Defying Gravity

I bought a new bicycle three months ago.  When I was choosing between two models, I told the salesman that I wanted to "go fast", and he sold me a bike that I've been riding (obsessively, just like I do everything else) since then.  Although I am by no means a "cyclist" proper, I talk to people about biking now.  Everybody.  Most of them ask, "Have you ridden "The Loop yet?"  Until today, I had to say no.

"The loop" is a route that takes a rider across the Kenai River up one side between Kenai and Soldotna, and then across it again down the other side.  Without shortcuts, it's 24 or 26 miles, depending upon who you're talking to.

 By the first of July my goal was to ride the loop before I left for college in Anchorage on the 29th of August.  I was riding 12 miles or so per biking session by then.  By the end of July I had ridden a round trip of one leg of the loop (19.2 miles), including three gnarly hills each way.  Gasping for breath and sure that my heart was going to pop out of my chest, I might add.  I continued "training" for the goal.  I could see muscles bulging in my thighs and calves, and my rides ranged between 11 and 20 miles, several days per week (whenever weather permitted).  By two weeks ago I was sure that I could handle the 24 or 26 miles and the three gnarly hills, but was afraid to ride the first leg of the loop: a three mile stretch of busy highway with no bike path - just a bike lane along the shoulder.  That leg crosses the "flats" that flank the Kenai River, and is close to the mouth where the river feeds into Cook Inlet.  I had been told it's "always blowing" there and was reluctant to take the plunge, so to speak.

I am a goal seeking old woman.  Today (the 28th of August) dawned sunny and still.  I strapped on my (new) helmet, (new) biking gloves, charged my iPod and made sure I had plenty of water.  Here's what I found.

Had I been too afraid to ride the first leg, I'd have missed this view (that peak in the background is Mount Redoubt, an active volcano that's part of the peninsula that eventually becomes the Aleutian Islands):

Without riding that leg, I would have missed the llamas at the ranch.  I love those llamas and it was wonderful seeing them close to the fence that divides their domain from the bike path.

I'd have missed smiling and nodding at other cycling individuals, couples and families I passed along the way.

I'd have missed this view of the Kenai River as it slices through the town of Soldotna:

I'd have missed running into (not literally) my former Chemistry professor (a truly admirable and brilliant man who also has a sense of humor) as he made his way along the loop in the other direction.  He had been one of the people who asked me if I had ridden the loop a couple of months ago.  He had also given me pointers as to how to tackle the first leg.  It was delightful to see him, and he "high fived" me when he heard that today was my first attack on the route.

Most importantly, I'd have missed achieving a goal had I allowed my fear to stop me.

My butt is still numb and my legs are a little wobbly, but MAN do I feel good.  Not only that, I promised myself that I would have ice cream tonight if I burned off enough calories by riding 22 (according to my odometer) today, and I'm looking forward to that.

Screw fear.

What would you do if you weren't afraid to try?

Three

Three years ago tonight I was with my husband in a hotel room in San Bernardino, California.  My sister and her husband were staying in the room next to ours.   The four of us and my nephew Russell had just said a final goodbye to my mother who died on August 26, 2008 at 5:26 pm.

My mother's death had been expected, still, when I saw her shortly after she drew her last breath I was overwhelmed with the finality of it all.  She had been the central figure in my life in spite of the fact that I had five husbands while she was living.  Orphaned by the time she was 18, she spent her life searching for security; she married my father who provided her with financial stability, and she settled on having me as her emotional support, her "brick".  Her touchstone, so to speak.  This was an unhealthy burden to place upon a child, but she didn't know that.  Having had no training in parenting, she did what seemed right to her, and my childhood was sacrificed in the process.  She did the best she could with what she had.

I'm no saint.  I was a wild teenager and adult, and terrified the family with my reckless lifestyle and drug abuse.  Even so, save for periods of time during which my mother and I "weren't speaking", I was her "best friend".  We fought and traveled together and shared holidays.  We spoke nearly every day on the phone.  In her eighties she moved from the coast to a house we bought in the mountains, where she lived with my husband and me for 18 very difficult months.  It's hard having two strong women in one household.

When it counted the most, I was there for her.  The last two years of her life were very difficult for both of us, and for my sister.  My mother's decline was painfully obvious, and she made repeated trips to emergency rooms, finally settling in a nursing home.  I worked for the company that owned the nursing home and knew the staff well.  They gave her good care in spite of her refusal to do anything at all for herself.

