more + more delights {2}

I promise this is not at all whiny. But. Regular readers might recall I have back woes. Degenerative disc disease. Not-so-scientifically speaking, tons of people over 40 have it. Stats vary. Severity varies. Everything about it seeems to…vary. To say my dad has it bad is putting it mildly. My brother, too. Not nearly as bad as my dad’s. But then again, Matt’s ‘only’ 50.

My spine came to a head (haha!) 2 years ago. Little did I know, it’d been in the works a while. The sounds I heard doing triangle pose and yoga twists all pandemic long? They weren’t good pops. I wasn’t aligning. That was grinding vertebrae! (Palm-to-forehead.) It didn’t hurt at the time, so I didn’t know to stop. I just kept going. And going. And going.

Where’s the Delight? It’s coming.

Navigating pain is a process. Managing the physical…accumulating knowledge…and wrestling with emotions. I’ve started, though. It feels proactive, much of the time. (Which is good!) It tells me…maybe?…I’m flirting with the last stage:

• denial — I’m too young! (48) Healthy! In good shape! (Joke’s on me. All the HIIT I used to do exacerbated it.)
• anger — PO’ed! I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop doing All the Things I’ve Always Done!
• bargaining — I’ll frequent the chiropractor. Give up yoga. Jumping. Others have WAY bigger crosses to bear!
• depression — Actually weeping after physical therapy when I couldn’t put on my socks or pick up a towel off the floor.
• acceptance — How can I adjust? What can I do FOR myself? How can I participate? What CAN I do?

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This morning I read Ross Gay’s essayette No. 10 in The Book of (More) Delights:

He and a friend are warming up to shoot hoops when two 20-somethings challenge them to a 2-on-2. They accept. As he describes them, they’re wiry, tattooed ‘babies’ with a reluctance to smile, and they’re doing everything to prove they’re not babies. By which he means throwing elbows, thrusting chests, playing with more of their body parts than is really necessary. 

When Ross lands on the ground — shoved hard by one of those ‘babies’ after getting (but, damn, missing!) his own rebound — he looks up at his friend and, in that moment, replays the history of men and war and what I’ll call machismo and the need to prove. And he delights in the fact that [at age 47] he doesn’t need to react with a punch. Which he’d have done not too long ago.

Instead, he writes:

…I felt myself feel nothing like rage or embarrassment or hurt or, god forbid, disrespect… I felt myself feeling love for this little tough guy, so much love I’m pretty sure it was also for my own little tough guy, getting less tough, and littler, by the day.

It reminded me of that moment last September when I glimpsed myself in the mirror while getting in the shower. Vulnerable moments, right? On the ground after someone shoves you. A naked reflection in an unforgiving mirror. There’s Delight in that kind of loving: Embracing time. Imperfection. Maybe a little less volume or speed. But going, nonetheless. Different than giving in…giving up…succumbing, there’s love in acknowledging. Accepting. Accommodating. Adjusting.

I think of my Gram. She gardened ’til the end. I’ve told you before how, when she couldn’t schlep bags of soil, she’d scoop what she needed, pail by pail, from the trunk of her car. When the bag was light enough, she moved it with her wheelbarrow.

When Ross got up from the gym floor, he hugged the guy and spouted ‘…a slurry of coachly affirmations — which were, in retrospect, probably directed at me as much as my assailant.’

In December ’19, I was planning a solo walk across Liechtenstein. (For September ’20.) (No-go.) The last two years, pain convinced me that trip’s a long shot. But now I’m thinking…Why not? I may need a little more time. Would have to make do with a day pack. If it’s not a race — *and it’s not* — that kind of a trip can be on the table for a long time yet. And it really can.

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Addendum:

Something about this plaque is a little cheesy…maybe it’s that it hangs in a restaurant bathroom with fake flowers and strong air freshener ‘cakes’ on the counter?

Regardless. I get this.

I took the picture and sent it to my dad. I knew he’d get it without me saying anything.

(There’s Delight in that, too.)

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Does this resonate? A sort of relief in acknowledging [something] — then figuring out ways to live fully, delightfully, anyway?