The BananaBlueberry Bits Book – Chapter 7 – Just Hold Your Breath If You Need To
Second guessing ourselves is like digging to Beijing with a spoon.
There is no point to it and it gets us nowhere fast.
I do not consider myself an expert on many things, but on second guessing myself, I had no equal.
Take this advice from someone who knows then, don’t do it.
Don’t second guess yourself, don’t ‘what if’.
Just do it and go on.
I was speaking to a pilot once, not about flying, but landing.
We were on a flight from Chicago to Louisville, Kentucky. He was hitching a ride home on the plane, which is a perk of pilots. He came on the plane and sat next to me. Neither of us had a magazine to read on the quick flight, so we started talking.
He told me that he used to fly jets in the military. He got his training at Marimar,
you know, of Top Gun fame.
The guy was obviously an experienced, more than competent pilot,
I mean, come on, we’ve all seen Top Gun!
After his training, for a long while, he was stationed on an aircraft carrier.
He described to me how empowering it was to fly jets over the ocean, above the clouds.
I was thinking how self-confident he must be, with nerves of steel. And then he let me in on a little pilot secret, I’ll never forget.
“You know, with as many times as I’ve landed on a carrier, I’ve never gotten used to it. Nobody does.
You hold your breath every time.”
His words reverberated in my head.
“You hold your breath every time.”
Each time there is that moment of truth.
He described to me how each wing of the jet had to land at exactly the right spot to catch the guide wires on either side. If you missed them, even by inches, they wouldn’t hook onto your wings and you’d careen off the ship. If you missed even one, you’d veer to one side, probably lurching into the rest of the jets parked on the top of the carrier and damage them.
I don’t think anyone’s idea of a good day is having a fender bender with a $6 million jet, I’m just saying…
That conversation gave me solace, in a roundabout way.
If a fighter pilot has a moment of doubt, doing something he has been trained by the best to do,
it was okay that I did.
That discussion also reminded me that even when we do have a moment’s hesitation, we shouldn’t second guess ourselves.
It’s just like that pilot told me, he always held his breath, but he still did it.
And he assured me, he had never crashed a plane.
… It all works out in the end.
Life changes and curves and shifts, but the kinks all get smoothed out.
Stressing about something just wastes time.
We must believe in ourselves,
because no one knows better than us, how to be us.
After all, who has had more experience being you than you have?
Don’t worry. Don’t second guess yourself.
I’ve done it; I’ve seen other people do it.
Don’t you do it.
Trust yourself.
Go with your gut.
Hey, and trust me,
there’s not a person who can honestly say they’ve never second guessed themselves,
so nobody can torment you for doing it every once in a while.
Just hold your breath for a second if you need to…
Copyright © Nicole Weber Crowley 2010
*Click On The BananaBlueberry Bits Book in my Navigation Bar Above,
to read previous chapters and the Introduction*
The BananaBlueberry Bits Book- Chapter 6- Two Angels
You never know when you are going to change a life,
so be ready.
My High School religion teacher followed my recovery from the accident, lots of people did…
She asked me to talk to her religion class…
I went into her classroom ready to inspire her students. I wanted to encourage them with the motto,
“If I can do it, you can do it!”
I kept alluding to that in my speech. I talked to these young women for an entire class period. All the while, scanning their faces for recognition, understanding, empathy,
anything.
I kept noticing a student sitting in the very back of the room. She wore a hard look on her face and folded her arms across her chest. I thought a number of times during my talk,
“I’m not getting through to them. I’m just not getting through.”
I continued my discourse varying my tone and pausing here and there to make my point, but to no avail. I saw no light bulbs go off, no nodding of heads.
I closed my speech with my motto, “If I can do it, you can do it.” The bell rang and the young women of Holy Cross Academy jumped up from their seats.
So much for making a difference, nice try. These teenagers cared more about who they were taking to prom, I was sure.
I felt silly. Here I was, trying to inspire. Who did I think I was, Mother Teresa?
They filed toward the door, thanking me with polite smiles as they walked by the podium. I thought how they must be glad I came, they didn’t have to take notes today or even pay attention, for that matter. They weren’t getting tested on this.
As I was thinking that very thought, the young African-American woman who had that stern look on her face, worked her way up to the podium. Then we stood face to face.
There were tears in her eyes.
I was shocked.