It was always all about her.

Three years ago tonight, she set me free.  I moved thousands of miles away from the hot, crowded, stressful place in which she had chosen to live and began to live my own life for the first time.

This morning I drove to a neighboring town for a haircut.  I walked into the salon and the woman who cuts my hair advised me that she was running late as she was working with an old woman who wanted a perm.  I saw the old woman with her thinning gray hair and watched as she carefully moved from a wheelchair to the beauty parlor chair.  At one point the woman turned to look at me and I saw my mother's face.  The woman smiled at me and tried to speak.  She had difficulty expressing her thoughts; I suspect she was recovering from a stroke.  I felt tiny tingles move up my back and down my arms when I looked at her.  Later this afternoon I rode my bicycle for 20 miles in the late summer Alaska sun, and I saw my mother again, in the sky.  When I see her these days, she is usually the sun peeking through clouds.  I can see her, and feel her, and she is beautiful.  She is smiling at me, cheering me on.  She tells me that she approves of my decision to go to nursing school at the age of 55, that she is glad that I am eating better, and that I'm exercising.  She tells me that she loves me.

She also tells me that she doesn't understand why I left California and moved to this "godforsaken" place.  It is then that I laugh and say to her, "My life, my choices."

It's my turn.  And Mom, I miss you.

Breakfast of Champions

When we moved into this rental last spring I found the raspberry plant burial ground my landlord had told me was on the property.  On the west border of our backyard is a weathered, falling-down fence, at the base of which were knobs of raspberry plant roots that had been repeatedly mowed to the ground.  I love raspberries and decided that I was going to cultivate those knobs.  By August of 2010 I had weeded and fertilized and watched as 10 to 12 hearty canes, some up to 6 feet in height, enjoyed the Alaskan summer sun and flourished.  I'm not a farmer and didn't know that raspberry plants don't flower and produce fruit their first year, and when my cousin's husband gently advised me that I wouldn't see fruit until this summer I was gravely disappointed.

Back then I was still taking the college prerequisites I needed to apply to a nursing program (worrying about that) and trying to find a job to keep me occupied during my second long dark Alaskan winter (worrying about that).

Winter came and with it snow that at times completely concealed my raspberry patch.  I found a job and completed my prerequisites and applied to the nursing program, to which I was accepted.  Spring came relatively early this year and shortly after the last patch of snow disappeared, tiny leaves appeared on last year's raspberry canes.  I watered, fertilized, and weeded, and within a short period of time (thanks to those long Alaskan summer days) the canes were bushy and green.  One day I was examining my crop and noted that there were what looked like tiny flowers opening on the plants.  I rushed into the house and asked my husband to look at them and tell me what they were.  He told me that they were blooms, and that those blooms would produce fruit.  He's not a farmer, either, but he laughed at me when I looked surprised.  "You mean they make flowers first?", I asked.  That made him laugh even harder.  I grew up in condos and have never paid attention to yards; in fact I mowed a lawn for the first time just weeks ago.  How was I supposed to know?

After the flowers came tiny green raspberry-shaped objects.  I waited.  The sun shone and rain came.

For two consecutive mornings in a row I have eaten raspberries for breakfast.  They are ruby red and sweet and delicious not only because raspberries are empirically delicious, but because I nurtured them a little and allowed them to grow. 

What once were withered knobs are now healthy plants bearing rich fruit.  Kinda like me.  What once was a worn out alcoholic woman is a mid-middle aged nursing student embarking on longest-sought, most exciting journey of her life.  As the rock group Queen put it:

"We are the champions, my friends.  And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end...we are the champions of the world."

Just me and my little old raspberry bushes.

Running with the sockeye salmon

We live less than two miles from the Kenai River in Alaska.  This river is world famous for its runs of king, red (sockeye), silver and pink salmon.  Three years ago we were living in California, and I brought my husband up to the Kenai peninsula hoping that I would be able to convince him that we should move here when my mother, who lived in California, died.  That summer we spent three days staying in a bed and breakfast on the Kenai river, and one overcast and chilly June afternoon my husband landed a 41 inch king salmon.  I took a photo of him as he held that salmon high, his thumb hooked through its lower jaw, and knew in my heart that the fish gods had smiled upon us.  Shortly afterward, he agreed that we could move to Alaska.  My mother died two months later after a long and peaceful decline, and nine months later, we moved.

