like the plague. I see them as a way to push boundaries. And since I’ve finished wrapping, I’m thinkin’ about it. This year, a surgery in January is going to suppress my athletic pursuits, at least for the first bit of 2015. Since that’s a limiting factor, I’m going to make FIFTEEN unconventional resolutions instead. In no particular order ………

15 in ’15 – New Years Resolutions … Deb Style!

1) See Crater Lake for the first time … stay for a spell. Find a rocking chair. Read. Hike.

2) Take enough horseback riding lessons to go to Chile next year and not embarrass myself.

3) Take a writing class in the quirkiest joint I can find.

4) Learn to cook for one … and like it.

5) Pick a random day and get in the car and drive far enough to get somewhere dark. Lie on my back and stargaze.

6) Donate blood (before I get my next tattoo in Ireland).

7) Kiss the Blarney Stone

8) Stand on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland; breathe the sea air

9) Ride in a pontoon boat in Lake Boon, Massachusetts

10) Max out my 401K contribution to the point they won’t take any more of my money.

11) Photograph the Chihuly glass museum at night.

12) Learn enough Photoshop to make my skin look flawless.

13) Drive the length of the Cascade Loop Highway in one day. Make time to find some funky shops … a mom and pop grill … a biker bar. Take pictures.

14) Grab my mom and dad, and my sisters, (if they’re willing) and little Izzy (who’s always willing) … and take the boat to Jetty Island and put our feet in the sand. Walk the boardwalk. Find shells. Admire the nests.

15) See one of the seven Natural Wonders of the World

2015 is shaping up to be a very good year, indeed. Let’s see how many I can check off the list! Photo compliments of one of the races from my 2013 resolution. Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year … cheers!

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Update: PhotoShop and 401K didn’t make the cut. But the 13 others? Check!

December 9, 2014: When I was sixteen, I was flipping burgers at “Campbell’s Drive Inn”, a little, family-owned fast-food joint in Silver Lake. Worked there for six years or so. Grew up there, really. Thirty-five years ago or so this Christmas, we had a white elephant gift exchange, and my name was drawn by a young girl named Dawn. She gave me several Christmas tree ornaments, and with it, she gave me the gift of a story. She loved a tree that spun a tale. She told me that her dream was to have a giant Christmas tree that didn’t hold shiny balls or tinsel. It would be filled with homemade ornaments … trinkets. Ratty old things. It would have history. I liked the gift, but it wasn’t … profound. But she spoke with such passion! Those were self-absorbed, self-destructive times. In fact, I think I may have gotten my tree that year from the local Community College campus landscaping committee. (Sorry, ECC faculty … I was a bit of a delinquent.)

Within the year, though, Dawn was gone. Cancer. Before she turned twenty years old. While the white elephant gift may not have been profound at the moment she placed it in my hands, it has touched every Christmas since. I’ve put up her ornaments every year. They get a special box. They are carefully placed. Away from little hands and paws. They’ve traveled with me through marriages, births, divorce, deaths, pain and joy. School … new jobs. Travel. Watching my beautiful boy grow from a newborn child to a fine young man. Thirty-five years full of extremes. The ornaments tell that story … a paper mache ice cream cone from 1998 that has chipped away more every year. A broken ceramic that looked more like stained glass when glued together … or so I said. A one-eyed santa. A gingerbread man licked thin by Chopper, our beloved kitty that crossed the rainbow bridge nearly a decade ago. Innocence. Cynicism. Anger. Joy. All held tightly in the Christmas box.

Every year, after the decorations are up, I spend a couple of quiet hours looking at the tree, the lights … the story. Sometimes the tree is tall, sometimes Charlie Brown-like. And for the last couple of years, pre-lit and easy to install. Homemade ornaments. Trinkets. Ratty old things. History.

Here’s to you, Dawn. Your life? Devastatingly short. But I will never forget you. Thirty-five Christmases. And you are still in my heart. Merry Christmas … I hope you enjoy the tree.

December 11, 2013: Life sure has a funny way of getting its point across. Today was … trying. I picked up my anesthetized sister at the hospital this afternoon. She thought I could just zip her home after day surgery. This quick ride home turned out to be a significantly more time-consuming adventure. (She’s fine, but needed to be monitored, so off to my folks’ house she went.) Traffic, ten minutes late with a senior director at work, red tape, annoying processes … sigh. Today was the kind of day that you’d generally classify as a pain in the neck. Thank heavens I had happy hour scheduled with a friend. Just what the doctor ordered … a nice glass of chardonnay, fireside.

