Phyz Ed

My strongest memory of junior-high-school gym (physical education) is standing in the green grass of the softball outfield with a baseball glove on my right hand. I watched the batter, fervently hoping she wouldn’t hit the ball anywhere near me. I was a below-average softball player and my focus was on avoiding making a fool of myself and angering my teammates. We chose our own positions and right field was mine. The majority of our class were right-handed, who tend to hit into left field, so right field was the plum position for the non-athletic.

When I was about sixteen, my mom suggested I take fencing lessons at the Westfield YMCA. I bought a left-handed foil as well as a mask and white padded jacket. It was a small class. Doug, who lived one town over, bought a sportscar our senior year and he let me drive it once, teaching me how to use the stick shift. Then we lay in the grass of my front yard and talked as the stars came out. I haven't fenced in years, but recently I've impresssed my six-year-old grandson, Andrew, with my swordplay.

In college I fell in love with archery. We traveled in a white van to nearby schools to compete in intermurals. My coach had a habit of saying, “Good girl!” whenever one of us did something well. As a child of the early seventies and a subscriber to Ms Magazine, I knew that I should resist being called a girl at age nineteen, but I soaked it up. I felt her love and great caring. She wanted all the best for me.

In the late eighties, I bought a Kathy Smith aerobics video, washed out two empty one-gallon cooking-oil bottles, and filled them with water to use as hand weights. Then I filled two old sox with rolls of pennies for ankle weights. I got pretty good at the routine, then did it off and on, and now haven't done it for a long time.

Now in my sixties, I’ve noticed my arms are thinner and weaker and I need to huff and puff when climbing outdoor stairs. I used to cart 50-lb. bags of flour, sugar, and oats into the house; now 25 lbs. are a challenge. I would occasionally try to start an exercise habit, but between boredom and busyness, it never stuck.

Two months ago I decided to try it again. I went online to find a routine and some instruction on how to do exercises correctly. I discovered a website that seemed custom-made for me. Nerd Fitness Academy (this isn’t a commercial, just a report of my experience) offered just what I was looking for: a graded progression of exercises complete with instructional videos. And there's fun: the academy is structured like a video game. I chose a character and wrote a story about myself. I get XPs for my accomplishments: calendaring my first week of workouts, getting a ‘dream team’ to report my progress to. When I want to level up to a fresh, harder workout, I do a boss battle to defeat the latest enemy: General DOMS (delayed-onset muscular soreness) was the first.

I’ve only missed a handful of my thrice weekly workouts: I’m taking it seriously. I email my 'dream team' with my progress. And I’ve begun to see results. I can do more knee push-ups (what we used to call girl push-ups) and balance longer on one leg.

Steve Kamb, creator of Nerd Fitness, counseled me to expunge “I don’t have time” and replace it with “It’s not a priority.” Priorities aren’t what we say, but what we do.

I read this idea three weeks ago and it is slowly changing me. I look more deeply into how I’m spending my time. Emergencies arise, but with my new thought: is this a priority? I can move forward with my life. I missed a workout while travelling. Chatting with friends and relatives who live far away became my priority over the workout. But there are choices I make every day that bear scrutiny if I'm serious about my stated priorities.

My Melting Heart

We last saw Eliza at Christmas time, when she was 13 months old. At 21 months old, she is bubbly, bouncy, and verbal. When she first saw me last week and said, “Hi, Oma!” in a high and clear soprano voice, my heart melted.

We had our annual Summer Retreat: a week dedicated to our immediate family. Eliza won my heart; Andrew, age 6, and Victoria, just turned 4, already had. Several months ago, an older friend of mine said, "Grandchildren just melt your heart." I agreed that grandchildren are wonderful (“If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have started with them” quips a tee shirt), but this week I experienced what she was expressing on a deep level. It’s an astonishing thing, to be accepted fully and without reservation by a tiny human being.

I love Victoria and Andrew; our relationships are more complex, in good ways. We can tell jokes and tease and talk about how things work. Andrew is teaching me how to play Pokemon, a game I ignored when his uncle was young and enthusiastic about it. Victoria and I play with kinetic sand and read stories.

Eliza is endearing as only a one-year-old can be. The freshness, the little personality in a pint-sized body: every encounter is magical.

When Victoria was this age, I visited them in New York. She returned from an afternoon doctor’s appointment and came into the living room; she saw me and ran to me, arms outstretched. The love of a child is deeply healing. The love of three is beyond measure.