Our first summer as Alaskan residents was uneventful as far as fishing went.  We were living 80 miles south of Kenai, and my husband spent some time fishing for silver salmon in a nearby river,  but he didn't catch any.  Salmon aren't hungry by the time they enter their home rivers; they're hell bent on finding the precise spot of their birth and spawning, after which they die.  My husband Virgil was used to fishing for hungry trout and spent hours trying to taunt a silver salmon into biting his hook, to no avail.

We moved to Kenai after nine months in Alaska.  Virgil eagerly anticipated the salmon runs of 2010, however, circumstances including his new job and a less than stellar run of red salmon prevented him from hooking a sockeye.  The silver salmon run later in the summer, and after many, many hours of trying he did catch one and brought it home.  Yes, we ate it, and it was delicious.

People in this part of the world start talking about salmon in June, when the "early run" of king salmon are due in the river.  We heard snippets of conversation regarding a slow, small run of kings.  No big deal.  Then we began waiting for the reds, which return to the rivers of their birth in July.  Virgil reads a private anglers report page daily in July.  Everyone is interested in the red runs, and fortunately there are a number of people devoted to predicting the size, numbers, and arrival time of these fish.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game controls everything fish related; certain numbers of fish must be allowed to make the long swim upriver so that they can spawn and produce the next generation of red salmon and the commercial fishermen (and women) must be able to make a living as well, so there are strict laws governing the days, hours, and number of fish available to be caught by sport fisherpeople.  In addition, Alaska residents are allowed to participate in an activity called "dipnetting" so that they may stock up on food for the winter.  Dipnetting, in a nutshell, is the process of standing in the cold water at the mouth of the river dragging a huge net on the end of a long pole and hoping that salmon swim into it, or sitting in a boat further up the river holding that same big net underwater and hoping that fish swim into it.

Dipnetting "opened" six days ago because enough salmon had made it upriver to spawn.  That was a Friday.  By Saturday morning, the private angler report was announcing in bright yellow letters that the red salmon run was going to be big based on reports from the spotters in Cook Inlet, the tongue of ocean that feeds the Kenai River.  By Saturday afternoon the first wave of fish had arrived, and it was big.  Really big.  The private angler report stated that "a wall of fish" was moving up the inlet.

By Sunday, Kenai (9,000 residents) had burgeoned in size.  Motor homes were everywhere.  The sand at the mouth of the river was covered with tents, four wheel drive vehicles, campfires, and people in rubber chest waders dragging dipnets.  The font on the angler report website had increased in size, and the webmaster was using all caps. 'THIS IS A HUGE RUN OF RED SALMON".

By Monday it appeared that everyone in Alaska had called in sick and driven to Kenai.  The local WalMart was selling coolers, dipnets, fishing tackle, groceries, and ice faster than the skeleton crew (most of the employees had already called in sick) could restock the shelves.  The store manager was mopping floors and restocking ice.

The salmon kept coming.

Virgil and my cousin-in-law, Alan, went to the mouth of the river to dipnet on Tuesday morning (at the crack of dawn).  It was so crowded that they had to wait in a long line to get into the water.  Once in the water they found that the current was strong and the commercial fishing boats moving in and out of the river were creating wakes that hit them at chest height causing cold water to pour inside their rubber chest waders.  They gave up on dipnetting and decided to drive upriver to fish with rods and reels.


Remember, the salmon aren't hungry.  They're sights are set on spawning and they don't stop to eat.  They push forward relentlessly.  The only way to catch a red salmon in that frame of mind is to drop a hook at precisely the right spot so that the salmon bites at it essentially to push it out of the way.  Fishing for reds with a pole is an art, and it is called "flipping".  It's fast, it's furious, and it's a process that takes practice.  Virgil has never fished this way before.  He is a master at catching trout (they're hungry) but brand spanking new at fishing for reds.  Alan caught his limit of three reds in about an hour, after which he waited for three hours while Virgil hooked and lost fish after fish and lost his footing at one point, after which he was soaked to the skin.  Finally, Virgil managed to get a salmon to shore, and the guys called it a day.

My husband considers himself a good fisherman, and he was not a happy man when he returned home with that one fish.  I made a big deal out of it and took photos of him holding the packaged fish before gently placing it in the freezer.  Virgil had a bad day.  He was cranky, dejected, and tired.  Alan called him late in the afternoon and told him that a friend had offered to take them both dipnetting from a boat on Wednesday, and he perked up a little after agreeing to go.

And the fish kept coming.

