Failing Calculus, New Year, New Resolutions

When I left for the University of Iowa at the age of 17, I was going to be a badass biomedical engineer.  I was going to design artificial limbs for amputees.  My limbs were going to be the most badass thing the world of prosthetics had ever seen. I am talking straight out of a robotic science fiction movie.  That is, until I hit calculus II my second semester.  I would find myself in a desk on campus with a TA who was from another country with a foreign accent I struggled to understand.  The board looked like some sort of hieroglyphics I would never comprehend.  Week after week.  I would sit there with no freaking clue how to deal with this. His office hours were not helpful as his accent was too thick. There was no internet.  No tutorials to look at.  Just sixteen weeks of feeling like I had been dropped in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language until I finally just simply quit going to class and would ultimately received a call after the semester ended, from my parents that I had failed the class.  My first F in life.

When I look back at that period of time I can't help but compare it to my four decades of attempts at weight loss and good health.  Entering the process so many times convinced I could be some sort of badass  fit athlete straight out of the pages of the Sports Illustrated.  I would launch myself into the latest and greatest commercial diet, overdo the exercise until I hurt and really end up feeling a little less Sports Illustrated and more lost in the pages of some sort of foreign language magazine where the characters made no sense.  I would hurt.  I would be hungry.  I would be mystified that a period of time had passed and I was at a plateau and the quick fix I had convinced myself existed was really more smoke and mirrors.  The period that followed this always proved to be a time of complacency and resignation to the notion that I probably could never reach my goals.  With New Years approaching I am wondering how many others will do just this as 2018 gets rolling. 

Well, right before I failed calculus, I had interviewed for a summer internship with a biomedical engineer.  I found myself entering the hospital where his office was and was impressed by the beautiful lobby.  Shiny chrome and glass, marble accents, yes, I could work here.  Let the badass limb designing begin.  Then, I was led to his office.  Beyond the lobby, descending to the basement, hospital green painted cement walls, past the morgue, into a windowless room that was little more than a broom closet.  Here it was.  Design central.  Somehow this lacked the glamour of the Hollywood sci fi I had built up in my mind.  There were no people here.  There was a tired looking guy at his computer who was excited about all the computerized plans he showed me.  Yeah, those were cool, but I am a social person by nature.  I would never see these limbs in action.  I would be in a hole somewhere lost in measuring angles and weight loads and yes using the calculus I had no freaking understanding of. 

So, after getting over the crushing blow of my first F, I changed trajectory. I would essentially scrap my entire first year of college and start again.  This time in nursing.  Financially speaking, this was an extremely difficult time for me.  Scrimping, saving, working and essentially taking school loans from anyone willing to give me the money to go.  I would have to take a semester off when the money rant out mid way through my program and work nights for months in the hospital to get back in.  In all, undergrad would take me six years with the last one being paid for by The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  The only stipulation for them, was I would go work for them after graduation.  I would go on to graduate, and work on the pediatric floor and be the clinic nurse in the pediatric amputee clinic.  Here, I found myself watching four month old babies being fit with their first prosthetic arms so they could learn how to sit and later crawl.  I would watch kids with traumatic amputations learn to walk again.  You never know how badass first steps are until you get to watch it first hand.  The look of surprise on a child's face when they are finally upright again after months of being down.  The hope in the parents' eyes when they realize their limb deficient born child could be just like everyone else.  It was these moments I was so grateful to have failed calculus and have the chance to have a front row seat to this rather than being in the dark basement in front of a computer screen.

So, maybe the answer this New Years is to change trajectory.   We need to get over the fear of the amount of time it will take to reach our goals, be wary of the quick fix, not be afraid of starting all over again, and most importantly set our sites on things we have never done before, because what lives on the other side of that is a greatness that cannot be described, only experienced.  My goals this year are to complete the Spartan Trifecta as I did in 2017, but this year take new people with me and enjoy my front row seat to their first steps at being completely out of their comfort zones, as this is clearly a soul feeding experience for me.  I also have committed to a crazy 200 mile 12 man relay race known as Ragnar which completely terrifies me.  However, I know that I will learn something all new at the finish line and those around me will get to witness my own reaction to reaching goals I never thought possible.  As always, I am quite certain that the best is yet to come in 2018.

The Tea Cups

When you grow up in the Chicago suburbs in the 80's, there was one weekend in childhood that we waited all year for.  The fair.  The fair would come to the empty parking lot outside McChesney and Miller in Glen Ellyn once a year.  The trucks would pile in and inside of 24 hours the place was lit up with neon lights and smelled of funnel cakes.  My siblings and I would beg our parents to let us go and spend as much time as there as possible.  We would meet our friends and ride the zipper as many times as possible until our tickets ran out.  We would come home exhausted with a belly full of saturated fat and cotton candy being excited for the next year. 

The thing I also remember vividly was my parents' reaction to the fair.  There were heavy sighs and eye rolls.  There would be the under the breath mutterings of a waste of money, and the resentment they tried to hide about driving us there.  At the time, I didn't really understand it.  As I got older and moved into adulthood myself, I would see probably what they saw.  The bolts on the rides were rusty, the zipper shook in an unnatural way when it went.  The food was heartburn producing and artery clogging.  The carnies smoked too much, had deep lines in their faces and clearly had pasts we probably did not want to know about.  They worried about our experience there.  Would we be sick when we came home?  Would we be safe on a ride that has been put together and taken apart a million times by staff that clearly had deep issues? 