There was a couple that sat across from us. Friendly faces … the kind of people you start a conversation with. We went from past travel stories to design plans they had for a house they were building. From what it’s like in Kelowna to how strolling the Great Wall is a terrific item for anyone’s bucket list. We talked about my plans to visit Jasper next year … what the Northern Lights look like from Yellowknife, while Dave drank his beer from a straw. Didn’t think much about it, but everyone’s got their quirks.

My friend, Lynn, and I told the story about how we met. Sixty miles of pavement-pounding in a fight to end breast cancer. From there, the conversation morphed to the value of health. I told the two of them the story of what will forever be known as “my really bad swim workout”. Dave’s brother suffered a similar situation, and the two of them got very animated about naturopathic health care. Turns out they weren’t here for wine tasting. Or shopping. Or looking at the Christmas lights. Turns out, Dave and Karen were there to see someone about the ALS Dave was diagnosed with last July. It wasn’t until then that I noticed that he leaned over to sip his beer from his straw while his hands, turned slightly inward, remained in his lap.

Dave was a long-distance runner. A mountain climber. A nature lover. He simply said, “well, you can’t not fight”. No truer words have been spoken. Today was not a pain in the neck. Today was a gift …

January 30, 2013: Dear Dr. Kures …

589 nights ago, you fought for me. You didn’t even know me, yet you did everything in your power to save my life. Your skills, knowledge, and decision-making that night allowed me to experience so much over the last year and a half. There have been big, loud, raucous times … mud runs, sunny days in a kayak, admiring Eddie Van Halen’s moves with my sister, watching my dad show us all how to properly operate a (child’s size) hula hoop … even a 5k run in a peanut-butter sandwich outfit. I got the opportunity to celebrate Felix Hernandez’ perfect game with 39,000 other yellow-clad baseball fans. I bought a house! There have been quieter moments … enjoying a beautiful sunset with friends, my mom’s smile … kissing my son’s cheek on his 28th birthday. And a profoundly joyful moment celebrating LIFE with a thumbs-up from my beloved nephew, home from one tour of duty in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, with a chest full of medals and a Purple Heart.

What you do matters. I will never forget, or take for granted, the gift you gave me.

Thank you …

A year ago last June 21st, I was training for a triathlon and had a severe asthma attack in the middle of Lake Washington. The stars were aligned for me, though … I was training with my friend, there were a couple of burly fisherman that just happened to be there to schlep me up on to the dock (at the stern direction of my buddy), the fire station paramedics were a mere minute and a half away, and there just happened to be a police boat patrolling the area. Any one of those things not in place, and I would have been toast (or fish food, as it were).

I remember thinking … it’s a beautiful sunny day, I’m in a boat speeding across Lake Washington with four handsome young paramedics (ahem … young enough to be my son), and I look like THIS?! Then … “we’re going to give you something to relax you”. From then on, it was lights out for a couple of days. Apparently, between the asthma and the lake water in my lungs, my heart was “stunned” and quit beating efficiently enough to keep me alive. Because everything was going my way that day, though, they got me to the hospital in record time. I had an intra-aortic balloon pump inserted in to my heart to keep it beating, and they intubated me to keep me breathing. Sometime the next day, I was conscious enough to hear (with alarming clarity) what was going on, but they had me paralyzed so I couldn’t move anything … no fingers, toes, eyes … nuthin’. That was very, very scary, trying to put the pieces together from what was going on in the room. My doctor tells me that for everyone on duty that night, I became an ER legend for surviving the night. Scared the heck out of my family, though. My first act upon regaining consciousness was to signal for a pen (I was still on the ventilator), and scribble, “WTF? Fine yesterday”. They knew I was going to be okay at that point, AND that I had maintained my sense of humor.

There are minimal lingering effects, but I am significantly more “fluffy” than I was a year ago. Exercise, which had previously kept my weight in check, had to take a sabbatical. I did three triathlons before this happened, but I think I’ll be hanging up my wetsuit. Try something more sedate and land-bound. Like mud runs. These life changes tend to give you a different perspective. Time to take action. I changed jobs. (My previous one had me on the road EVERY week.) I finally bought another house, which I had been longing for. (My own patch of dirt! I can plant flowers! And cook in my own kitchen!)

Since my “really bad swim workout” last year, I’ve gained 20 pounds. This is bad. I am ready to get back to early-morning boot camp, training, and feeling strong. This is good. A few things I’ve learned … 4:50 a.m. is REALLY early! The hula hoop is way harder at 49 than it is at 7, and I want to know who the heck invented tricep dips. I will hunt them down. Sheesh. Next May I turn 50. I am SO grateful to be alive to celebrate it. I vow to enter that third quarter of my life more confident, more fit, and more healthy than I’ve ever been. Here’s to a journey worth traveling.

 

Postscript … One take-away from all of this, ladies … do not neglect the bikini wax. You never know when some handsome young medic is going to cut off your clothes.