Zen in the Wait

This summer I climbed a rock wall for the first time.

I did the easy side, and my third born zipped up the harder side next to me—but after so many years of being too afraid to try it, I knew THIS year I had to get it done.

So I did. Awkward helmet on my pumpkin-sized head, straps uncomfortably cinched around my ample backside, I did.

I zipped up my course…not because I have skill, I just have long arms and legs and I find that when I am nervous I do much better if I can go as fast as possible so that I don’t have time to think, I am just doing and moving forward.

There were a few moments where I had to grip onto teeny tiny colorful globs that really seemed incapable of holding all of me as I looked for the next grip. I focused with all my might on Just Getting To the Top. I knew if I stopped to think, I might be stuck like Charlie on the MTA.

Will she ever climb up? Will she ever climb down? Oh her fate is still unlearned!

She may cling forever to the Camp Sunshine Rock Wall!

She’s the mom who never climbed down!

Yergh.

And then, when I got to the top, I had to wait for my third born, she who is 6 inches shorter than I am and was climbing a harder route. After the brief moment of Extreme Woohoo! I did it!…I started to think a bit about physics and altitude and the rate at which one could fall to the earth if the person belaying me let go, or what the probability was of my grown up self launching that young woman into the air as she tried to help me DOWN the wall.

This moment was less fun.

This is the moment in which I find myself now, in so many areas of life.

No, not typing at the top of a rock wall—although that would be some awesome multi-tasking. I am in that moment of waiting. And in waiting there is time to think. And for me, with thinking comes doubt. 

I have a feeling I am not alone in this, even though those moments often feel awfully lonely!

Which way is up or down? What direction am I supposed to be climbing in? How can I help my friends who I love so much and who live so far away and are in the thick of things right now? How can I keep my skills sharp as I wait to see if I will find my way back into a classroom? Is that where I should even be headed? Which way is the best way to help people in my own community, to support my children even as I try to get them to be more independent and responsible? How can I start contributing financially to my family again? WHICH WAY IS UP?

Thankfully, I have zero doubt that starting the climb into this new moment (i.e. leaving my old job) was ten bazillion percent the right thing to do. Zero doubt.  I miss my students, but I have Gwen Stefani levels of No Doubt. There is great freedom in THAT choice, huzzahlelujah.

My doubt and overthinking come in the moment of waiting. What now? 

At the hospital, folks who worked there would joke about how good our family is at waiting—we love our neuro-oncologist, she spends so much time with her patients that she is notoriously late. Since we have been the “needs more time to sort through catastrophe” family too many times, we NEVER fuss about waiting. Ever. Even when the hospital staff are checking out for the day and we are the only people left in the waiting room, we wait without fussing. During certain waits (like scans and such) after a certain time I start to pace, which makes my spouse insane, especially when I throw in moves from the Ministry of Silly Walks or start only stepping on the colorful tiles, but otherwise we are really good at waiting there.

In regular life? In figuring out where/how to focus my efforts? I am less good at waiting. I am super skilled at self-doubt and overthinking.

Doing is so much easier than being—quiet moments are hard. 

Circling wagons to help a friend is easier than sitting in the wagons and waiting for first light, just sharing the dark space with friends in quiet.

Taking a course to keep my skills sharp is easier than making myself work through texts on my own with no measurable goal in sight (other than to finish the text).

Demo is always easier than the slow task of planning and rebuilding.

I just am not sure where the next colorful glob is to hold on to—just that it’s probably uphill!  I have to hang on, and keep moving right along in the small structures that shape my day (around chauffeuring my girls), one colorful glob to the next, and trust that the right path will become clear as long as I stay focused on the process of moving forward—and not obsess about an end point I can’t see. 

In order to get down from that rock wall--I had to let go. Literally. Let go of the wall and trust that I would not splat. After some awkward flailing, I went all Blues Brothers Swat Team on that wall (hut! hut! hut!) -- but letting go of  that which is solid and known is scary--but required to not stay stuck.

 Rebuilding done right takes letting go of my need for control over every outcome, it takes time—and I know there is zen in the process, zen in the wait. I can't just race through without thinking. And that's ok. 

