You could say I’m superstitious. I’ve been known to never wear an outfit again because I had a bad day in it. I don’t walk under ladders and I’m not a fan of black cats crossing my path. I never tell people when I send a short story out for publication because I don’t want to jinx it; I used to only mail the stories from the Newport, KY Post Office but then literary journals started doing online submissions and threw that all out of whack. As did the move to Akron.
In my family, we leave through the same door we came in. I’ve also been known to knock wood and throw salt over my left shoulder if I spill any on the counter. If you don’t know about the salt thing, we superstitious people have heard that the devil sits over your left shoulder and your guardian angel on your right. When evil is lurking about (apparently evil only lurks in kitchens where salt is typically found , no wonder I’ve never been a good cook) your guardian angel nudges your salting hand and spills it. You pinch some between the fingers of your right hand and then throw it over your left shoulder. Take that in the eyes, devil! Oh, and there’s also something about Judas spilling salt at the Last Supper and we all know how that went down.
Anyway, in my most recent episode of superstitiousness, we buried St. Joseph to help us sell our house. If you don’t know about this Catholic tradition, you’re missing out. Old St. Joseph has a mighty big cottage industry going for himself. It’s simple – you buy yourself a miniature St. Joseph statue (though soon I may consider going life-sized with giant search lights and possibly waving clowns given the housing market) and bury him in your front yard. But, but, but you don’t just dig a hole and throw old St. Joseph the Hardest Working Realtor in the World in there. Oh no, you better show good old Joe some respect. He must be buried upside down with his feet facing heaven and his smiling face facing your house. There’s a prayer to go with it, too. And don’t be skimping on the prayer. Because, remember, there’s that old devil sitting over your left shoulder just waiting for a chance to start a fire in the kitchen you’re trying to sell. And try not to bury him when there’s a black cat in your yard or a random ladder. And for the love of all the martyred saints, wear something that’s brought you good luck before.
When we sold our house in Newport to move to Akron, we buried St. Joseph in a solemn afternoon ceremony. Dave dug the hole as I recited the prayer and wah-lah, we sold the house in less than a week. Granted, the housing bubble hadn’t burst yet but I like to think St. Joseph was working his magic right there under the crabgrass.
This March, we brought St. Joseph out of his honored spot in the dining room cabinet and buried it again. It was after Saint Patrick’s Day because you really don’t want to be mixing your patron saint worshipping and end up praying to St. Joseph to send you back to Galway, Ireland…hmmm…maybe you do. Once again, Dave and I stood in the front yard, chose a spot near the front porch, and put St. Joseph to work. I said the prayer but it was rushed and, on the reverence scale, I probably hit a two out of ten. I think the prayer went something more like, “c’mon dude, sell this house, sell this house fast.”
I’m thinking maybe St. Joseph didn’t appreciate that so much. I mean, it’s the worst housing market in a long time and here we are pressuring him when he’s already up to his upside-down sandaled feet in foreclosures and for sale signs. He’s been in that spot for a month and, despite a fresh coat of mulch, we haven’t seen much action. Today, with it being Earth Day Weekend and all of that, I decided to dig him back up and bury him in a different spot.
Here’s where the lilac comes in. We went to brunch at Mustard Seed Market and they were giving away lilac shoots and dogwood shoots for Earth Day, five per family. We have a dogwood in the front yard so I went for the lilac. When we got home, I got out the shovel, dug a hole in the side yard where I tried to grow the pumpkins last year (natural disaster of epic proportions) and settled the roots into their new bed. Lilacs are considered a harbinger of spring, just like tulips and daffodils. They also represent youthful innocence and early love. What I was hoping was that they represented “somebody buy our house” but apparently there’s not a national or martyred flower for that so I have to settle for the lovely, fragrant lilac.
I looked at the shovel and it made me think of St. Joseph hanging out in the front yard. I unburied him, wiped off his face, and considered throwing him over my left shoulder with some salt or driving to the Newport post office to mail him off to some sort of house-selling mystic. Instead, I dug another hole, this time nearer to the daffodils that are in their third and final act of blooming and beginning to droop in the shadow of the magnolia tree. Maybe old Joe needed some springtime encouragement, a fresh new look at the house. I said a little prayer, most definitely hitting at least a seven on the reverence scale, and made certain he was comfy in his new digs.
Standing there, it made me wonder how many St. Joseph statues are working overtime in yards across the country right now, and how many old Joes are left buried and forgotten after the homeowners close the deal. If I had the time and gumption, there’s probably a humorous essay or coffee table book to be written about the Life and Times of Underground Joe. I can see it now, dirty-faced Josephs being unearthed with all of the stories — good and bad — to go along with it.
Rest assured, if and when we sell the house, Joe and the lilac shoots are coming with us. I’m digging both of them back up and transporting them to places of honor in their new home, wherever and whenever that may happen. Not that I’m superstitious or anything.