And then she spoke to me,
“God sent you here today for me.
Thank you. That’s exactly what I needed to hear with what I’m going through now.”
It seemed she didn’t want to divulge any more information. But she was thankful for my talk.
Then she gave me a huge hug. It lasted several seconds, but still not as long as I had hoped. Next she pulled back and smiled at me.
Still with tears in her eyes, she turned and walked away.
I heard the words again in my head,
“God sent you here today for me.” My face was coated with smile.
And then it dawned on me and I whispered as if to her,
“And God sent you here today for me.”
Suddenly, it had all been worth it- my accident, my struggle.
By helping just one person, I’d changed the world.
I was her angel, and she was mine that day.
Copyright © Nicole Weber Crowley 2010
*Click On The BananaBlueberry Bits Book in my Navigation Bar Above,
to read previous chapters and the Introduction*
Quotable Friday
“Spread Tidings
Of Great Joy,
Wherever You Go!”
The BananaBlueberry Bits Book- Chapter 5 – Walking On Water
It was the spring of 1990. Crocuses were emerging. Young birds were embarking. And I was exiting the hospital. I would continue healing at home.
My excitement to return to Miami University in beautiful Oxford, Ohio was enormous and I prepared for that return to my sophomore year by taking a summer class at the University of Maryland. A classmate volunteered to give me a copy of daily notes and I got unlimited time for test taking. These accommodations were due to fine motor skill damage in my right hand. I couldn’t write quickly, as was necessary when keeping up with a professor’s lecture or taking a timed essay test. I continued to get this assistance for the rest of my college life.
I was tutored at George Washington University that summer. Reading skills were sharpened. Drills were done. Writing exercises were practiced.
All this to get ready for Miami. So, without any anxiety (I guess I really hadn’t fully healed) and enormous jubilation, I moved into a house off campus with eight other young women. Looking back, I can’t believe I lived in that place, especially right after being released from the hospital. Four of us shared the basement and everyone had to duck down there because the doorway was so low, everyone but me. I am really petite. Okay, I’m short.
We had bats. It was an old house. Five women were on the second floor. Every piece of furniture looked like it was from a bad Brady Bunch episode. All of our mismatched pieces were snagged right before our various parents gave them away to charity. One couch that we had on the front porch was snapped up by one of my housemates when kids in an apartment across the street were putting it out in a dumpster.
But we all loved our house on Spring Street, even the carpeted first floor bathroom that developed a smell like chicken gone bad every few weeks. I learned that no one should ever carpet a bathroom. Especially when it has a shower and no bathtub, so every time one of us took a shower, the water leaked out on the carpet. Along with the occasional smell, the carpet would change colors around the shower stall. It went from it’s original, very stylish hue of burnt orange, the shade that oak leaves turn right before they are about to fall off the tree, to looking like the oak leaves had landed on the brown, muddy ground with sprigs of green grass cradling them. These outcrops of green and brown mold didn’t bother us much; a few squirts of cleaner got rid of them. And besides, it was a small price to pay for a house in such a key location, just a couple houses down from Campus Avenue, close to classes and one of the fraternity rows.
Afterward, I found out my parents were extremely worried, but they knew that my five-foot frame was stubborn enough to return to school that fall. They also knew, even though the doctors were against my return so soon, that I needed the challenge and stimulation to keep getting better. Going back to school was my dream. I wouldn’t accept anything less. I couldn’t. If I didn’t go back to college, I would be telling the world that I was different and even worse, that I was unqualified, incompetent, incapable, helpless and powerless.
My first semester back proceeded fairly well. Classes, fashion concerns and fraternity parties occupied my time, instead of physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and recreational therapy. I thought I would welcome this severe change in lifestyle with open arms. But adjusting from:
“Will I walk again?”
to,
“Will I get an A or B on this quiz?” took a bit more time than the few days I had foolishly allotted for the transition. My perspective was almost too good. I looked at everything in terms of the big picture.
“I’m alive. I can walk. I can talk. I’m already further and farther than expected. The National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, DC is behind me now. Look! I did it world!”
Campus glimmered to me. The trees seemed greener than before. I smelled grass and noticed each bird’s unique song. The imperfect perfection of rocks even leapt out at me. I could anticipate and appreciate for the first time that nature was about to evolve into an autumn dance of color.