Hearing aid (singular)

A dozen days ago I took a leap and bought a hearing aid at Costco. Yes, singular. Since high school, my left ear hasn’t heard as well as my right. It has gradually gotten worse. Three years ago I had mild loss; now it is moderate. When I told my daughter, R’el, that I was getting just one, she said, “Classic under-buyer”, the terminology Gretchen Rubin uses in describing personal styles and preferences. Yup, that’s me. (Though I just looked at her Over-buyer/Under-buyer Quiz and she doesn't describe me at all: I have a basement full of storage items: soap, shaving cream, food: things I use; no late-night trips to the store for me. I do consciously put off purchases and cut corners, like buying just one hearing aid.

After the fitting, as I walked through Costco, the aisles seemed noisier and more crowded, though they weren't. As my brain adjusts to the new input, I notice it less and less.

In Portsmouth, NH, after we passed a couple on the sidewalk, I could still hear their voices deep in my ear. I felt like a spy with a covert listening device. Last week in the temple, I could hear a whispered conversation behind me. I turned around, expecting they were just behind my chair, but they were across the large room. It felt like eavesdropping.

Buying a hearing aid is a rite of passage. I’m definitely in my  60s now. I’ve worn trifocals for about 12 years and didn’t feel any reluctance to start, in fact, I asked for them: being able to read anything instantly, without searching for my ‘cheaters’ and getting them on my nose, is more important than looking young. 

Trifocals don’t make me feel old; a hearing aid does. Maybe that’s part of the reason I only got one: makes me half as old, right? I discovered that my hairstyle makes the aid is nearly invisible (though I’m blowing my cover now, aren’t I?). Completely accidental, but I’m quite pleased. I will probably ask my hairdresser to keep the style.

When a nurse sticks an otoscope in my ear, I have to concentrate on relaxation breathing. I've heard some people enjoy the sensation (do you?), but for me it’s barely tolerable. The worst part of getting fitted was that the audiologist had to put thin probe tube in my ear to verify the effectiveness of the aid. I made it worse by cringing: she had to adjust it three times.

So much of interpersonal communication is by voice: I have felt isolation as I've lost my hearing. I’m grateful for the improvement.

Four Years On

A friend of mine, Cami, taught a Relief Society class (women’s group at church) a few weeks ago and sent out a quotation she found on the internet: an old-timer talking about grief. I was organizing my emails and wanted to copy the quotation to save it on my laptop. Where to save it? I searched for grief and found a spreadsheet with a series of questions that Jim, Annie, and I answered in February of 2016: six months after David died. I found no surprises, but one thing stuck out:

Ever since we came back to Lexington in May 2014 I have carried a BOX of tissue in my church bag. I'm always prepared for unplanned tears. David's death is another motivation to living my life more consciously. However, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning and hard to get things accomplished, so that's a frustration.

When did I stop carrying a box of tissue in my church bag every Sunday? Six months ago? Three? The box had gotten pretty banged up and I hardly used it, but for the first three years I felt comforted having it nearby.

And when did it become easier to get out of bed? I suppose it was gradual. I’m in a much ‘better’ place now. What does that mean? We Americans are so afraid of painful emotion. I’m grateful for the grief, even the intense grief. I want to feel; I want to miss David.

And I do miss him. Just an hour ago I looked up at the pencil drawing of him, smiling and ‘extremely presentable’. It’s becoming obvious that the picture isn’t aging and his siblings and cohorts are. I’m becoming one of those weird grieving mothers with the old photo of a long-dead child. He’s not long-dead yet, but it’s coming.

Doing further surveying of my computer files on grief, I found a document I made of bereavement support groups. During the last two weeks of his life, David received care from Good Shepherd Hospice. Part of their service is to provide grief counseling support to family members for 13 months after the death. Jaye was our counselor. At the time of his death, that seemed very generous and more than adequate. However:

18 Jul 2016. I’m in a panic that the Good Shepherd Hospice grief counselling will be over in another 7 weeks. I have only been to see Jaye twice, but both of those were so significant. I’m going again. I wanted to go on the 11th monthiversary, but she has conferences on Tuesdays, so I’m going this Friday. Can I tell her I’m panicked, that I’m afraid of what Kimberly told me, that the second year is the worst? I hope I can. I hope I can be honest with her and find healing in the honesty. I hope she can help me navigate this unknown territory. It will remain unknown for a long time, for my whole life, but I hear it will get less intense. Life will get better.

Called Mt. Auburn Social Work asking about a bereavement support group. Left a message, while breaking down into tears and a squeaky voice. Apologized in the voicemail for the tears. “She will think I’m a basket case: it’s already been a year.”

Found A Compassionate Friend website and a monthly support group in Concord, 16 minutes away. “Well, if it’s only once a month, they must not expect you to be over it in 13 months.”

It’s hard not to distract myself. Hard to know whether it’s healthy. Hard to know who I can share this with.

Two days later I wrote:

I am feeling much calmer today. Maybe reading these grief books has been too intense; maybe it’s healthy; I just don’t know.

