Vacation

We just got back from spending five days at Ocean City, Maryland. It's a tacky sort of beach town that has amusement parks and video game arcades and a boardwalk. You walk past one shop after another selling ice cream and french fries and T-shirts and cover-ups and sunglasses and boogie boards and other sorts of beach paraphernalia. Most of the restaurants are pretty basic -- pizza, seafood, burgers and ribs. Most of the people are pretty basic too.


We stay right in the middle of the action at an old hotel that has a big front porch with rocking chairs that face the boardwalk. It's far from luxurious -- the beds sag in the middle and you don't get complimentary toiletries and the WIFI is temperamental -- but it's clean and friendly, it offers tea and coffee 24x7, and you can rent bicycles on the premises.

Why do I insist on a beach vacation at least once every summer? Why do I love it so? Why doesn't it feel like summer is complete without it? Partly because it reminds me of my childhood, and vacations that I took with my parents to similar beach towns -- Altantic City and Wildwood, New Jersey; Jones Beach and Coney Island, New York. My husband says that when I'm at the beach, I'm always 11 years old. But there are other reasons that "going to the beach" is a restorative thing to me, a thing that brings a smile to my face and a new spring to my step.

Wikipedia defines vacation  a leave of absence from a regular occupation. It further explains that "in today's digital society, vacationers may choose to unplug for all or portions of the time, thus separating themselves from the demands of constant digital communications." Yes, that's part of what I love about the beach. It's totally different from being at home. Most of my daily routine (except for early-morning 2-Step meetings) is totally changed. My "to do" list is ignored, and the temperamental WIFI at our hotel forces me to let my incoming email pile up and remain unread. I admit that I do post the occasional photo of a beautiful sunrise on Facebook, but no one's perfect. But ah, the beach. There's no place quite as relaxing, beautiful or pleasant to spend time without electronic gadgets.


^{The beach just makes me feel good. Sunshine is a great source of vitamin D, and my doctor says I need more of that.I've also read that the minerals in the ocean could help reduce symptoms for people with arthritis. According to a study, patients who spent time around salt water experienced fewer symptoms, like morning stiffness and trouble with hand gripping. You know what else can help relieve symptoms of arthritis? Getting enough vitamin D.}

We all tend to be happier in the brighter months of summer and less so in the gloomier months of winter, Sunshine CAN make us happier. A study conducted in Australia found that the amount of sunlight participants' received directly affected their mood, and had a positive effect on stress, sleep and appetite. I'm not claiming that a lack of beach time will lead to symptoms of depression, but I do believe that the beach has got a lot of what our bodies need, all in one beautiful place.

My beach vacation includes very little time actually sitting on the beach. When I'm at the beach, I love to walk. I mean LONG walks right along the exact place where the water and the sand meet. I look at the people on the sand, and the kids in the water, and the birds in the air, and the little airplanes pulling banners that say "TONITE 1/2 PRICE MARGARITAS. JOE'S BAR&GRILL." I think about old friends and good times, and tell my husband stories about my childhood. Before we know it we've walked to the end of the beach, so we turn around and walk all the way in the other direction. Long enough to get good and tired -- and usually sunburned.And if we're not walking, we're riding rented bikes up and down the boardwalk, and along the streets of the town. Sometimes the boardwalk is so crowded that it's a real challenge to avoid other riders, as well as skateboarders, walkers, and families with young kids who have rented surreys and don't have a clue how to drive them. But it's part of what we do at the beach, and our bodies appreciate the exercise. Besides, I have to work off all of the ice cream that I eat at the beach. Every day.

In some mysterious way, being at ocean is good for my mind and my spirit. We are all connected to water from the beginning of life.When I see or hear the ocean -- or any large body of water -- I feel calmer, and closer to God. Prayer and meditation come easier when I'm sitting on the porch, in a rocking chair, watching and hearing the waves break along the shoreline. I feel like I'm a part of everything -- and everything is a part of me.

The Near Side of God

During this morning's Twelve-Step Program meeting, the speaker talked about how relieved he was when he read Step Two: "We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." He knew that he couldn't change himself because, even though he had stopped drinking for several years, he was still an angry and dissatisfied human being. He was no longer drinking, but he wasn't "sober." Step Two told him that there was a Higher Power that would help him -- all he had to do was to turn his will and life over to that Power. He did, and the positive result was obvious to us all.

When the speaker finished, he chose the topic of "Finding Your Higher Power" for the sharing part of the meeting. Several people shared their stories, including their individual perceptions of God "as they understood Him." Although I didn't have the opportunity to share at the meeting, I felt compelled to share it here.

When I was growing up, I learned about a God who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent:  all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere. I still believe this, but I found it hard to develop a close and personal relationship with that kind of God. Then, two things I read changed everything.