So for anyone who can relate to this sort of questioning in the hanging on moments--you aren't alone. For anyone stuck in the present moment, plagued with doubt or self-recrimination about past choices or personal weaknesses or generalized ugh with all the awful things going on these days—hang on. We will figure it out, whatever IT is. We can. We just have to hold on, look for the next little glob (moment) to cling to and keep moving forward. We will figure out where we are going.

You know what my beloved Muppets say – no, not “Bear Left, Bear Left!” – “Right, Frog!”, although that is true, too --
“Getting there is half the fun come share it with me!”

And when getting there is NOT super fun—I am grateful to share the trek with all of you—especially when the path is dark and hard and we have to hold each other up. Without that young woman belaying me, I would not have made it up that wall--or down! Now, I am so grateful for friends and family belaying me in my What the Heck Now? climb. Don’t forget your helmets…and thanks for not letting go! Seriously. I have a strong aversion to Splat. Thank you. 

Also, I should go look up what those colorful rock wall globs are called, right? Stay tuned.

I Have Been to the Mountains...

I figure by now the consensus is likely one of the following options:

a. I did NOT survive the Jersey Shore Relay, I simply got washed out with the tide.

b. I decided while in Seaside Heights to embrace my true Jersey Girl Self, call myself K-Mom, and start a reality show about people who don’t really drink, never go to bars, have natural volume to their hair that they try to subdue daily, and get sunburned way too easily to hang out at the Shore for long.

c. I was so flummoxed by trying to run that I headed off course and am still somewhere on the Turnpike murmuring “what exit? What exit?” to people driving by. (1)

d. I actually SURVIVED the Jersey Shore Relay, Basked In My Own Glorious Survival, Marveled at NOT dying on the course, and then Collapsed Utterly Wordless for 3 months.

Note (1) for true wannabe Jersey folks, this would take SOME wandering, as it is of course the Parkway, not the Turnpike, that takes us to the Shore. Not the beach. The Shore.

I did survive the race. Actually, I kicked some race bu…ok, let’s not get crazy, I survived. It was wildly emotional, physically yikes, and surprisingly satisfying. I still hate running, but running for a cure for NF, this maybe I could do again.
We’ll see.


This has been a season of mountain climbing, figuratively, for me. Maybe I’m prepping for being officially grown up in less than a year. I always hoped I’d grow up to be Aretha Franklin. I still have my fingers crossed on that, but things don’t look promising. Growing up is hard to do.

Anyway, in May I got back on an airplane for the first time in 15 years. This was a mountain of Everest proportions for me. I have a deep seated aversion to altitude, far more deep than my aversion to running. If I collapse running, police could figure out who I was pretty easily, I wear an ID on my ankle. (http://www.roadid.com) But collapsing from 35,000 feet? Ugh. I left a toothbrush at home in case investigators needed DNA evidence to figure out which pieces were me if we didn’t make it. Really, I did.

Without going into the 2.5 hour delay with thunderstorms followed by 6 hours of eek that constituted my flight, I can now say I survived that too. I might even fly again. To Florida or points closer. No more West Coast for me. At least not without medication. The theoretical “big girl pill” does not have the clinical strength of an actual pill. I have learned that the hard way (see “6 hours of eek”). But I got through it, and I’m glad I did.

At the end of that airplane ride was an adventure, the Golden Gate Bridge, astounding mountains bigger than any I’ve ever seen (or driven over, YIKES! What is it about guardrails that folks out west find so offensive? Eek!), a beautiful wedding, a new sister in the family. Just like the race, the plane ride “mountain” was ultimately totally worth it.

I’m not sure what mountain is next. Maybe a class trip with 22 high school seniors to our hospital city? Maybe just getting through our next medical moment? I’m not sure. But I will keep climbing mountains, or at least scaling hills, or stepping over speed bumps or something. The morass of my own head tends too often to suck me in, and I lose my ability to write things out. But even though I may never be the Queen of Soul, or feel like a Natural Woman, I plan to keep moving. Even little mountains count for something…

Even little mountains like putting backside in chair and writing a blog entry…