Five miles this morning in 44:00 flat. She’s back, folks! She can see the shadow of her former self on the treadmill. And not one bit of knee pain in either knee. Now the question will be whether she can ramp up the mileage in time for Cincinnati’s Flying Pig Half Marathon. The other question is why am I talking about myself in third person?
Everyone has their favorite Thanksgiving Day tradition – mine is running in a Thanksgiving Day Race. It used to be the Thanksgiving Day Race in Cincinnati, OH which also happens to be one of the oldest 10k races in the country (this year the race celebrated its 100th anniversary). If someone asked me what I miss most about Cincinnati — aside from family and friends — I would put this race in the top five, maybe even the top three.
The race itself was only part of the tradition. There was also seeing friend and elite runner Brian (aka Swarthy) before the start. No matter where I happened to be in the crowd of more than 10,000, I would somehow spot his minimally-dressed, wishbone-thin frame stretching and jumping and preparing for the run. There was also the frantic search for my notoriously late running pal Teresa who typically double-parked her car in an illegal spot downtown and reached the start line five minutes after the gun went off but somehow, she always caught up with Suzi and I. And there was also the post-run beer at Crowley’s, an Irish pub in Mt. Adams. There’s nothing like cramming hundreds of sweaty runners in a poorly-ventitlated dank bar while they drain the Guinness and Smithwicks taps. Believe me when I say the smell is undescribable. Ah, sweet memories.
Now that we’re in Akron, I run the Home Run for the Homeless. The race helps Gennesarat feed approximately 600 homeless people weekly. Weekly. On a day when most of us experience an overabundance of food (there is always too much food at Thanksgiving), it’s nice to know that more than 2000 registration fees and four-miles worth of time goes to help those in dire need. Not all tradition was lost though. I carried out my pre-race routine to the letter. First, I got up three hours before the start time and made myself a cup of coffee. Along with the coffee, I ate my pre-race cup of oatmeal, accompanied, of course, by two begging dogs waiting for a spoonful. Then I stepped outside to check the weather and decide what to wear. Three running shirt combos later, I was ready.
Stretch, stretch, stretch the knee. With it being 26 days since I had my knee scoped, I knew I wouldn’t break any personal records but I also didn’t want to miss out on the tradition so I did an extra round of physical therapy stretches. I usually don’t run races with an iPod but given that I’d need a distraction from the knee, I slipped that in my right pocket along with a prayer card from my dad’s funeral. The back of the card includes the Irish Blessing (May the road rise up to meet you…) and I figured I’d need a few more blessings than usual.
Once at the race, I followed tradition by getting in line for the port-a-potty and making general port-a-potty small talk with others which, in general, includes a lot of sandbagging. Runners are the worst kind of sandbaggers. “Oh, I’m not worried about my time this year,” or “I’ll just be glad to finish,” or “I’ve got this kink in my back that’s going to slow me down,” or “At least I’ll be running off all the beer I drank last night.” These are typically the runners who finish in the top 20. Sandbagging comes from a good place — it’s all about keeping your expectations in check and, then, if you do better than expected, celebrating.
Which is exactly what I did. Set my expectations and then celebrated when I beat them.
Based on my only pre-race run on the treadmill, I figured I’d finish at a respectable 10-minute mile pace, 4 miles in 40 minutes or maybe a wee bit over since the course included rolling hills and a steep incline outside of Glendale Cemetery. The first mile went down in 8:34. A lovely pace – hurray, I was back to my regular running self again! The second and third miles were, ummm, much slower. No worries, I just had surgery, for crap’s sake. I blessed myself with the Irish Blessing and the road rose up to meet me. The fourth mile included some walking but when I saw the finish line banner, my iPod started playing David Bowie’s “Heroes” and I started crying. They were happy tears, especially when I saw that my watch read 38:18. Under 40 minutes!
I did it and I did better than I thought I would. It was a reminder that discipline and goal-setting pays off. But it was also a reminder that I’m pretty damn fortunate to have my health, a house, and a table full of food to return to. I don’t take for granted that I have a job that comes with health care to pay for my surgery and physical therapy sessions, and that I can worry about things like my knee when other people are worrying about whether they can afford groceries. The road may rise up to meet me but there are lots of folks finding it difficult to put one foot in front of the other this year. Knowing that 40 minutes of my time helped feed another family in Akron made this traditional run far more meaningful than beating my expectations.
