"never in your wildest dreams..."

it's odd, sometimes, where the catalyst comes from.  i have been considering the concept of regret lately and the creation of this line of thinking occurred while watching a "feeling bad for your actions and making amends" themed dance on a reality show.  i was stunned by the looks of absolute anguish on both the dancers face and that of the celebrity judge.  when finished, the dancer apologized to his mother for having been a little too rambunctious and causing her to struggle.  In turn, the judge expressed sadness over youthful indiscretions and unkindnesses to others.  from my couch, i could feel her regret.  i watched her tear soaked face, and the way her features froze as her thoughts turned inward while being transported, by the message and power of this dance, back to days when she knew little of who she was and chose an action that would hurt another.

why is it that we make the decisions that we sometimes make?  are we selfish? can we not fully understand the impact of our actions?  do we not know who we are?  do we not care about ourselves or not know our worth?  are we lost? are we inherently flawed?

for the last three days at work we have been removing sections of malignant melanoma from the face of a man that i had as a teacher in high school.  we have talked about how much time has gone by and how much i have changed and he said this to me, "never, in your wildest dreams, did you ever consider that you would be doing this procedure on your teacher this many years later?" honestly, i can recall very little of the subject that he taught me but i do remember that he was always kind to me.  sadly, the depth of the melanoma in the skin indicates a poor prognosis and even removing all of it won't be enough to ensure his long term survival.

we have yet to repair his wound as the pathologist has not declared his margins to be clear and because we removed the last section of skin after regular work hours last night we missed the courier who delivers specimen to the lab.  in order to continue the process for this patient, i brought the speciman home with me and will deliver it this morning and hope that these margins are melonoma free.

having this bio-hazard in our home sparked some conversation with my kids and some of their friends and i firmly stated my wish for them to always be nice to their teachers.  they laughed and immediately thought of the pranks they wanted to play and giggled about certain teachers names, like kids do, and i knew they couldn't fully comprehend what i was trying to convey.  i told them that someday they would grow up and be professionals and be required to perform services on/for the people who taught them knowledge and life skills and their competency could be judged, initially, on how they had behaved. 

we, collectively as human beings, make decisions sometimes based on where we are, emotionally, in that moment and we cannot fully grasp the impact for ourselves and others.  i have seen those looks before, the ones i saw on the dancer and the judge, and i have seen them in the mirror as i have questioned my actions and considered my carelessness.  and though i have an idea where the emotional catalyst for my decision-making spurs from, i am not quite sure how to improve or resolve or find the grounding required to both stop making mistakes and to forgive myself for mistakes of yesterday.

i have, as many of us do, many flaws and imperfections to work on. but, thankfully, i can say i always treated this teacher with respect and i am incredibly grateful that his trust in this process is not compromised by my immaturity as a teenager.

and, i sincerely wish him well.

to my family

we have done some traveling recently.  when we left for texas, one of the first things we felt it necessary to do was to buy an atlas. every time someone would ask us "how much farther", we would tell them to check the atlas.  our atlas could tell us where we were, presently, in relation to how far we had come and how much distance we had yet to travel.

we followed the atlas to texas and though many things have changed, both jimmy and i felt the history and memories of our first year spent together there as intensely as we felt the heat.  we spent time with his family, told stories from their past, and learned briefly how to care for his father who is struggling with poor health due to diabetes, weight issues, and congestive heart failure. 

i took my kids to bear lake last weekend for a small family reunion and spent saturday with my face to the sun and watched them play in the water like i did at their age.  we, three generations of us,  ate sandwiches at picnic tables with our feet in the sand while i remembered similar happenings from years ago with my grandparents and my siblings.

the next day, we traveled to randolph, utah to see my great grandmother's home and visit the cemetery where many of my maternal relatives are buried.  we sat in the shade and listened to tales of m.i.a. p.o.w.'s, of infamous wolf kills, and of death that comes too soon for various reasons. 

while visiting the now uninhabited home of my great grandmother, i peeked into the windows and saw an old hand-made quilt and i wandered around the out-buildings finding other old objects from their lives.  i found myself considering my ancestry and wondering what kind of traits i may have inherited from powerful men and women whose cells i carry.  as is the nature of life, there are bad things that come along with the good.