The first thing was a book: The Shack, by William P Young. In this story the main character encounters a God that he can get "up close and personal" with. In fact, the God of this story is three persons, each one different from the other, but all somehow linked together. That's all I'm going to tell, because I don't want to spoil the story if you haven't read the book. I highly recommend it.

The second thing was a piece of Program-approved literature that spoke about "the near side of God." The author wrote about grappling with the concept of God, and concluded that God was essentially unknowable, but that He allowed us to approach him by showing us his "near side." That is the part of God that we can feel, that is close to us everywhere and all the time.

I still pray to and worship the God that is all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere. But I have a close and personal relationship with the near side of God every day. He is always at my side. He laughs at me -- and sometimes with me -- when I think that I'm in control of things. He rolls his eyes when I say or do something totally foolish -- which I do more often than I care to admit. He helps me to turn away from temptation, but then He forgives me when I'm weak and sets me back on the right path. And He gives me a pat on the back when I do or say "the next right thing."

If you're reading this and willing to share your concept of God in the comments section, please do!

Reality is the Way Things Are

I keep lists on my phone. Lists of what I need to do, lists of what I want to do. Lists of places I'd like to go. Lists of books to read, lists of songs to download to my phone, lists of movies to order from Netflix. And I'm old enough to keep a list of my medications.

This morning I'm in the last row of seats on a Smithsonian bus to Reedville, where we will get on a boat to Tangier Island, in the south Chesapeake Bay. This has been on my list of places I want to go for quite some time. 
I just consulted the list called "Quotes" and picked one. It says "See reality as the way things are, not as you want them to be." That's an easy one to write about. It's my story.

When I was growing up as an only child in a working-class neighborhood of the Bronx,  my father told me that I could be anything I wanted to be, and do anything I wanted to do, if I tried hard enough. I believed him -- totally.

Working hard at school got me into the best high school. Working as a waitress on weekends and in the summers got me enough money to supplement my small scholarship to college. Graduating summa cum laude made it easy for me to be accepted into grad school. An advanced degree, good test scores and a lively interview got me hired into a Federal management intern program. Being good at what I did, learning a variety of disciplines and taking advantage of opportunities -- and being a woman in the right place at the right time -- helped me become an executive. Changing jobs from time to time kept things interesting. Retiring at age 55 with a full pension put me in a position of being able to just about anything I wanted, within reason.

While I was making all these things happen, I also lived a normal and happy personal life. I made -- and have kept -- many good friends. I  experienced the joys and heartbreaks of young love. I dated a variety of young men and married one before I even graduated from college. When we realized that we were growing in different directions, we divorced with relatively little pain. I jumped back into the free-wheeling social pool of the '70s with great abandon, and then found a wonderful man who I have now been married to for 36 years. We had no children by choice rather than by chance. We found and became members of a church that supports and sustains us. We were now both retired with adequate investments and a comfortable income, ready to travel and bike ride and explore new activities.

It was a wonderful life, almost perfect, that I had worked for and grasped and nurtured. Things were exactly the way they were supposed to be. ..... And then they weren't.

My body became uncooperative. I had pain, first in my neck and shoulders, later in my hip and lower back and leg. I had experienced health problems before during my near-perfect life. I could always get them fixed through medications or therapy or surgery. So I had surgery for my neck. It worked. I was fine again ... for a while. Then other pain, and a diagnosis of osteoarthritis, and the knowledge that it was progressive.

Pain got in the way of living my near-perfect life. Over-the-counter meds didn't help. I was afraid of narcotic meds because my mom "had trouble" with them. I was frustrated. I couldn't do things I wanted to do. I couldn't enjoy a number of daily activities. This was NOT the way things were supposed to be. I NEEDED it to be the way I wanted it to be.

When I finished my ritual glass of single malt Scotch before dinner, I felt a little better. Some days I had a second glass. Then most days. When I worked preparing food in the kitchen, standing, I hurt. A glass of wine on the counter started to appear. The glass was emptied and refilled. The same thing began when I worked on the computer. Over a relatively short period of time, I was starting the morning with whiskey in my coffee and ending the day with a shot from a hidden bottle. I stopped feeling my pain. But I also didn't feel much of anything else. I became devious about hiding bottles and making up stories about why I was stumbling over pieces of furniture. My world got quite narrow, and I drank because I drank. And then I began to black out, and fall down the stairs.

Reality was not what I wanted it to be. Reality was that I had unintentionally become an alcoholic in my pursuit of eliminating my pain. I had entered a new and even more painful reality.

A month in rehab and daily 12-step meetings ever since have taught me much about handling reality. The Serenity Prayer tells me "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

I cannot change my condition. I cannot avoid growing older and all that comes with it. I can do whatever is healthy and reasonable to be the best I can be. I can do yoga and cardio and weight training to be a fit 63-year-old. I can investigate non-narcotic medications that address my pain. I can, through prayer and meditation, maintain a strong spiritual life. And I can share my story, to remind myself and, possibly, help others.