So, back in the day when I was training for my first marathon, my friend Suzi had this mantra that she picked up from a military friend: “Pain is temporary, pride is forever.” I can recall the exact moment of the exact run down a portion of Eastern Avenue heading toward downtown when she said it. We were at the dreaded Mile 18 of a 20-mile run and I was semi-limping my way toward the Montgomery Inn parking lot with the Ohio River to my left and a concrete wall to my right. Ahead of me, Marty’s braided ponytail bobbed along with his perfectly-rhythmic running gait. Teresa, always the one with the kick at the end, was up ahead, probably singing whatever song was on her iPod. Suzi was slightly ahead of me and Michael was somewhere far behind, having a not-so-great morning. My legs felt like I was running up against the concrete wall instead of making forward progress. I remember saying that I was going to start walking and that’s when Suzi called out the mantra. It kept me going, not only because it made sense at the time but also because it distracted me from thoughts of quitting.
Since then, I’ve used the mantra on many ugly runs and sometimes even on particularly heinous workdays. Yesterday, at physical therapy, the mantra came back loud and clear as a went for a third round of breaking up my overly exuberant and aggressive scar tissue. It appears that my body is so hell-bent on healing itself that I’m producing an overabundance of scar tissue. This all sounds good — scars mean healing, right? — but pesky scar tissue reduces range of motion and gets in the way of my goal, running. Not only running but running on Thanksgiving Day, something I have done for more than 10 years without fail, rain or snow. This turkey needs to trot!
My first two sessions of physical torture had me nearly in tears as my P.T. Susan “dug out” my knee. Those are her words along with “if you need to cry while I’m doing this, go ahead.” My words were all expletives followed by wince-growl-ouch-ouch-ouch-wince-wince. But, as the mantra goes, pain is temporary and scar tissue is a bad, bad thing so it was worth the suffering. Interestingly enough, after scar tissue is ground to a pulp, it’s reabsorbed by the body through your lymph system. I decided I needed to write a thank you note to my lymph nodes, maybe even send them a special gift of a gallon of water to help wash out the super-bad scar-y stuff.
On Monday, I was introduced to my new friend Graston and the Graston Technique. Long story short, a few fellas in Muncie Indiana developed a set of medieval torture devices to help rid the body of scar tissue and get blood flowing to and through the injured area. So Susan checks me over on Monday and says, “oh, we have to go Graston on you today.” Somehow this sounded even worse than being told I could cry. She drags over this set of heavy metal instruments that all look like shiny dinosaur teeth and butter knives for the Jolly Green Giant. Two older women were being iced down for their various injuries and one of them gasped when Susan wielded her weapon. Ready, she asked. Um….are the executed ever ready for their executioner? I think not.
After 20 minutes of a massive rubdown, my leg felt like shredded wheat and was apple-red. Susan said “go walk around.” The two ladies near me started snickering. No way can she walk after that, one said. The other, fear edging in her voice, said “you aren’t going to do that to me any time soon, are you?”
Thing is, these Graston folks know their stuff. My quad, calf and knee all felt loose. And then Susan said words that nearly brought me to tears. “Hop on the treadmill, let’s see how it goes.” Treadmill? My old friend? The mill of treading I haven’t set foot on in so many months? I felt like a kid at Christmas. I cranked it up to a paltry 5.5 (I usually run at a 7.0 or 7.3) and started jogging. Pat-clunk. Pat-clunk. Pat-clunk. Susan was not happy with the sound my legs were making. I should’ve been making the happy, healthy pat-pat-pat-pat sound with my feet. Hmmm…
Now, I’m a closet nutrition junkie. I love reading about nutrition – it fascinates me how our bodies processes things like vitamins and protein and such. But second to nutrition, I’m a physiological junkie. I’m equally fascinated about how our bodies work on a mechanical level, and how one muscle is out of whack, all of the others team up to compensate for it. Apparently, my entire left side has been overly supportive of my right side since I popped my meniscus. Thus, I’m more lopsided than usual. That right-footed clunking is due to a weak hip that decided to take a vacation and let my left side do the heavy lifting. Lazy right-side schmuck. As Susan is relaying the work we’ll need to do to strengthen the hip, I started humming the old campfire tune, “the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone…dam bones, dam bones, dam dry bones” which is a far cry better than humming the string of expletives I had been humming during the Graston Incident.
All told, I have some work to do before I’m comfortably treading the mill again. Back on the table with my knee on ice, the woman who looked so afraid of the Graston tools asked “what I was in for”. Yes, in physical therapy we talk like prisoners who have committed bodily harm unto ourselves. I told her it was a minor knee surgery to fix up a tear and remove some junk. She just had her second knee replacement. The first one didn’t work. We got to talking (there’s nothing else to do when you’re sitting with a giant bag of shaved ice on your leg) and she revealed that she was also a breast cancer survivor. That told me she’d been through far worse pain than the Graston torture devices could ever inflict.