I’m glad I wrote this down. It’s hard to imagine now how panicked I was, how distraught and overwrought. That isn’t happening anymore.

Another document I found was a transcription of a voice memo I made a year ago, on the third anniversary of David’s death. I was bothered that I couldn’t keep in mind whether it was three years or four. And how I felt that

as a grieving mother I should be crying and I should be watching the time, and I should be aware that this is the anniversary of the last time he did this, the last of that.”

I remembered arranging the words from “If You Could Hie to Kolob” to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus while washing dishes when David was sick. I had fantasized about singing it in public and wondered if I could ever sing without tears.

In early grief it feels like it’s never going to change, that it’s always going to be excruciatingly raw. Even though people tell you it won’t be, you can’t imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of strong emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would say, “in my experience”, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they find comfort in that. Who can predict the emotional life of another person?

So, as the fourth anniversary of David’s death approaches, I can say that there has been healing. I miss David and am terribly sad that he is missing out on the mortal experience of adulthood. But I’m not overwhelmed with grief and sadness.

Another entry I made in July 2016, 11 months after David’s death:

So, how will I breathe as Victoria lives her life forward while all there is of David’s life is to live it backward? Is this why I can’t go visit them? Is it the truth I guessed at earlier in this 11-month journey, that Victoria’s birthdays will surpass David’s death anniversaries? Part of me sees that as inevitable, as I did intellectually when I thought of it months ago, but a deep emotion wells up inside of me that it’s not fair, that there could have been both: Victoria and David growing older together.

Now, with three more years past, I can breathe, and freely. Seeing Victoria grow into a loving, curious, vivacious four-year-old doesn’t make me sad; it fills me with deep joy. Of course, I wish David could be alive and enjoy the niece he never met. But I'm not in debilitating agony. What I can do to honor David is to live my life fully and be fully present in the lives of his beloved nieces and nephew, our grandchildren.

The Zaandam

As I gazed down at the St. Lawrence River from the Greyhound bus, I saw a white and blue cruise ship moving slowly away from us. Painted on the stern, I could just make out the name: Zaandam. For the first time in my life, I longed to be on a cruise ship.

In 1989, my mom bought a neat one-bedroom condo on a beach in St. Croix while my dad was scuba diving from a boat offshore. She later bought the unit above and my parents frequently invited their children and relatives to share their piece of the Virgin Islands. When Sam was one and R’el ten, they invited our whole family. The kids and I spent three weeks in paradise; Jim joined us for the final week. Their backyard was a beach and reef. We snorkeled and had hermit crab races, visited Whim Plantation and enjoyed freshly-fried johnnycakes.

After that trip, I went down every February. I loved mile-long swims along the shore, scuba diving among the coral reefs, and having dinner with my parents. A mile from the condo was Frederiksted and the pier where the cruise ships docked. We would see the tourists scurry off the boat for their shore time. Spending 17 hours each day on a boring ship for just a few hours on shore had no appeal. I was content with visiting the same reefs (and there were several) and loved staying on the same island all week.

An Alaska cruise appealed to me. My dad and grandpa, discerning world-travelers, went on one and thoroughly enjoyed it. About eight years ago Jim and I did the same. The glaciers were magnificent, Anchorage's dusk at 11 p.m. unworldly.

When Jim’s mom suggested a New England and Canada cruise for all her children and spouses, I looked forward to it: I’d never been to Nova Scotia and love Quebec City. The cruise ship would simply be the vessel to get me there: easier than driving. We boarded in Boston and headed north to Maine and eastern Canada: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec. After a day in Montreal, Jim and I would return home by bus though Vermont and New Hampshire.

But as we rode over the Cartier Bridge in Montreal, I found myself wistfully watching the Zaandam as it glided back towards Quebec City, with a fresh load of passengers. It had been our home for seven days. Every evening at 5:15 p.m. Robert, our head waiter, had cheerfully greeted us and taken our orders; there was a different menu each night. George, the wine steward, gave up asking for our wine order and quietly removed the long-stemmed glasses the staff had set at our places. Jim and I soaked up the showtunes and sing-alongs with Jamm the piano man: he knows many hundreds of songs. We listened to a jazz quartet from Greece. I laughed at the ventriloquist, Mike Robinson, and was convinced there were two distinct personalities on stage, even though Terence arrived and left the stage in a suitcase. (My favorite joke from Mike Robinson (there are so many to choose from): Gaming, that’s the preferred term for gambling. Gambling suggests you might win.)

I grew attached to the ship in a way I never had to a hotel. Of course, I’ve never stayed in a first-rate hotel for a week: I usually choose a hotel for low price. The ship had rooms to explore. It took me days to go directly and confidently to the dining room, and a few more to understand where the Mix piano bar was. To the end, I was still guessing how to find the Hudson Room and the main stage and needing to check with the ‘you are here’ map to confirm which staircase I was at. Every evening after dinner, we'd find a creature folded from a large towel with googly eyes in our stateroom. One evening it was a monkey hanging from a skirt hanger; another it was a dear little mouse on our couch.