Postscript: I'm posting this after we return from Tangier Island. They proudly say that they now have wifi on the island, but I didn't try to find it.

"Accept the fact that you're not God"

When I was growing up, my father said to me, "You can do anything you want to do, and be anything you want to be." This was a wonderful gift at a time (the 1950s) that girls and women were just beginning to argue for their place in society, and years before women began to fight for equality. It gave me the self-confidence to become a star pupil, to play softball with the guys, and later to become a government executive. 

There's a downside to this gift, however. When we believe that we can do anything and be anything, we also believe that we can fix anything that's broken -- all by ourselves. We don't EVER feel like we have to ask for help, not from our spouses, not from our friends, not from our colleagues, not even from God. That seemed to work pretty well for me until I hit my early 60's, when I developed anxiety disorder and became an alcoholic. These were two things that, at least in part, were caused by my "I can do it all" attitude. They were ruining my life. And they were two things I couldn't fix all by myself. 

When I entered a 12-Step Program, I learned that my problem was a very common one. Another member said to me, "Accept the fact that you're not God. Only God can do anything, and he's waiting to help you out, if you ask him to."

The Serenity Prayer, which we pray together at the end of every meeting, uses the following words:

 

As I began "working the steps," I discovered that the first three steps focus directly on the problems I was having.

1. We admitted we were powerless - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

When we're ready to do the Third Step, we say the following prayer.

"God, I offer myself to Thee -- to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always!"

I've done the Third Step once so far, but that doesn't mean that I've done it perfectly or thoroughly. I've "made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God," but from time to time I fall into old habits and think that it's all up to me. That's when attending meetings regularly, and reading Program literature, remind me that there's a better solution. To use a common phrase, I'm "willing to be willing," and that's at least heading in the right direction.

There are now times when I actually ask for help. It doesn't come naturally, but when I do it saves me from a lot of frustration. I can't do everything and I can't be anything. All I can do is the best I can do, and the "next right thing." Beyond that, I ask for God's help in knowing what He wants me to do.

Stressed Out or Anxious? Just Breathe...

Do you find yourself "stressed out" or anxious on certain days or at certain times? Of course you do. I can with all honesty admit that I'm a member of the same club ... although several of my friends have asked me what I have in my life to get stressed or anxious about. I'm retired, for gosh sake. I don't have any economic problems. I have a loving husband and a healthy marriage. We don't have any children (with or without issues), or living parents who still need care. So what is there in my life that causes anxiety?

Nothing much. But I'm perfectly capable of creating my own anxiety. It's just the way I am. I create lists of things that I want to accomplish, and then I get anxious if I don't get them done. I have an ache or pain that I've never had before, and I imagine all sorts of terrible things it might be a symptom of. I get to the airport long before I really need to because "you never know what might happen along the way." That's me, in a nutshell.

Three things that help me to relax and reduce my anxieties are exercise, yoga and meditation. Exercise helps because it works off the adrenaline that builds up when we get anxious -- it's that same natural "fight or flight" mechanism that we've all learned about. Our bodies are ready to do SOMETHING! ... so we need to work it off. Take a long walk, work in the garden, clean the house, go to the gym, whatever works.

Yoga and meditation help me to relax because they both help me focus on my breathing. Taking regular, deep breaths is an easy and almost foolproof way to quickly diffuse anxiety and stress. People who teach yoga and meditation will spend a fair amount of time teaching their students how to breathe properly. But I'm going to share a shortcut. In the January 2015 issue of Real Simple magazine, Margaret Townsend, a certified "breathwork practitioner" (who knew there was such a thing?), offers a simple exercise that we can all try when we get stressed. It worked for me.

"Think about a stressful situation you're facing at the moment -- something small or something epic. Close your eyes and scan your body, noticing where you feel tension when you think about this tough situation. It might take a minute to find the right spot. (Good places to check: jaw, shoulders, belly, chest, throat.)

Rest your hand on the tense spot and take a deep but comfortable inhale, imagining the breath flowing into and around the spot. Exhale naturally, all the way out. Repeat a few times, letting your breath take you right into the center of the tension; your hand will help remind you to direct the breath. 

If you've noticed tension in more than one spot, move your hand -- and your breath -- to another spot and repeat. Then relax, eyes closed, hands in your lap, and feel the new softness of those spots. 

You can do this exercise anytime, anywhere, even with your eyes open -- and even if you're not sure what the source of your tension is. Breathing into tightness and softening creates a gentle space for tensions to relax."

Travel Temptations

We are at this moment sitting in the airport of Quebec City waiting for our flight home. Seems like a good time for a short post.

