When Life Knocks You Flat, Kick Back !

“Fall seven times and stand up eight.” I live by the Japanese Proverb. I have hit the deck more than once – undercut on a rebound, flipped off a bike, smashed in a car accident. I have fought back from broken bones, shattered dreams, dashed hopes. I cried an ocean of tears over lost abilities. I have tried one remedy after another to combat chronic illness. Pain is my sidekick. Do I ever want to give up? Yep. Everyday.

What keeps me going?[cincopa AkNARcKJDACp]

People. First off, my forefathers, from my grandfather who left the fjords, learned a new language, new trade and made a new life in the Windy City never returning to his beloved Norway. To my Scottish-American paternal grandpa who still coached college football in his 90s. To my dad, who within the span of four months endured 3 surgeries, 2 heart interventions and one hip reconstruction, without losing his sense of humor, concern for others, or fighting spirit. And especially to my mom who unwraps each day as a precious gift.

To my friends from third grade, to highschool, to college and beyond, scattered across continents and countries, including cyberspace buddies – readers, writers, bloggers – some who I’ve never met, but whose words keep me chuckling and chugging forward.

To my family, from my old sibs who understand my past to young nieces, nephews, son and daughter who connect me to the future by teaching me to text message, Twitter and Facebook.

To my hubby who has endured thirty some years of my lolly gagging, bellyaching, foot stomping, tongue lashing, story telling.

To the teammates and athletes I played beside or coached during four decades court-side. To my students, who zap energy but bring laughs with their antics. “But Mrs. M, I didn’t copy a word. I used Wikipedia.”

If you look behind my dark glasses, other than tired eyes and worry lines, you would never know what my body has endured. After three years on antibiotics living in darkness, doctors insist that I stop the meds and see if the treatment works. I feel worse than when I started. Reeling from the cost in time, money and energy, I am filled with discouragement. It’s definitely another knock down day. I want to pull the comforter over my head and check out of January. Cold days. Long nights. Holidays over and done. No hope to run, no sign of sun. No fun. Bottom line. I am still here kicking, with the ol’ ticker ticking.[cincopa AoIADfqVDEzo]

Every time I am knocked to my knees AGAIN. I pray for Strength. Courage. Faith. Hope. Then I whisper worries to the wind and shout thanks to skies. I know without doubt,

“My peeps, got my back!”

Bring it on, LIFE!

Fall down nine, stand up ten!

Want to listen to the song ? Click on the following link: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

A New Year Older, Oh La La…

OMG oh my God… a New Year means I am a year older. How did this happen ? When I look in the mirror, I am shocked by the reflection of the stranger in the glass. My nose enlarged, my chin recedes and my lips, barely visible, regress. The corners of my mouth turn down. What is that goofy mask I am wearing ? My jowls sag, my chin doubles, my eyes bag, my hair greys, my skin wrinkles. Now I understand why women undergo the knife. Forget simple face lift, I need an entire body boost. But once one starts nipping and tucking there is no end. Face peels, botox injections, cosmetic surgeries.

I am lucky that due to my medical treatment, I have a great camouflage for aging. I have to wear big bulky dark glasses that a student once told me, « Looks like a dead animal covering your face ! »

My shades conveniently hide any imperfections. Also since I see everything in dimmer mode, I assume people have trouble seeing me too. But take off the dark glasses and look out. My face has been ravaged by time….too many summer days under blazing suns life-guarding, too many hours teaching sports outdoors, too many year ignoring the natural elements and swearing off synthetic beauty products. Mary Kay be damned.

Cheer up. With age comes wisdom. Smile. Are you kidding me ? I love The Color Purple, but not for teeth. I look like I have mouth filled with blueberries. Antioxidants and antibiotics do a number on the canines.

Teeth whiteners, brighteners lighteners. Creams to regenerate, rejuvenate, to blend crows-feet, cover age spots. Make ups to hide, tint, color, and resurface the skin. Consumers spend a small fortune pursing the foundation of youth in a bottle. Cover the mirrors, succumb to the battle, embrace growing old gracefully. And take it from me, never, ever leave the house without the dark shades.

Like a lot of women, feeling slouchier, slumpier and frumpier in the new year, I rushed to the nearest department store for a little inexpensive pick me up for returning to teaching. I tried on a pair of fitted, navy blue sweats in front of the mirror in the hallway of the dressing room, glaring at my reflection when I heard a voice behind me.