That put my pain (and grimacing) in perspective. My pain is very temporary and very non-life threatening. Graston has nothing on the brave women who battle breast cancer — women like my niece Jeannie, my sister-in-law Mary, my friend Karen, and the woman in physical therapy. They are the real heroes and athletes. When I run on Thanksgiving — which I WILL do — it will be for all of the women (and men) out there who are the proud survivors of cancer because that is definitely a forever kind of pride.
Today is Day One of recovering from knee surgery. I’ve already had my first cup of life-affirming coffee along with breakfast (Alice at my side waiting for the scraps), two things I was denied yesterday along with a 20-hour stint with no water.
In general, this surgery on my “good” (right) knee was minor compared to the other two surgeries I had on my “bad” (left) leg. My recovery time is supposed to be much shorter, and the aftereffects of being under anesthesia have been so minimal that I’ll be writing a thank you letter to Dr. Greg, the anesthesiologist. I have him and a national shortage of propofol (the Michael Jackson drug) to thank for this windfall of uber-goodness.
When I told Dr. Greg that getting me to wake up from anesthetic and maintain normal blood pressure is like waking Rumpelstiltskin, he asked me a few questions and then explained that he was going to go old school on me. The national shortage of propofol, caused by back to back recalls of the drug, has anesthesiologists across the country resorting to older methods. Dr. Greg opted for a cocktail of gas, anti-nauseau meds, and some other sedatives. Instead of using the now-common intravenous method, I practiced breathing through a mask and holding my breath. Once it was time for the big stuff, I took one breath with the magic mask and was knocked out in less than 10 seconds.
Normally, it takes me eons to wake up after surgery, my blood pressure plummets, and there’d better be a bucket next to the bed to catch the wretching. This time, I awoke so bright-eyed that Dave wasn’t sure they were putting the right person in the wheelchair. Dr. Greg came to check on me and I claimed he was brilliant, much to the chagrin of the nearby nurses who said they’d never be able to live with his ego now.
A big shout out to the staff at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron. They were super attentive and sweet. Two of the nurses were sporting fancy, trendy frames so we talked glasses and frame trends while I was waiting to be wheeled into surgery. I gave Barb my email address and agreed to take her shopping for her next pair of glasses because she wants something fun and artsy. Dave decided I need to go into the personal shopping business, which isn’t such a bad idea.
All of this is to say, it was the right time and day to have surgery. The staff was great, the surgeon (Dr. Pakan) was no-nonsense and superb, and Dave was there to care for me. I had put this surgery off as long as I could, since March to be exact. I opted for the cortisone shots and a significant reduction in exercise. The cortisone allowed me to put in some time on the elliptical machine (dreadfully boring) and the bike but nothing compares to running. Time might heal wounds of the heart but it doesn’t take away a meniscus tear and cartilege damage. As the months have passed, I realized how much I missed running. Really. Really. Missed. It.
I know there will come a day when I can’t run anymore and I’ll have to resort to cycling or a relaxing walk in the park but I’m not ready for that day just yet. Running is part of my daily and weekly routine. Without it, I have been sort of like an unmoored boat, thrashing around in choppy waters. My concentration has suffered (not a good thing since I have a hard enough time paying attention for more than thirty seconds), my muscles have gone soft, and my writing hasn’t dried up totally but I admitted to Dave that the ideas aren’t flowing as freely as they normally do. Sir Roger Bannister said: “We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves … The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom.”
When I first started running, I used it as a means to an end of some extra poundage. That was years ago. Now, running is, like Bannister states, my freedom and my therapy. It’s the only time of the day that I can be alone with my mind and my body — in tune with myself. No conference calls. No emergency deadlines that usually turn out to be non-emergencies. No laptop. No dogs manipulating their way into the treat jar (believe me, it’s hard to deny two smiling Aussies). People have asked me if I do a lot of thinking about my fiction writing or life in general when I run and the answer is, ”Hells no”. I think about nothing except putting one foot in front of the other. I thank the man upstairs for my health and remind myself how lucky I am to be able to run. I focus on my breathing and, sometimes, the songs on my iPod. I rarely think about anything and that is the beauty of running. I can turn off and tune out everything going on around me (except oncoming cars and uneven sidewalks). It gives me the mental space I need to dump all of the trash and clutter so I can clear a path for new ideas. Since March, I’ve collected lots of trash that needs dumping and I’m looking forward to running in the wide open spaces soon.
In honor of getting back on the road again and in honor of my two Cincinnati running pals, Suzi and Teresa, I offer up Bruce Springsteen singing “Born to Run”. Teresa once belted out the lyrics during a long run, right around Mile 19 or 20. She was in the zone while the rest of us were ready to quit. Any time I hear this song, I think of her energy and motivating spirit. You can be sure this will be the very first song I play on my very first run after recovery.
Now, back to the vat of Garrett’s Popcorn (cheese and caramel mix – aka crack) that just arrived from our friends Kevin and Doug. Ah, the sweet taste of recovery!
