FALL WARNING! BIFOCALS ARE DEADLY!

 

Since last November I have been teaching yoga via Zoom to a group of about a dozen women I've known for years.  Attendance varies, but many are very faithful to our weekly class.  When I started to teach I asked what they'd like to focus on....they said, "knees", "hips", "balance".  Can you guess we are an older group?  But at any age, keeping every part of the body strong, flexible, and in balance serves us well.  

(Mandatory teaching moment: Of course, yoga isn't really about the body.  It's about calming the fluctuations of the mind.  The ancient yogis addressed the body as a way to get the body in shape and keep it healthy and strong (and not distracting) so one could sit in meditation with ease.  Here in the West yoga has become just another physical exercise to try, like Zumba or Jazzercise.  That's not the purpose of yoga, but OK, a healthy, stronger body is a "perk" of the practice.)  

Each week I lead us through an asana practice (the poses) to help us get stronger, more flexible, and more balanced.  For older folks in particular this triad is essential to helping us stay independent.  One fall can be the end of living independently should a severe injury result.  And as we get older, for many reasons, falls are more common.  

Actually, ask me about falls.  

One year, heading up the escalator at the Hawaiian resort where we'd been staying I was trying to wrestle my suitcase onto the tread, with a heavy backpack on my back and a purse slung across my chest.  The suitcase slipped and twirled in front of me, tripping me as the stairway took off upward and somehow, by some miracle, in spite of what had to be a comical (to others) dance of avoiding disaster, I righted myself and did not tumble down the upward moving staircase.  I credited the muscle memory of balance in my yoga practice.  

Also one night, some years ago,  I took a careless slide down our flight of wooden stairs at home in my socks.  Duh!  I was in a hurry with my mind in ten different places and took one step, sock to slick wood, and down I went....All. The. Way. Down. 14 steps.  I was VERY fortunate I didn't seriously injure myself as my right buttock/hip hit each step before I landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.  All I ended up with was a big bruise and sore knee.  I credited yoga for allowing me to tumble with injury-saving flexibility.

Then on our maiden trip to Great Britain two years ago I tripped over Hadrian's Wall in England -- or at least a chunk of the ruins that are little more than rocks in a field.  Down I went, but bounced right back up, again feeling my yoga practice kept me from splaying down face-first.  Also on that vacation I tripped over a shallow single step-up at the entrance of a pub in Inverness, Scotland and down I went, just to my knees (thankfully), but embarrassingly so.  (One would think most people fall OUT of the bar.)

Given my experiences, you might assume my yoga students will start to doubt me touting our practice as being beneficial to staying upright.  But I have begun to see a pattern that is causing my falling down habit.  I'm always looking down in these instances, to ensure I don't fall!  But my bifocals create a sense of "flatness" where I lose the 3-D depth perception so essential to seeing clearly the obstacle at my feet!

This happened again yesterday.  We were at the waterfront with our 6-year-old granddaughter where she was searching for "crystal rocks".  (There are none, of course.  Wrong geology, but whatever.)  I had head down, desperately trying to spy anything I could pass off to her as a "crystal" and tripped over a protruding chunk of breakwater rock and boom!  Down I went on hands and knees in the rocks, coming up with a classic "kid injury" of a scraped hand and knee, skin pulled away and slightly bleeding.  I started laughing about this silly injury and said I'd need a Barbie bandaid.  But this was also the moment I realized -- IT'S THE BIFOCALS AGAIN!

When I go for my annual physical I guess I'll have to confess a fall this year, but I'll know it's not my strength, flexibility, or balance causing the issue -- it's my glasses!  Does that count?  Well, I fear it does.  Bifocals are also an older age thing, so they present the same hazard as a throw rug or an electrical cord stretched across the floor, or clutter in the path to the bathroom -- all those things they warn us about.

But I'm still crediting my yoga practice for being able to take these falls and still come up swinging!  Fingers crossed that strength, flexibility, and the ability to right myself back into balance, even during a fall, is benefitting me.  I think it could be worse.  

I'm also wondering if I should go back to having reading glasses instead of the two-fer of a bifocal...  