It occurs to me that this is so much like the holiday season.  My children are so excited right now for the emergence of Santa, they can't wait to have their presents, eat our traditional foods, and enjoy the magic of the season.  I have now taken over my parents' role of worry.  Will I get it all done?  Will I get the toys they want?  or will they fall apart like the rickety zipper?  Will my cinnamon rolls they count on Christmas morning come out right?  How will I accomplish all of this while keeping the kids in order, working my remaining 12 ten hours shifts this year, running my motivational company, including launching a challenge Jan 1,  training for five races next year for the teams I captain, and caring for a sick family member?  This whirlwind of stuff at the moment has my head spinning much like the rickety tilt-a-whirl.  I suddenly find myself with the sensation of standing in the middle of a the chaos of a small town fair, neon lights clouding my vision, with a better understanding of the lines on the face of the carnies as the exhaustion of the season sets in. 

When I became a parent myself,  I had the opportunity to take my own mother to Disney with my children.  It surprised me that she would want to go as amusement parks did not seem to historically be her thing  Yet, she was excited.  There was really only one thing she wanted to do in that visit.  She wanted to ride the tea cups with me and my two oldest children who were small at the time.  It seemed so odd coming from the woman who hated the tilt-a-whirl.  That day she would sit in the cup and laugh as she watched the faces of my dizzy children.  She smiled at their reaction and I smiled at hers.  She enjoyed the ride.  The whole day at the park went that way. Watching my children's excitement over seeing beloved favorite characters, and enjoying food far beyond funnel cakes. She was more excited with each thing.

To be fair, it was a bit of a challenge to get my 60 year old mother out of the tea cup.  She was dizzy and not physically built for the cup at that time.  We would laugh as we pulled her out and she staggered to the gate slowly regaining her equilibrium.  It occurs to me now that this woman who never liked the fair maybe had the right idea.  We will never be perfectly made to get through this thing we call life.  Maybe instead of tolerating the chaos of the local fair, our job should be to look for better opportunities to take a ride.  We should hold on tight, enjoy the smiles of children, seize the dizzy and take the hands of help and laugh as we stagger to the gate realizing that at some point equilibrium will return, but until that time we are in for quite a ride.

  

Drowning in Three Feet of Water

In my adult life, I have found myself at many family holiday gatherings.  These are always times of reconnection and celebration, but I think, for my family anyway, it always comes down the swapping of stories from years gone by.  It would seem there were the classics for each person.  For me, hardly a family gathering goes by without mention of the Cancun incident of my childhood.  At that time, sunscreen really was not a thing.  So....this white girl from Chicago, after being parked near the equator for a few days ended up with sun poisoning.  It is a particularly nasty form of sunburn that causes an intense itching sensation and scratching only makes it worse and it burns like fire.  As a child, I maybe did not handle this well as I found myself on the beach doing some sort of uncoordinated dance similar to Elaine Bennis from Seinfeld, as I tried to cope with the total body sensation.  Now, understanding, unfortunately I am the youngest and the only girl which led to my brother's pointing and laughing.  I became annoyed and began uttering the phrase,"I itch".  Going forward, this would be known as the "I Itch Dance" and has literally provided decades of entertainment for my siblings who very thoughtfully taught their own sons the dance.

I suppose I could spend the time at family gatherings annoyed at the jokes at my expense, but the reality is, everyone has a story.  It really is equal opportunity.  One of my favorite stories involves an aunt who used to spend a great deal of time on Kentucky Lake with her siblings and children.  Here was the problem, that aunt did not know to swim.  One fateful hot July day in Kentucky, she found herself venturing out into the water to cool off.  Summers in Kentucky are humid and unbelievably hot at times. She went deeper and deeper until she got to the place that she was sitting down.  The water up to her chin.  Legend has it, in this moment, she suddenly realized she could not swim and began to panic...arms flailing, screaming for help... as her siblings began laughing at her and telling her to simply stand up.  The reality was, the water was all of 3 feet deep, she simply needed to put her feet down and stand.

As I reflect on this, I begin to wonder how many times we find ourselves drowning in the demands of life.  So many times life can come at us like a daunting wall of water with sudden changes like the loss of my mom this summer, or life altering diagnoses like one of my family members is going through.  There are the simpler things that build up on us too such as financial constraints, injury in the middle of race training or interpersonal issues.  Whatever it may be, we may find ourselves flailing around screaming for help.

I think the thing we fail to consider, is that often the water really isn't that deep and what we need to do is simply stand up.  Rise above the struggle and let it land right where it belongs, harmlessly splashing against our shins. This does not mean we minimize serious issues or ignore things, rather we focus on what lives above the water.  At Kentucky Lake, what lives above the shallow water is a wider view of clear blue with the reflection of bright sunshine, surrounded by tall pines and rich greenery only found in that area of the country.  Yes, some of the best views nature has to offer, all things that aunt would have missed by failing to stand and drowning in three feet of water.  So, this holiday season, maybe our challenge is to see what lives above the flailing in shallow water.  What views can we find beyond the struggle?  I suppose it is our job to simply stand up and look.  Rumor has it if you are patient and look hard enough at the Kentucky Lake you will see an eagle soar across the sky. 

One word of caution, though, while we are busy enjoying the view, and figuring out new ways to fly in the face of the trials of life, it may be best to employ some modern day sunscreen to avoid creating a dance move best left out of any dance party.