The guys set off on Wednesday shortly after I left for work.  Virgil had promised to text message me at about noon to let me know how things were going, but I didn't hear from him.  My cousin, who was also at work, text messaged me at about 1pm and asked if I had heard from them.  We waited.  At 2:30pm my phone beeped.  "Alan and I got 15 fish each".  I shrieked.  My boss told me to go home and help clean fish.  I showed up at my cousin's house in very old, stained clothing, carrying my camera.

These were big fish.  They were silver and shiny and regal even with their dead, glazed eyes staring into nothingness.  Alan and Virgil were filleting them, one after another.  Under those glistening silver fish skins was ruby red, firm flesh.  They were absolutely stunning, healthy, hearty, voluptuous creatures.  I was assigned the task of washing and drying the fillets, then cutting them in half for packaging.  I carried a big plastic bin of fillets from the cleaning area to the kitchen and began working.  As I washed each fillet, I said ,"thank you", out loud.  Several times I recited a Buddhist chant as I worked.  It was an honor to handle those fillets.  They were perfect, nutritious jewels and I revered them.  I returned to the cleaning area to fill the bin with fillets three more times, carrying my heavy treasure back to the kitchen.

We packaged those fillets with care, using a machine that heat sealed plastic bags of fish.  I brought home 13 bags of fish for our freezer.  Each fillet, each bag, will easily feed four people.  Alan kept 17 bags at his house, as he will be smoking those fillets for us after carefully preparing them for the smoking process.

I took the smallest fillet, wrapped it with aluminum foil, and baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes at 7 pm this evening.  Virgil and I ate it together.  I wept a bit as I devoured the tender, flaky, moist, scarlet meat, appreciating the exquisite flavor of salmon fresh from the river.  I smiled as I realized that tonight I will not need to take a fish oil supplement, because I have eaten salmon today and it contains those healthy oils that are so beneficial to the human body.

I am a lucky woman.  I have run with the sockeye salmon.

Summer bummer

I can go very bad places in my head when my mind is not occupied.  I know this, and thus I registered for College Algebra via an online course this summer.  The class started on May 16th.  I started on April 22nd.  The class ends on July 24th.  I completed it by the 6th.  Today is the 9th.  I have completed the three math tests required of me to begin nursing school on the 29th of August and have already begun to study one of the several books also required for the nursing program.

I'd like to believe that someday I'll be balanced and serene enough to spend time in that mythical place they call "retirement", but I suspect that will not be the case.  My brain is active (hyperactive) and is serving me well in the late-in-life course of study I have chosen.  For that I am grateful.  However, it is not my friend when I allow it to idle.  I've lived on the dark side for most of my life; apparently that is my default setting.  There are worse things than cramming information into one's gray matter until the moment of death, but it does sound like a bit of an effort.

It's not that it's impossible for my mind to be settled and mellow; I have studied and practiced meditation and have been sporadically successful at achieving states of "emptiness" for admittedly brief spans of time, but it takes a gigantic amount of effort for me to meditate.  The right place, incense, the right sort of pillow on which to sit, silence, making sure that my eyes are positioned correctly, that my back is straight, and that my hands are in the relaxed curve they are supposed to form.

My hope is that I will make an excellent nurse.  The body is old, but the mind is still working.  What a relief it will be to focus that mental energy on helping others.

Not Knowing

I was raised by a difficult woman and an absent father.  He deserves credit for being a great provider of food, shelter, clothing and the portion of my psyche that loves to carry a portable GPS receiver into woodsy areas in search of geocaches.  She deserves credit for teaching me how to be a good hostess, a fine conversationalist, and an expert manipulator.  She managed to take me hostage at an early age and sell me on the idea that my purpose on this earth was to take care of her until she died, and I did. Kudos, Mom.

I didn't know I was unhappy when she was alive.  I knew I was depressed (because antidepressants made living "better") and stressed (big job, difficult declining mother, long commute), but I had a good life.  Big house, big money, nice cars, frequent vacations, lots of shoes, comfortably large circle of friends.  Everything a girl could wish for, right?

Before my mother died, I was certain that I would disappear when she did.  My identity was seamlessly soldered to hers (retrospectively - that was my choice, but is it really a choice when you can perceive no other option?) and I was terrified at the thought of losing her and myself.

She has been dead for more than two years now.  I have not disappeared.  In fact, I have begun to live a life that has my name stamped on it.  I knew what steps to take to find this life.  They were intuitive.  I didn't have to wrestle with what was right or wrong for me, worry about what she might think about my choices,  or push through much fear to reach this path.  What I did was reject the vast majority of the elements of my existence when she was alive.  I allowed my heart to speak and I followed its direction.