At least that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: www.pixabay.com

PUPPY SITTING

Our dog Toby died just over 8 years ago.  Our cat Cooper too a month later. So we have been without animal companions for a good long time.  Before that we had cats and/or dogs (usually both) non-stop in our married life.  We decided after losing our two long-time "roomies" to the scourges of cancer and old age, we wanted to see how it might feel to live in a home where every surface wasn't covered in animal hair, where Hub didn't have to sneeze uncontrollably whenever the cat jumped on his lap, where we did not have to make homemade dog food to deal with our pup's food allergies, and to have a yard that didn't have worn dirt paths from the dog's daily run/route around the property -- not to mention poop pick up, dog walks in all weather, ruined hardwood floors from wet paws and scratchy claws, stinky litter boxes, furniture as scratching posts, vet bills, boarding kennel guilt.  

I sound like a curmudgeon.  And I admit to a bit of that sensibility.  We were, we realized, finished with the responsibility and "hassle" of pets.  

I know I'm offending some of you.  And causing you to think less of me.  Causing you, perhaps, to wonder if I have a caring bone in my body; if I even have a heart!  I get it.  In my defense, I think a family pet is a lovely thing.  

We ensured our sons grew up with the love and companionship of always having a dog and at least two cats in the house (and innumerable fish, a couple of parakeets, a pet rat for God's sake!)  And they weren't just for the kids -- we loved them all too and grieved mightily with their passing.  (I mean the dogs and cats...not so much the fish, birds, and definitely not the rat.  But I made Hub take the rat to the vet to be euthanized when after two years he developed an ugly tumor -- which was about 18 months after my then 8 yr old son had lost interest in him.  The vet was shocked -- said it was first to have a rat brought in for the final injection. LOL  He charged Hub a nominal off-the-top-of-his-head ten bucks to do the deed.  See?  I have a heart!!!)   

But as an empty nest retired couple who wanted more freedom to be away from home for more than 5-6 hours at a time, we knew we didn't want to have another dog and Hub's allergies put the kibosh on another cat, at his request; a request which I very reluctantly agreed to, but now see the wisdom of.

Today we are nearly at the end of a walk down memory lane.  We are pup-sitting a one-year-old Australian Cattle Dog (AKA Blue Heeler) for 8 days for Son One's family.  Rocko arrived mid-last week with crate, bed, bowls, food, treats, leash, collar, poop bags/poop scoop, a bag of toys, emergency contact info for the vet and a long goodbye from his humans.   

He has been here before, but in the yard and on the back deck during our outdoor Covid-protocol picnics.  By nature the breed is cautious around new people and places and with so little socialization available to him this past year, perhaps more so.  At any rate it took most of the first day for him to leave the kitchen.  He found his spot on the rug by the back door, no doubt hoping his people would soon return.

Eventually we coaxed him further in and he realized no bad thing was going to happen. He seemed to trust us and, so as long as we were nearby, he was relatively happy, both indoors and out.  Until we took him for a walk at the Marina.  He was afraid of everything.  Noises, people, railings, shadows, and particularly the solid metal grates in the sidewalk that rattled and clanged when we walked over them.  He took to coming to a dead stop or taking a wide berth around them.  We were sad for him, so cut the walk a bit short, but did notice he was becoming slightly more comfortable toward the end.

The next couple of days we walked around the neighborhood instead and that went much better.  He was more familiar with a normal sidewalk and grass to sniff.  OK.  Got it.  Actually, I started to empathize.  I have anxiety disorder too.  Mine is better controlled, but those grates....I totally get it!  It's not that Rocko and I think that a bad thing will happen once and be scary, then we get over it.  NO!  We are convinced some bad thing MIGHT happen EVERY TIME!!!  Best to avoid whatever is scary and not take a chance, right?  I like walking a familiar path too.

Anyway, now, 7 days in, he's fully part of the household.  We have a routine and he is totally comfortable here and no longer needs us in his sights constantly.  He runs all around the yard, exploring and sniffing and chasing the tennis ball with limitless endurance and enthusiasm.  He has completely destroyed all of his "indestructible" toys, (including a couple I'd kept here for his "canine cousin", Oliver), the detritus strewn everywhere.  He convinced us to give up one chair for him to claim, but even with that restriction, there is dog hair on all of our furniture, carpet, floors, and our clothing all of the time.   He tracks in pine needles, grass, and dead leaves, and leaves wet, slightly muddy paw prints in his wake.  He barks out the front window at every passer-by, (with a rather high-pitched shrillness that hurts my ears) protecting his domain.  

And he's sweet.  His wagging tail when he sees us makes me happy, especially in the mornings when I first greet him for the day -- his whole body wags.  I love how he rolls over to get his belly scratched. He brings us toys to play with and runs to us (most of the time) with a call to him.  It's cute how he prances, proudly bringing his ball for us to throw again and again or gifts us a stick he's found in the garden.  It's cute how he likes to closely follow us around the house, gently "herding" as is his instinct.  I love seeing him curled up asleep on his chair, relaxed and cozy and at peace for his naps.  At bedtime, he goes into his crate on his own -- his familiar den -- and sleeps through the night.  