I walked around campus slowly, drinking in the early fall air, never having felt this sense of freedom and independence before. I guided my body where my mind wanted to go. I noticed the stark contrast of the wide-open courtyard I was walking in to the tiny hospital room I had lain in. I wondered for an instant if an orderly in hospital scrubs would appear with a wheelchair and insist it had been a mistake that I had been let out of the locked brain-injury unit of NRH. I thought back to my battles of swallowing, urinating and moving. College students walking by started to resemble aliens, I felt so different from them.
As I walked by King Library, snippets of conversations dropped along the sidewalk. They created a hodgepodge of college life.
“What did you do this summer” was a frequent question I overheard. Answers to the inquiry ranged from internships to trips to beach bumming to babysitting. But no reply was uncomfortable or traumatic. Relaxation and summer went hand in hand. No deviation was expected, or even permitted.
“Nicole, what did you do?” I couldn’t say,
“Well I learned how to speak again and walk again. The best was when I went to the bathroom by myself, instead of being catheterized, that’s when my social life really picked up.” People get very uncomfortable when you bring up your brain injuries; paralysis and bladder control are not everyday conversation.
I realized I had a problem. Uncharacteristically, I also acknowledged I needed help in bridging these two worlds, my painful one and the one I wasn’t completely ready for. I contacted a recommended psychologist. I needed answers. Answers to questions like,
“I want to live my life to the fullest again. But how can I forget everything that just happened?” I felt like my body lapped my psyche in the healing department. I looked relatively fine. So I didn’t talk about the trauma, out of guilt. Everyone would say, “Well, just look at you now!”
I knew I was lucky and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. So I just didn’t talk about it. I just kept my mouth shut and bit my tongue. But how could I try to forget when I had daily reminders, changes I had to make in my routine, notetakers in my classes? Nobody knew that I had a screaming voice inside me. As I went about my day this voice sounded like an abandoned, malnourished baby crying for its mother. It was the kind of screaming noise that throws you at breakneck speed toward your breaking point. It was annoying and never-ending and had a shrill tone to it that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Every moment I dealt with the separate voice that came from some part of me which was not healed. I wish I knew where it was coming from. I made the first available appointment with the psychologist.
His office was bland, decorated with shades of crème. The rooms were full of beige furniture and light brown wood. It was on the outskirts of town, around Walnut and Beech streets. I still got tired walking, so when I arrived at his doorstep, several blocks away from our house, it seemed like I had just walked a marathon.
The whole setup was stereotypical. He was soft-spoken, so as not to excite his patients. He treated me like I was fragile. Little did he know, I wanted him to shake me, tell me in a loud voice what I should do and then collapse back in his chair and rub his face with his hands, admitting that I’d been through a lot.
The doctor listened to me intently, I thought. Nodding his head and squinting his eyes as I talked. He would delicately cross and uncross his legs. Four sessions of, “How do you feel about that Nicole?” To which I wanted to reply but didn’t,
“I want answers, not more questions. Give me some advice. You are supposed to be the expert. Don’t think I haven’t examined my soul. I have. I got to know myself pretty damn well lying paralyzed in a hospital bed at the age of 19.”
I’ve listened to young people who are disillusioned talk about traveling across the country to find themselves. People climb Mount Everest or swim the Chesapeake Bay to find out what they are made of. One thing I know for sure: as I chugged pints of juice to jumpstart my bladder, when my mother cried joyfully at my first successful bathroom trip, I understood exactly what made up my fiber. I jubilantly remember doctors granting me permission to go down to the hospital cafeteria instead of getting my food on an insipid brown tray in my room.
Back at school, my view of life and my own shortcomings was clearing. It was like the early morning fog covering a plush jungle was evaporating; I could see everything now, including the dangers that could be lurking behind every vine. The fog couldn’t protect me anymore from my phony reality. I realized that I had gotten excited about merely getting to go downstairs in the hospital to eat a meal with real utensils.
I began to chuckle despondently as I thought of those young people who planned trips to find themselves and discover life. I wished for my life to be so free and simple again that I would have to try to know myself, instead of my existence staring me in the face.