in september, i will celebrate my 36th birthday and in some ways i am younger now than i have ever been.  as life throws me both opportunity and chaos forcing me to evaluate and re-invent i am learning, like my children, to communicate, to process, and to evolve.  and to fix what i have broken, to serve, to fight harder, and to love myself better. 

i would guess that, collectively, my siblings and jimmy's siblings share versions of similar stories and struggle likewise, to varying degrees, with issues passed down from those that came before us. but sometimes we, connected at times only through our weaknesses, forget that along with depression, self-hatred, addictive personalities, and weight issues, we have been handed incredible strength.

we often refer to the fact that our father ran 80-100 miles per week in his attempts to outrun his demons and we use this as an example of his inability to manage stress.  we should, however, consider how physically and mentally demanding it is to put your body through that much work and celebrate this perseverance, dedication, and strength.

we should remember that grandpa rex, though struggling and dying young with kidney issues, took aim at those wolves and protected his cattle.  he did this knowing, without a doubt, that he could use his rifle to its very limits when noone else could.

we should remember the women who bravely continued to carry and bear children even when the likelihood of loss due to infection, illness, and still birth was so great.  and the women who, in an attempt to avoid ever allowing her children feel unloved and hungry, used the forethought and planning it took to feed us. and we should remember the women that slept on the floor near our beds when we were sick or injured.

these were the men and women that, eventually, got us here through hard work, planning, adaptability, and perseverance.

and we should remember that regardless of whether these skills were ones they developed or were learned behaviors, it makes no difference because we have them now.  and we have used them, too.  we have trained for and completed ironman triathlons,we have climbed big mountains and continued to grow in our abilities,we have gone to medical school and learned how to facilitate life and perpetuate health, we have conquered addictions, survived horrific loss, and provided support  (and cheesecake) to our loved ones while they suffered despite our own heartache.  and we can and will do it again. 

where ever we are now, good or bad, we have the ability, the strength, the stamina, and the support to help ourselves and each other create positive change.

we just need to open up that atlas, see where we have come from, accept where we are now, pick a destination and move towards it.

i love you all.

the many faces of ty

"you can count days, or you can make days count."

After several attempts, I finally stayed awake through the movie Inception.  I am still completely confused by the whole thing but, basically, the movie is about a team of people who build dreams within dreams to gather information and perpetuate certain future actions by their chosen subject.  The team enters the dream state, does their business, and a "kick" or a quick jolt is used to wake them and bring them back to reality.  The theory of "inception" is to implant an idea that when the subject awakens, he/she will then act upon it benefiting the party financing the entire thing. In order to make it seem as if the dreamer/subject came up with this idea on his own, the creators have to produce multiple layers of consciousness.  Each added layer presents more challenges and more risk of getting stuck and it turns out that the main character, Cobb, has some secrets that begin to complicate matters for everyone.  Certain events from his past keep Cobb from being able to move forward and he has "built" for himself some "memories" that because of guilt or other attachments he has been unable to let go and parts of these designs begin to infiltrate the dreams used for the mission. Due to the danger of becoming unable to distinguish between the architect-ed dreams and the "real world", Cobb and his team have chosen small items called "totems" that can be carried at all times and the weight and/or action of them help the user determine the reality of each situation.  Cobbs totem is a spinning top that will fall when the gravity of reality pulls it downward.

Recently, I assisted with a surgical repair of a large melanoma that required the surgeon to separate a portion of the patients facial and neck skin in order to rotate it around to fill the space where the affected skin had been removed.  To assist the doctor, I held the skin in my hand while hemostasis was obtained.  To help the patient, and lighten the sterile atmosphere of the room, I conversed with the patient and his wife.  I became aware that they had been business acquaintances of my dad.  While we talked, thoughts of my dad came flooding in.  Memories of watching him work, sitting at his drafting table, and hearing him tell stories about meetings he attended.  I mentioned that it was nice to visit with people who remember him as there are many in my life now who have never met him.

Later that day I took some of my kids bouldering out to the old Teton dam site.  As my thoughts wandered, I overheard the kids talking about the dam breaking and a grandpa (that they have never met) clearing the area that day of construction workers with a warning of impending danger and then fleeing the canyon behind them as the dam broke and washed away the earth behind him. And more memories came flooding in...I thought about driving out to the site with my dad, sitting next to him on the fabric seat of the old pick-up truck, eating cookies and drinking a cold can of rootbeer as I listened to his stories.  It made me feel like a kid again.