« Wow, you look great – slender and long legged. That’s the build designers had in mind, when they invented that style , » the clerk said… Check out your backside !

Now I have the perfect solution to ace the aging game, forget the face off, present the backside first.

11 Things to Focus on in 2011 for a New Year Filled With Contentment

1. Health- though it may seem self centered to focus on you first, especially to super moms, before we can save the world, we need to take care of our own ticker.

2. Family – appreciate your partners and kin at all stages and ages, from toddlers to teens to great grans, from siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, and families in all combinations, adopted, step, mixed, multi cultural, for the in-laws, and out-laws, who are with you for the long haul

3. Friends – random strangers whose lives magically intersect on crossroads of your journey and carve a niche in your heart

4. Freedom – to travel beyond one’s own backyard, to think, say and do whatever floats one’s boat

5. Faith – belief in one’s God, Great Spirit, higher power, or whatever it is that helps you endure tough times and trust better days lie ahead when all hope is lost

6. Dreams – whether it’s a new career, a trip abroad, a long awaited milestone, a joyous celebration, attainment of personal goal

7. Seasons – how can one truly appreciate the new birth of spring and splendor of summer without knowing the bleak, cold, dark days of late fall and winter

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8. Art –a beautiful melody, a powerful painting, a great game, a good read, simple pleasures in music, sports, and literature that sustain our soul

9. Purpose – work pays the rent, puts food on the table, makes ends meet, but purpose is a higher calling. It’s what we do without monetary remuneration or social recognition to make this world a better place whether it is bagging groceries at the food pantry, writing blogs, mentoring colleagues, coaching kids, consoling friends

10. Communication – from hugs to handshakes, letters to emails, postcards to phone calls, words, printed or pronounced, whatever ways we step outside ourselves to stay connected

11. Solitude – not loneliness, we all have days where we feel isolated, alone, misunderstood, but for those moments when separate self from the rat race and reflect on our inner lives. For in spite of all the people, places and experiences we encounter in a lifetime, we enter and exist earth alone. We must learn to like ourselves – sags, bags, wrinkles and all – before we can reach out to the human race.

Staying Connected at Christmas Always Worth the Trip

My sibling and I live 5,000 miles apart, away from our childhood home, yet in spite of the distance we remain close. It helped that we were a family born on wheels. In the sixties, at time when most people wouldn’t take four kids five years apart any further than the corner grocery store, my grandparents and parents loaded the station wagon with, nine bags, eight bodies and one big red ice chest and hit the road. Like the Beverly Hillbillies, we cruised the blue highways from sea to shining seas in our beat up old Rambler.

We grew up believing life was an endless road trip. Consequently we continue to spend an inordinate amount of time in our adult lives riding the rail, flying the sky, and pounding the pavement to remain connected.

Just last week over a span of 24 hours, my youngest sister, Karen, drove to my son’s college game in Minnesota, one evening, and dropped our daughter, Nathalie, off at the Minneapolis airport at 6 am the next morning. Then she drove 7 hours to Sterling to support my mom and middle sister, Sue, as my dad recovered from delicate hip reconstruction surgery in Sterling Rock Falls Hospital. Meanwhile my older brother, Doug, and sister in law, Julianne, picked up Nat at the airport in Cleveland and chauffeured her to her residency interview at Rainbow Baby and Children’s Hospital.

In the meantime, Rush Memorial called her for an interview, so my brother-in-law, Cliff in the Chicago suburbs, helped change her ticket and arranged her pick her up 0’Hare Airport. He will drive her to her appointment at Rush; she’ll take the train from there back to the airport to fly to Utah for another interview.

On December 17th, Gerald and I were supposed to fly from Geneva via Amsterdam to Minneapolis. Our son will pick us up in the car he borrows regularly from my brother-in-law Dick. Then after Nathalie arrives from Utah, we will drive back down to Sterling, via our cabin at Summit Lake, to celebrate my dad’s successful surgery.

“And that my dear,” Aunt Mary used to say, “is love in action.”

One wonders what do people do without family?

Every winter, the McKinzie clan will log miles in the air and on land, braving blizzards, airline strikes and flight delays because Christmas happens whenever, wherever and however we can get together.

Be sure to rejoice in the gift of family especially this holiday season. Safe travels to you wherever you gather. May your wheels keep spinning for another year.