I did not find myself on a fun cross-county trip. I found myself in a bed. I found my inner fiber lying in the most ordinary of beds. Most everyone gets into a bed every night. Just about everybody lies in a bed whether it be made of antique silver or spare boards and chicken wire. Yet a bed is where I experienced the biggest high and low of my life. What made my hospital bed so unique was that it was not a comfort to me, somewhere to rest my head, but a place to exist until a person who was paid to care for me could help me move.
I was paralyzed. I would think so hard about moving my leg or arm. I would will it with all of my mind and heart. But that wasn’t enough. I still lay still. In the next instant my mind would race away.
I would close my eyes for sleep before I was tired so that I could daydream.
I’d imagine myself a princess looking over my court and kingdom. I’d imagine myself a jet-setting heiress. I imagined looking down to my neck and wrists and fingers and seeing beautiful jewels adorning them. And I’ve never even been into jewelry.
I imagined myself in every fairy tale I could remember from childhood.
Then gradually my daydreams went to yearnings of just being able to move.
I started to daydream about merely being happy.
I mean, I was happy.
I was happy when I didn’t think about things too much.
I daydreamed about walking down the street by myself to buy groceries so I could make my own dinner without anyone checking on me to make sure I hadn’t burnt myself.
I daydreamed of sitting around a kitchen table with my girlfriends and gossiping about everyone’s current guy situation.
I remembered things like listening to the radio while I drove to school.
I thought back to doing my own laundry in the Morris Hall laundry room and how I secretly thought doing my laundry in coin-operated machines was cool, such a college-kid thing.
I daydreamed about anything outside my room.
My mind flew around a lot in those days. It didn’t always make sense. But I was always completely aware of that bed.
I’ve heard poets refer to death’s face as heinous. Try gazing at mere survival. His complexion is pallid. Survival’s mouth is capable of only producing a low moan. His eyes droop under the weight of disappointment. All the millions of choices life is made of, none of which were even entertained as an option, keep piling up on top of Survival’s brow; and his horrid wrinkles, more accurately, ravines above those deep-set eyes, these ravines have been carved by unfulfilled dreams. The same dreams that keep achievers’ hopes alive keep gouging and eroding Survival’s forehead like a cancer that goes undetected.
On the other hand,
the high I came to in that bed was monumental. I started to think I was invincible, for I had been crushed like a bug on a windshield and still I was here. I started to gather the strength I discovered inside me. I never knew I had it, but there it was, in an enormous dusty cedar chest down in my gut. I had never needed it before, but the weight of my injuries acted as a lever that pried it open. All I did was tilt my brain. I just slightly moved my thinking. And I saw it. And I knew when that cedar box let out its strength and let it course through my arteries that the strength was mine. It felt familiar, as well as new, like a present that you knew you were just meant to have.
I was still breathing, so I was coming back. I had to; I didn’t even have a choice in the matter, that’s how certain I was. If I could survive this anguish, finishing college would be a snap; the rest of my life was a chocolate dessert with whip cream and piecrust, sprinkled with almonds.
I would laugh if someone ever insulted me, how ordinary, how very matter-of-fact. How comical everyday problems were. They were no more than pinches. I had endured punches instead of little inconsequential pinches, punches with the full weight of a huge boxer behind them; yet there was nobody there, nobody to blame for my pain. It was just I.
… How could this psychologist be so calm about this?
I felt he had no concept of anything I was talking about. It would have made just as much sense for me to be pouring out my feelings and concerns to the nearest wall.
So,
I politely excused myself at the end of our fourth visit and walked out the door for the last time…
My gait was determined. I did not hesitate on my path. I walked directly to St. Mary’s on High Street, although I wasn’t sure what I would do when I got there.
As I marched along I thought about my spirituality. I felt a pang of guilt, for I was doing what so many do, I was calling on God as a last resort. I passed The U-Shop and looked over at the Water Tower, the trademark of Oxford, Ohio. It reminded me of a scene from Petticoat Junction. It had been there forever. So many students had looked at it before. I was just another undergraduate trying to work on what was fueling me, yet how many others found themselves trying to adjust from being in the locked brain-injury unit of a hospital to a college campus? What kind of college student was I?
What type of Catholic was I? I should have gone to God in the first place.
But God is busy, I thought, He helps those who help themselves. No, come on, I was trying to make myself feel better. I never stopped in the church before when walking by, just to let God know I appreciate everything. I wasn’t good enough. I felt I wasn’t devout enough in my actions, in my feelings maybe, but not in my actions. Actions speak louder than words, right?