It's been fun and a fine bonding experience for us all.  We've grown very fond of him and him us.  I'm glad we did this.  I'm also glad he will go home to his family tomorrow; he will be a wiggly happy dog when he greets them again.  And we will spend Friday vacuuming.  😁

At least, that's the view from here...©

WHAT NOW? -- ON THE PRECIPICE OF CHANGE

What now?  

Let's establish that like many others I don't do well with change, especially chaotic, unwelcome, "didn't see that coming" change.  So the Covid Times were a wee bit disconcerting for me. I've written a lot about the early days and beyond here in this blog.  And now...well into my post-vaccine full immunity, I'm facing change again.

I'd settled into a Covid Times routine.  I had mostly made my peace with how we were -- physically distanced, isolated, masked, at home 95% of the time, Zoom-connected.  But now...

It feels like the "in-between time".  I don't know how to be with this exactly.  I don't want to forget what we just experienced individually and collectively.  It was huge.  But I'm glad the sense of doom is abating.  I'm glad we can begin to breathe a sigh of relief that science and good sense (well, some never got the good sense part) have seemed to prevail and we are truly on the road to returning to a life more recognizable, that we once so took for granted.  But we are not there yet.  And it's hard to believe all is well.  Especially for a skeptic like me.  Can I trust this to be true?  I'm working on it.

I still grab my mask for my daily walks; I'm still hesitant to hug; I still won't go to restaurants; I still keep my hands sanitized; I'm still not eager for gatherings with more than my family or maybe 2-3 vaccinated friends at a time.  I still read all the updates and listen for Drs. Fauci and Walensky to guide my decisions.

I've been thinking, too, about what I want to keep from the Covid Times.  

*I'm not eager to return to the calendar full of socializing and obligations.  I want to be radically discerning about what I do and do not commit to.  And I might have to have difficult conversations with friends to explain why I don't feel like seeing them as often, perhaps.  

*I've learned that family outreach and gatherings were primarily initiated by me -- maybe fewer is better for all concerned, but I'll have a conversation about that with the family rather than assuming one way or the other.  It's a conversation we haven't really had.  Do they want Mom to back off (as I have dramatically over the past year, with seemingly little impact) or do they rely on Mom to keep everyone connected and appreciate the effort?

*Hub and I have gone through some "stuff" and have come out with a deeper, more honest, more intimate relationship.  That has been the biggest blessing of this time: time and attention.  But he will want to return to away-from-home activities and socializing that I don't.  We will need to negotiate and accept each other's individual decisions without assuming every social and activist commitment is an "us" thing. And I don't want "busyness" and outside obligations to intrude on our tender, playful, deep sharing time together.

*And, had the hug become the new norm in your circles, replacing the handshakes of olden days?  It was in mine, pre-Covid.  So many are saying they just want to hug again.  I'm not so sure.  I've had lots of thoughts about this lately and I think it's worth another blog post.  But maybe hugging everyone I meet/see/like/love every time we are together is not a thing I want.  Maybe it's just become a thing I do to be "polite".  (Decision about this is to be determined...)

My introvert self has in many ways loved a year-long excuse to avoid social obligations, to stay home, to have a blank calendar, to meet up via Zoom for a limited time frame, to spend unhurried and undistracted time working through deep-seated, long-unrecognized "wounds" of the past that had made me be a certain way in my life. I see clearly that old me is gone, or at least walking away and fading into the distance. I feel the change: quieter, more confident, more grounded, more steady, more self-assured, better boundaries, stronger, more accepting, more joyful.

Hopefully those changes will serve me well as I take baby steps into the post-Covid-Terror future.  I don't want to go back to "normal", as in everything returning to how it was. 

I've done hard work: feeling the grief of distancing from people I love; embracing the fear of illness and death; understanding the realization that trust is hard for me and abandonment is a dreaded experience I've built my life around avoiding; knowing, really knowing that I am, we are all are, existentially alone and finding the courage to rely only upon myself -- and finding strength and peace there.

I'm different now. I need to forge a new normal for me.  I'm not getting any younger and anything at anytime can hit us out of the blue, as we've just seen.  

Living on the precipice of change is lonely and scary.  But living an honest and authentic life is more urgent than ever.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit: www.pixabay.com