Twelve days in Nova Scotia,  Prince Edward Island and Quebec. Ten days on a small cruise ship. It's hard not to notice that most people on vacation do things we might not do otherwise. We eat more, including desserts -- myself included. We might dress differently -- I bought a pair of flannel trousers (pyjama pants?) in the plaid of the Nova Scotia tartan and wore them proudly. And many travelers drink a great deal of alcohol at all times of the day.

Bloody Marys and Mimosas in the morning, beer and wine with lunch, several "whatevers" during cocktail hour, wine with dinner,  and a nightcap before retiring. I noticed one couple who always -- always -- had drinks in their hands. After a couple of days I grew irritated every time I heard the announcement "The bar is (still) open." Then I just let it go...

I'm grateful that there were plenty of things to drink that aren't alcoholic. I'm grateful that the bartender quickly learned and remembered my preferances. And I'm grateful for the evening that I chatted with the two members of the band and discovered that they, too, are members of the same 12-step program.

It was a lovely vacation, I never had to nurse a hangover, and I remember it all.

Imprisoned

During this morning's 12-Step meeting we read a story in the magazine called "Grapevine" written by a young woman whose childhood was so filled with violence and turmoil that she was certain she would end up in the women's prison that was near her home. Instead, having participated in a residential rehabilitation program and entered a 12-Step program, she found herself bringing 12-Step meetings to the women who were incarcerated in that prison.

After we read the story, we shared our thoughts about what it meant to be imprisoned. A few members of the group had spent a night in jail on one or more occasions -- usually arrested for "driving under the influence" and in one instance for public drunkenness. One member had served time in prison. These people, now sober, smiling and with cups of coffee in their hands, aren't any different from you me. In fact there, but for the grace of God, go I. There was at least one occasion when my Mini-Cooper must have driven itself to the coffee shop where I was meeting someone for lunch -- and parked itself as well -- because I don't even remember getting behind the wheel.

Mostly we talked about other kinds of imprisonment -- the kinds that are of our own making. Naturally, we talked about being imprisoned by alcohol or drugs, and after the meeting one man made a humorous comment about wanting to be set free, but "not being able to walk past the bars." We talked about the prisons of fear, of self-pity and of self-image. It's almost impossible to be spontaneous, or to be "happy, joyous and free," if you're locked into a certain view of the world, or of yourself. I thought of many other ways we can be imprisoned. The prisons of depression or anxiety can keep us from enjoying even life's simple daily gifts. The prison of isolation keeps us from seeking out, and gaining consolation and strength from, contact with other human beings. The prisons of too much dependence -- or too much independence -- forces us out of the natural balance between trusting others and relying upon our own skills. The prison of lethargy or laziness -- due to whatever cause -- prevents us from the joy of accomplishment.

In recent weeks I have felt imprisoned -- by pain and by fear. One morning I woke up and something was wrong with my left hip. The range of motion of my right side was seriously limited, I couldn't stand up or lie down fully straightened, and I couldn't walk without limping. The pain was severe when I moved, and still there -- constant and relentless -- even when I didn't. I could only fall sleep in the fetal position, lying on my opposite side, and if I moved in my sleep I immediately woke up.

After manipulating my leg in a series of excruciating movements, the doctor said, "Yes, it's a hip problem," gave me a prescription for pain medicine and sent me for an x-ray. The x-ray showed nothing unusual, so he sent me for an MRI. In the meantime my natural tendency towards anxiety about any health issue kicked in. (The psychological term for this is "catastrophizing.") I was afraid this would be permanent. I would never be able to ride my bicycle or work in the garden ever again! I would become a "couch potato" and gain weight!! I would become a tiresome invalid who would bore my poor husband with my inactivity and complaints..... In addition to all of this self-pity, I resented and feared each pain pill that I took. I would have to take them for the rest of my life. I would become addicted to them! I would have to take more and more of them!! Then they wouldn't help any more and I would have to suffer through agonizing withdrawal..... Despite my prayers for patience and friends' advice that "this too shall pass," I was (borrowing a phrase from current slang) a "hot mess." I was well and truly imprisoned, even more by my thoughts than by my physical state.

The end of the story was predictable. I want back to see the doctor. The MRI showed degenerated cartilage, inflammation, and fluid accumulation around the hip joint. The osteoarthritis that I inherited from my mother was up to its usual nasty tricks. The doctor withdrew about 1/2 cup of fluid from around the joint, and pumped in three shots of cortisone. Removal of the fluid, and the pressure that it put on the nerve, resulted in some immediate relief. The cortisone will do its work in 3-5 days. I'll be able to stop taking the pain medicine. We don't know what caused this to flare up, and it may happen again someday, but for now my mind is at peace. I take a deep breath and say a prayer of gratitude. The door of my prison has been opened, and I'm free!