But where else did I have to go?
There it was now, in front of me. I tapped on the rectory door. A pleasant looking priest answered my knocking.
“I need to talk to a priest, Father.”
We sat down on a picnic table in the church courtyard and I explained my history. I told him everything: the accident, my physical recovery, my mental recovery and my emotional recovery, which was not yet complete. I expressed my struggle reconciling my two worlds.
He listened.
I told him how hard it was to go back to everyday life, to go back to a place where the consequences were insignificant. Hearing someone whining about a cold was laborious, when a few months before, I couldn’t move half of my body.
I had to move on. But so many little things were different about me. I couldn’t see myself acting like nothing happened. I couldn’t see myself becoming a street corner preacher either, especially on my college campus.
I had worked hard to get back those normal, everyday annoyances. How could I get along in the everyday world? At quick glance I looked fine, but I wasn’t inside.
I talked and talked and talked. He kept listening. After a long time I became silent and just looked at the priest for something.
He gazed back at me not saying a word. He kept peering. Then he looked away.
“Do you see that water?” It had rained the night before and there were puddles scattered about. He was pointing to one in particular.
“Yes.” I answered.
“Can you walk on it?”
“Sure, I can step over it. I can get past it, through it.”
“No. Can you walk on that water?”
A grin broke across my face,
“No, I can’t.”
He sat there, so calm, with just a hint of a smile,
“You don’t have to. You’re doing fine. Don’t worry about walking on water.”
Common sense can be the greatest wisdom.
Copyright © Nicole Weber Crowley 2010
*Click On The BananaBlueberry Bits Book in my Navigation Bar Above,
to read previous chapters and the Introduction*
Quotable Friday
“Once you make a decision,
the universe conspires
to make it happen.”
The BananaBlueberry Bits Book – Chapter 4 – Learning To Walk… Babies Are Cool
Babies are Cool.
Eventually, learning to walk became my world. Feeling gradually came back. But, my muscles had no memory of what to do, how to walk. So every movement, muscle tensing, releasing, re-positioning had to be taught to me, learned by my muscles once again. It was scary in a mortal sort-of-way.
I hate to admit to this now, but my wheelchair was a comfort to me. It was stable. I could depend on it. I could rely on it rather than my own legs. It made my out-of-control life seem controllable because it made my world smaller.
I’ve never told anyone this, but when I started walking, I missed the chair a little.
My chair had been safe. And now, it was so difficult to physically stand on my own.
I thought how everyone gave me space with my chair and lauded me for being so brave.
Meanwhile, when I walked I just looked like a drunk.
I could not believe, while instruction was given to me on which muscle to clench at every moment, that babies were learning to walk every minute, every moment.
I was told every muscle to move, to tense, to release. I remember how difficult it was to think about so many different minute movements at the same time. Interestingly enough, the leg that was moving wasn’t the one I had to worry about. It was the other leg. That was the hard one to master. The one that isn’t moving keeps us balanced and upright while at the same time, anticipates redistributing weight onto our other foot.
Babies do not get detailed coaching.
Their legs just know what to do.
People search long and hard for miracles and signs.
What about a baby learning to walk?
That should be impossible and yet it happens, every moment.
Every moment,
somewhere on this planet,
a baby is learning to walk,
all by themselves,
for the very first time.
It’s Miraculous.
Walking is hard. Seriously, walking is really tough.
For a time, I couldn’t imagine walking without concentrating on my every step. I consciously tried to remember walking unconsciously, and couldn’t. An automatic response would not be mine. Instinct was an unknown term.
Realize the miracle of walking and looking around.
Doing more than one thing at a time was so hard for me. I relearned to walk and thought I was home free. Then my physical therapist added moving my head to the equation and there was another mountain that had sprung up from nowhere.
I hadn’t even thought of walking and not looking straight ahead. I couldn’t fathom looking in any other direction.
How could I walk if I didn’t look where I was going?
I could trip. I might lose my balance.
I may run into something, like a wall.
But I did learn how to walk again, and talk, and look around
all at the same time.
And it was harder than you might think.
And babies do this at every moment.
Babies Are Cool.
Copyright © Nicole Weber Crowley 2010
*Click On The BananaBlueberry Bits Book in my Navigation Bar Above,
to read previous chapters and the Introduction*
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