So, as a proverbial kid feeling the loss of my father and without perspective gained over years of growth and prayer, I was unprepared to process my thoughts when the guy down the canyon began shooting his gun at the canyon walls.  More than a hundred shots and shells and echos later, I forgot how to breath and felt stuck between two levels of consciousness. One level where all I could hear was the sound of the weapon that took his life and another level as a mother feeling helpless to protect her kids as we walked out of the canyon. I was anxious not knowing where this shooter was, angry that no one was there to help me, and frustrated that I had so little control over my emotions.  I felt like that top from the movie, spinning to no end in the dream state and it made me dizzy.  I needed a "kick" or a totem to help me understand and move forward.

But, because I did not have a totem, I waited and struggled for days...so deep in this previously hidden level of space and consciousness, and I could hardly move.  My loss and lack of control so overwhelming to me that I was unable to see my way out of it.  Logic pervaded me and I tortured myself with questions left unanswered, things I want desperately and couldn't have, and fears that weaken my self-esteem.  And I could not wake up no matter how hard I fought the dream and it hurt.

After a night of restless sleep and with a stabbing pain in my back, I dragged myself out of bed, took some motrin, threw on some completely un-matched running clothes, drove out to Heise, and forced myself onto the hillside.  And I counted.  I counted my footsteps...and each breath until it was no longer an effort to take them.  I continued upwards to the top and each time I purposefully emptied my lungs, I chose to let go of the chaos that interferes with everything else and that, for the last couple of days, had completely ruled me.  I let go of negative thoughts, breathed away the desperation of missing people and things, and left the need for answers on the brush of that hillside.   It felt good.  And  it felt cathartic.

It was then that I remembered I do have a totem and I always have had it with me; I just need to remember how to use it.
 
It is the sound of my own breath when I move over the earth and I push my body to cover distance.  It is the air in my lungs that allows me to climb to the tops of things.  It is the notes of my off-key singing when I bust out to the radio with my girls while the wind blows through the backseat.  It is even the breath that catches when someone I love plants a soft kiss on my lips.  It, for me, is the perfect totem and I won't forget it again.

I descended the hillside with renewed energy, deep rhythmic healing breaths, and a new level of consciousness.

I noticed something that I had not seen on the way up.  In my stressed out oblivion I had completely missed the cemetery that marks the sacred history of the family who developed the area.  The words carved on the headstone of a friend from school, taken too early, read, "You can count days, or you can make days count."

And this, was just the "kick" I needed.

south park with ty and izzy

this wind sucks...and blows!

There is something about listening to the wind that slowly sucks the life right out of me and makes me feel completely alone and needy.   I hate to admit it but when the wind blows and my inner princess colors start to fly and I want just want to lay in bed, ring a bell, and have all my wishes served to me on a silver platter.  I don't even want to expend the energy to figure out what my wishes are; I just want them delivered.  And now.  I want my mind read and my belly and my soul fed.

There is a bouldering route that I have been working on for months now.  (In the gym, because the weather is too crappy to entice me outside.)  It had occupied so many of my thoughts that, in a way, it became a tangible item that I could carry around with me.  When I first tried this route on the suggestion of another climber, I could not even do the first move.  For me, the holds were more crimpy than what I was accustomed to and often, while working this route, my right wrist and forearm would fatigue much sooner than my desire and determination.  Over time, I got stronger and I added to my route sequence until I could  complete every move except the last one without even thinking about it.  I could visualize each move in my head and I dreamt about it often. But, that last move!  Ugh, it consumed me and I did it wrong so many times that my tangible item become something that carried me around.  Finally, with support, encouragement, and constant beta from other climbers, I was finally able to send it.  It was awesome.  But, sadly, it felt a little anti-climatic for me.  Stupid, right?  In prior athletic endeavors, when I have finished or won a race, my family is often there and they hug me in celebration.  And last night,  that was missing.  I mean, Ty was there but he's a little too big for his britches if-ya-know-what-I-mean...and hugging his mom in public is no longer cool and I wanted a proper hug.  I have become spoiled by supportive loved ones.