What was that wistful feeling? The feeling an only child might have on acquiring a younger sibling. I thought the Zaandam was mine. Who knew that two hours after I locked my stateroom and rolled my purple carry-on to the gangway there would be 1400 people waiting to board and take our place?

Pioneer Trek

Jim and I went on a Pioneer Trek with about 70 of the youth of our church. It was a reenactment of journeys nearly three thousand Latter-day Saints took across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Salt Lake Valley, from the years 1856 to 1860. They packed their belongings in a handcart and walked over a thousand miles. Our teenagers were organized into 7 ‘families,’ each with adult leaders as Ma and Pa. Over three days we trekked 15 miles through the woods of New Hampshire: not quite the Great Plains, but challenging.

I often walk 4-5 miles in a day, so I was actually disappointed that it was only 15 miles total: I had misunderstood it to be 15 miles a day. I did worry about sleeping on the ground: it’s been years. But we bought backpacking air mattresses, which are very lightweight and inflate in 15 breaths.

It was a fun date for Jim and me. As the company's grandma, I wasn't responsible for anything. Except for a slight rain Saturday morning, the weather was great and the rail-trail easy to follow.

Back home on Sunday, two of the teenagers reported to our congregation. One had been quite skeptical of the plan. He named it ‘cruel inefficiency’ to pull a loaded oaken handcart over dirt and rocky trails for three days. But in the end he was glad he’d done it.

For both of them, and for me, it heightened our appreciation of our pioneers. Everyone who has gone before is a pioneer, not only my great-grandfather James Farrell, who walked to western Nebraska and built a sod house, or my great-grandparents Bruesch, who came as children to Wisconsin from Prussia and homesteaded a wheat farm in Highwood, Montana, but my grandparents and my parents. Every generation has its own challenges and forges the way for the rising generation.

I’m grateful to have shared the trek experience with Jim and new-found friends. I’m grateful to live in beautiful New England. And I’m grateful for my parents, grandparents, and all pioneers, for the sacrifices they made to give me a better life.

Janet Haas 1960-2019

A musical memorial service was held at Lexington High School for Janet Haas, an exemplary music teacher and accomplished musician, who collapsed in school in early December and was rushed to the hospital. She died a month later of a brain tumor. She was born in 1960 and was planning to retire in June. As one colleague said, “This should have been her retirement celebration.”

The service included a short video and beautiful music, played by her music students, from fourth graders through high schoolers, alumni, and colleagues. It including “Nimrod,” from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, “Over the Rainbow,” played by a string orchestra of elementary students, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The Adagio is a great favorite of mine. It accompanies the David Whyte poem, "Well of Grief" that I wrote about 17 months after David died.

I hardly knew Janet Haas. An avid garage sale customer, I once found a violin for $25. Senior year, our daughter R’el, who played the flute and sang, decided to take it up and joined Mrs. Haas’ intermediate orchestra. To me she seemed a stern taskmaster: at one concert she announced that they would not be playing one of the pieces: it wasn’t ready.

I was pleased to hear of her gentler side, the extra attention she gave students, her interest in early music, figure skating, and gardening. The video showed a home movie clip of her smiling and patiently teaching a little boy how to move on figure skates.

According to Lexington Wicked Local, when Mrs. Haas began teaching in Lexington the high school orchestra had 17 string students. Thirty-one years later there are nearly 200 string players in three orchestras.

The announcement in Lexington Wicked Local reads like the obituary of Doc Graham (Field of Dreams), full of love and admiration for a life well lived:

Haas is remembered not only as a brilliant musician, teacher and colleague but also as a woman of the highest professional, personal, and musical integrity. She deeply wanted her students to experience the fullest passion for music. When she saw a need among her students or in a program she quietly rose to address that need. If a student wanted to learn to play bass at a school that was not in her schedule she would find a way to fit them in. She was a living example to her students of commitment, honesty and perseverance. Praise from Ms. Haas was a precious gift that meant her students had done something special and important.

After the service, we spoke to some of the other music teachers. Mr. Leonard, the music director who worked with us when we donated some of David's insurance money to buy new choral risers, pointed out John, with a bushy red beard, clearing the stage. He said that John was very careful handling the risers and made sure the brass plaques with David's name on them always faced out. Jim and I went up on stage to thank John for his care. We shook hands. It was a sweet moment.

David played the clarinet. He sat near the back of the section, stage right. I can see him intently blowing into the clarinet, or chuckling with another student. He graduated in 2006, thirteen years ago.

It was a bittersweet afternoon.