It's impossible to describe happiness to someone who isn't.  I wasn't.  Now, I am.

Axe Murderer

On Monday I awoke at the ungodly hour of 6:15 am to the truly worn out tune of my cell phone alarm.  It is spring break and I shouldn't have had to go to work at the college, but I did.  Just that one day, fortunately.  I usually get up at 6:30 am on the days I have to work, but one of the fellows I work with doesn't drive and wanted a ride to work so I got up 15 minutes early so that I could pick him up and still arrive at work on time.  I won't go into how much it irritates me that even though I call him five minutes before I pull into the parking lot of his apartment building he makes me wait at least five minutes before he "rushes" down to get into the car.  Five minutes during which I mutter to myself about his audacity, thoughtlessness and sense of entitlement while my Jeep burns gasoline (which is now a whopping $4.11 per gallon here on the Kenai Peninsula).  I suspect that those five minutes would be better spent considering how I might deal with my people pleasing codependency issues and tell Chris that I won't give him rides to work anymore unless he is standing inside the hallway to his apartment building when I arrive and in the car within one minute.  He doesn't give me a dime for these rides.  Gee, I guess I went into how much it irritates me that Chris consistently makes me wait for him after all.

Monday was my first workday post "springing forward" to daylight savings time.  Daylight savings time is a ridiculous practice in Alaska.  We spend all winter driving to work in the dark, and right about the time it's blissfully light at 7:30 am we roll the clocks forward and it's dark when we're driving to work again.  Monday it was dark and cold and icy on the road, and frankly I wasn't too happy to be working that day.  Chris is one of those incredibly happy morning people, and he was chatting away as we drove.  I was not amused.

We stopped at the light on Bridge Access Road (long, cold, icy, dark two lane road that crosses over the Kenai River) waiting to turn left onto K Beach Road (long, cold, dark, icy two lane road that leads to the college).  For once, Chris was silent.  Then, we heard a "knock knock knock".  Exactly the sound that a neighbor would make when coming over to borrow a cup of sugar.  Very unusual to hear it when sitting in a car.  Chris and I looked at each other briefly and then I looked out the driver's side window.

A man was standing very close to my window waving a hatchet at me.  In the dark.  On a rather remote road while I waited at a red light.

I spend a lot of time worrying about things.  I worry about plane crashes, having a heart attack, not getting good enough grades, my cats getting sick and dying, and a vast number of other things that don't happen (or haven't happened yet).  I had appendicitis two years ago and refused to believe the Emergency Room physician when he told me what was wrong with me because I had never worried about that particular ailment and figured that I couldn't have it if I hadn't fretted over it previously.  Another thing that I hadn't ever worried about was being brutally murdered by a man wielding a hatchet while I waited at a stop light on a dark road in Alaska.

The man started shouting at me and waving the hatchet more vigorously.  I couldn't hear him and thought, "I should roll down the window so that I can hear this fellow."  Then I thought, "Are you out of your mind?  He's going to kill you."  After that, "He has a hatchet.  If he's going to kill you, he can do it by driving the hatchet through this window."  The man shouted louder.  He screamed, "This hatchet was hanging off your rear bumper!"

My husband had spent a good part of Sunday afternoon trying to clear our driveway of the solid six inches of ice that had built up over six months of snowfall.  For some reason he had opted to hack at it with a hatchet.  I remembered watching his efforts from the living room window and wondering what kind of idiot uses a hatchet to clear ice from a driveway.

I opened the window and profusely thanked the man with the hatchet, who had jumped from his car when he stopped behind me at the light and left his coat in his car.  He was shivering.  He smiled kindly and raced back to his car as the light turned green.

Chris laughed the rest of the way to the college.

When I told the story to several people at work, after recovering from a bout of hysterical laughter, each responded that the man with the hatchet wouldn't have scared me as much had I carried a handgun in my car.  This is Alaska, after all.  They all carry handguns.  I'm not ready for a handgun because sometimes my husband irritates me so much (as in when he leaves a hatchet hanging from the rear bumper of my car) that I fear I may shoot him one day when he pushes me over the edge by leaving dirty dishes in the sink, dirty underwear on the bathroom floor, or once again forgets my birthday. I doubt that I have the strength to chop him up with a hatchet, so I'll be keeping it in my car.  Just in case.