So, here's my question.  Now what? Now that this route is no longer fueling me, what do I put my energy into for the summer?  I'm pretty sure my yellow route won't miss me as it will have plenty of company but I kinda feel a little lost now. 

Ridiculous, I know.  The moon is full, and I mean full...have you seen it?  And this wind is making me crazy!   So, help me out and tell me...Now what?
 

more weekend adventures

the kids and i stopped at maverick on the way to kelly canyon for our hiking adventure. i had to entice them with snacks to get them to go with me and i asked olivia to load my pack while i drove. my sweet olivia is twelve now and only listens to about 1/3 of the things i say to her and instead of stashing the extra gatorade's in the back of my car for future use, she shoved them in my pack.

we parked the car, put on our packs, and started hiking up the road to the trail head. the route i had chosen for this short, kid friendly hike began with 20 feet of muddy incline steep enough to require one to dig their feet into the mush and grab hold of the brush in order to make progress up the slope. it quickly became obvious we weren't the only species making our way onto the trail as we noticed deer, dog, and even eery  bear prints scratched into the earth. i had been talking to the kids about paying attention to nature and the amazing world that surrounds us and this discovery made us even more aware. i wasn't too worried though as i guessed that those tracks had been made when the ground was much wetter from rain than it was presently, giving those animals at least a day or two head start.

olivia and lincoln began teasing ty about the possibility of his falling into some poison ivy and that he better learn how to identify it. ty is the youngest child, accustomed to being spoiled, and tends to be quickly reactive and, of course, this set him off and he started whining. walking directly behind ty and his newly acquired "walking stick", olivia realized she was in danger of being hit in the face while ty swung this stick at passing trees and she began yelling at him to walk faster. i told her to go in front of him, which is when the whining about "budging in line" started. at this point, lincoln, in all seriousness asked, "are we done yet?" i looked at my watch and reported that we had been hiking for precisely 6 minutes and 20 seconds.

we continued our hike, following the trail which at times declined for a while before heading upward again.  we were still in the trees and it was difficult for the kids to visualize the top of the mountain. having hiked this trail before, i knew what to expect and could encourage them on with a explanation of what kind of landmarks to look for and could provide an estimated time frame which helped them be more patient with our progress.

soon, we got to a clearing and the trail became more obvious to them. the markers were no longer attached to trees but to the tops of tall metal spikes that pierced the ground and showed the way. we agreed that we would hike two more markers and then sit for lunch and rest. once there, i pointed out that since we had hiked high enough to see over the trees that once impeded our visibility, we could now see the valley floor both eastward and westward and the view was spectacular. and for a few moments the kids could appreciate this new perspective, given to them only after effort and sweat had been shed.

we sat, we watched, we ate, and we talked. we pointed out the landmarks that we could see differently now from above, like the giant hole in the ground caused by a mudslide, the roads, and the rocks that have become familiar to us over the last year of exploring new hobbies. and while the kids watched the earth, i watched the kids...and gained a new perspective of them...beyond their whining and their complaining. i could see that they got it, if only a portion of it but they got it, nonetheless.

i noticed at this point that my pack was loaded with a lot of extra weight; way more gatorade than we could possibly consume on this short hike and while i was strong enough to carry it without problem, it was still more than i needed to haul. i had no choice, on top of the mountain, but to stick it back in my pack and carry it back down to the vehicle. after we resumed walking, a herd of cows forced us to circle around the known trail and through the brush side-hilling towards a low spot in the landscape and a dry stream bed that i believed would eventually lead us back to the trail or at least down to the canyon floor and our ride home.

and it did. 

when we reached the road, we crossed over and soaked our feet in the cool stream of mountain run-off and expressed our excitement of all we had seen and experienced. the kids talked about all the tangible things they had seen; the trees, the tracks, the flowers, the other peaks, and the clouds.

but i hope that someday they would see more.

i hope they will see that sometimes we have to push further to get through the trees and into the clearing. i hope they will see that following other footprints is often a good idea but that sometimes we have to be brave enough to forge our own path. i hope they will see that sometimes we carry unnecessary weight and we should re-evaluate, often,  what we keep in our packs and that sometimes our complaining prohibits us from fully accepting our outward surroundings and that sometimes we have to dig our feet in and pull ourselves up out of the mush.

and i hope they will see that the view and the rewards and the snacks are much sweeter when earned and when shared with people we love.