Living in Darkness Without Losing Hope

On, December 21st, the earth tilts farthest from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere. Ah, the gloomy gray Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. No one knows as much about enduring dark days as my Norwegian relatives living on fjords by Narvik, near the North Pole. I, too, have learned how to live with limited light. For the past three years I have lived in darkness as I endure a medical treatment for a multi system, auto immune, inflammatory disease in which my body produces too much Vitamin D. I live in a house with lights off, my skin covered head to toe and hide behind thick black glasses. I lurk in the shadows, coming out at night like Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird.

In one of my greatest moments of despair, I came to terms with the idea that we are all dying. Get over it, girl. As soon as we are born, our cells begin to decay. When I lament that I cannot ski the Alps, run marathons, travel the world as I so hoped after I “retired” from basketball, I focus on what I can do. I can write letters, give pep talks, edit English papers, encourage students, and offer support to family, friends and newcomers to Switzerland.

Right now as I write this, I am flat on my back, listening to my iPod, and typing on a laptop while resting the spine. This is not the life I envisioned. Oh no, I was going to conquer the world straight up. Even though I am often limited to my four dark walls, in a house shuttered closed like Fort Knox, I am amazed at how far the mind can wander. I can brush up on my German or French, strum my guitar, watch Macbeth, (ugh) take an on-line course, and write a blog.

Like a rapper without the bling, I walk to school in my hoody, shades and tennis shoes. Sometimes I lose my footing. But if Stevie Wonder could compose, “ You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and insisted “Don’t You Worry ‘bout a Thing,” in total darkness, I can make it through another day teaching with the lights turned low.

Everyday I gaze at the painting my dad made me of a lighthouse signaling safety from the stormy black sea. I focus on the pale reflection and pray for those struggling in the darkness; for my colleague suffering from depression, for my dad regaining use of his leg, for my buddy recovering from foot surgery, for a friend battling cancer, for all those people who are facing the loss of a limb, a life dream, a loved one, in moments of doubt and darkness.

Even though the blackness of longest night of the year seems interminable, I still have sunshine in my soul. And miraculously, the more I spread my light to others, the greater the hope, glows within me.

Walk away worries !

When I was growing up, I abhorred walking. Walking was too slow, too boring, for old people. I would bike, run, skate, even parade around the block on stilts to reach my destination. After a car accident ended my athletic career, I aged overnight. Forced to give up the pavement pounding I once loved, I concentrated on being able to put one foot in front of another and walk again.

In the beginning, I still hated walking, too slow, too boring, for old people. But now that I am old people, I have learned to appreciate it. Europeans helped me acquire a taste for walking. My German friends insisted on “spazieren gehen” through the woods surrounding Marburg. In Paris, like the French, I escaped my tiny apartment by heading outdoors, rain or shine, to a “promenade” in the park. In Switzerland, walking is as natural as breathing, especially in this nation of hikers, where every mile is beautiful.

In our techno, fast-paced, modern world, walking has become a lost art. Yet walking, which combines fitness, relaxation and meditation, is the safest sport. It costs nothing, wastes no energy, burns calories, builds muscle, fights fatigue. When I feel anxious, angry or depressed, I walk until worries slide off my shoulders.

I step outside my door into orchards and vineyards on the fertile slopes above Lake Geneva. While the sun slinks behind the Jura Mountains over my right shoulder, light shimmers around the white-peaked Mt Blanc to my left. The fields flame in amber, gold, rust of autumn marking the harvest in earth’s last hurrah before lying fallow for winter.

Walking forces us to slow down long enough from our hectic lives to appreciate the beauty of the moment, to take stock and count our blessings. Even though I live thousands miles from loved ones, I picture them walking in their daily lives. My sister paces around Yorkville’s newest subdivision at dawn, my daughter strides the halls of Minneapolis hospitals during morning rounds, my parents meander around Northland Hills mid day, my son dashes through Macalester quad to ball practice early afternoon, my niece marches in the band across Shaker Heights football field after school, my sister and brother-in-law stroll oak-lined streets of Golden Valley hand in hand at dusk.

Somehow when I walk, I am closer to family, matching each footfall step by step round the clock. Every hour of the day someone I love, somewhere, is walking to work, school, or practice.

I once dreamed of running marathons and skiing mountains, alas injury and illness prevented those goals. Though each year it is harder to roll out of bed, instead of lamenting what I can’t do, I focus on what I can do – walk. No matter how badly the rest of the day has gone, I am filled with wonder and wellbeing. Suddenly all is right with world.