Vacationing with Gratitude

Vacation is my day job for the next three weeks. 
Good….. Right?
Part Stay-cation and part vacation.
Two short jaunts to see family and classmates.
Scheduled work hours have fallen off my calendar into my lap, 

piling up like soft pillows threatening to smother me with nothingness.
Blank spaces envelop me in suspended animation 

until called to attention by alarm clocks and need.

Abruptly self pity and boredom vanished.
This short span for me is temporary.
Yawning ahead to recovery on the other side of active addiction ~  a chasm with burned bridges and 

the shaky desire to rebuild, 

with rusty scattered tools ~
a mind dry, hesitantly willing to learn
shattered spirits that regenerate slowly.

The blank spaces are not the length of a shift or a pay period
but entire days filled with huge gaping minutes
surrounded by wavering expectations.

Many successes have come from this strained commitment.
Today, I walked on through my bartered minutes with gratitude.

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between

his inner vision and its ultimate expression.”

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Inkwell Threat

Lubbock, Texas. 1994. I’m almost 47 years old. Terrified. Texas Tech University and at least a thousand - well maybe a few hundred - students were going to accompany this so-called ‘mature’ student in moving forward into Addictions Nursing from twenty years of General Duty nursing.

The knot in my stomach had tendrils reaching up to squeeze my heart and were so real I called my sister in Calgary, Alberta to help me untie it. ‘One class at a time’ was her advice, not a whole semester but each class. I could take the opportunity to walk out of any class at any time that became too much for my very fragile ‘mature’ psyche.

Tumbling back in time as we talked, a narrow window opened on my first day in Grade One  ~ 

Milestone, Saskatchewan. 1953. All the kids were the same age and I knew them all. From Sunday School, the skating rink and playing Hide and Seek and Kick the Can on dusty gravelled small town streets. I had yet to met Mrs. Jones, our Grade One teacher. School was an old building, a two story brick school with floors that sagged, a metal Maypole in the front playground and gigantic monkey bars in the side playground. The Grade One classroom was on the first floor that also held classrooms for Grades Two, Three and Four. The old school and playground have been gone for many years. But not this next memory.

Mrs. Jones was introducing herself to the neat and tidy class, all sitting expectantly in old wooden desks with brass inkwells. You know, the ones with the sharp edged brass lids that flipped up and made a really neat noise when you flipped them over and over? Mrs. Jones was a nice lady. I liked her immediately. But......if any of us were to misbehave, her stern but gentle threat was that the finger of the miscreant would be put under that brass lid and she would sit on it! I don’t know if any of the class believed her. I don’t know if I believed her. In retrospect, no one, even the smallest kid, would have fit over that corner of the small desk. Those were the days of getting ‘The Strap’, but I do not recall any corporal punishment happening in Mrs. Jones class, only a threat on day one.

Recovery of memories is not a task easily done on command. Nor is the task of shaking off troublesome memories. Special memories are just saved for special situations. Recovery of memories, at least for me, is usually tied to something in the present. My ‘mature student’ fears in 1994 of sharing a classroom with so many younger students now seemed less daunting. Taking a tumble now and then, into the waters of memory, reminds me of where I came from and that I survived even the ‘inkwell threat.’

“What we remember from childhood we remember forever - 

permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.”

 ~ Cynthia Ozick

The Reality of Recovery

Recovery is hard work and comes slowly as body, mind and spirit heal and grow strong.

Enthusiasm for a different life, full of much more than sickness, 

life that knows blue sky and smiles, waxes and wanes in waves full of longing.

Confidence that anything can be different grows slowly with each tiny success - a day without sickness or to hold a child’s hand in reunion and love.

Opportunities to turn back or go forward challenge the desire to be well again.

Valuable lessons from the past, 

sorted and separated from guilt or shame, 

shape goals for the future.

Experiencing conscious awareness, 

glaring and new, 

frightens, 

often surprises with joyful smiles and laughter.

Responsibility for life ~

so much more than paying bills, 

but maintaining health and sanity 

despite ups and downs, joys or sadness.

Yesterday’s path, full of potholes and craters ~

the journey ~ just for today...and today...and today.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the

nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author's note: edited December 25, 2023

Recovered

Recovery is about more than the human condition. 
Trees, grasses dry in summer heat
browned as though licked by fire
patiently awaiting nature’s remedy

With flashing lightening
rolling, cracking thunder
from clouds mottled black and gray
edges and gaps of pure blue clear sky
the storm, like the Big Dipper filled to the brim,
with water saved over the dry summer,
sloshed great splashes of cold water on gardens, streets and parks.
Umbrellas, impotent under the deluge, barely protected summer shoppers,
soaked leashed dogs and drenched horses harnessed to vacation carriages.

Today the sun shone
the wind blew the air dry
umbrellas folded up and vanished
dogs shook themselves dry and horses clop-clopped pulling carriages of late vacationers
Victoria recovered from what seemed a prairie storm!

“Only one thing that you can see and hear that is beautiful and 

frightening at the same time,and that is a thunder storm.”

~ R.K.Cowles

Putting Down Roots

Recovery is not a thing ~ an item that can be picked up from a store or found hanging from a tree. Recovery is a process. There is no finite time when illness or misfortune ends and recovery begins, and further, when life returns to what is considered normal.

There are, in my opinion, two opposing factors involved. The once valid and valuable spiritual beliefs which became channeled and squashed into a myriad of dogmas, creeds and higher powers. And then there came realism ~ secularism. Solid fact. Researched data. Provable points. Again all squashed and channeled, but this time into rules, regulations and the attendant higher powers of authority figures.

Recovery occurs along a hidden seam between these two disparate factors. Solid recovery spreads out like far reaching roots of a tree, knitting both  areas of life firmly together. Recovery, outside of the directives and counsel of health care professionals is the sometimes rather bulky baggage that an individual can choose to carry, unpack and absorb into their life. Emotional, physical and mental discomfort and pains can become teachers of strength and tolerance or heavy chains to bind and drag through life.

Recovery involves laughter and tears in balance. Tears to relieve grief, sadness, anger, remorse........ Laughter to lighten and brighten with dark humour and just plain silliness. 

Recovery is a process, not an event.

“The learning process continues until the day you die.”

~ Kirk Douglas

Healthy Returns - RECOVERY ~ Theme for September 2014

Recovery is my theme for the month of September. In my nursing career, I have watched recovery every day at different levels. Long before solid recovery starts and through early stages. When recovery is in full swing, I occasionally have the privilege of meeting someone in life or worked side by side with them. A healthy person can almost seem invisible when the disease or condition has become dwarfed by robust health of body, mind and spirit. It’s the in-between part that I see and have seen over the years. I’m not just talking about active addiction to alcohol or drugs. The particular usage of the word recovery seems attached like a neon sign. I’m talking about cancer, diabetes, heart disease and of course my own recovery within epilepsy. Recovery may involve some repair, surgical or pharmaceutical, physical therapy or counselling, but the most solid recovery I have witnessed is when an individual’s attitude changes from ‘poor me’ to the process of learning to stand and walk. Of the many I have known in recovery from a variety of conditions, some have died of their disease. So recovery doesn’t necessarily mean a long and healthy life, but does mean that, with acceptance and gratitude, an individual's life can be lived in fullness on a daily basis.

“You were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

Author's note: Edited December 25, 2023

A Birthday Call Interrupted

Across miles of mountains, roads, cities,
over bodies of water and through the sky, 
channeled through wires and radio waves
to my kitchen there sounded a ringing alert ~
cell phone data screen flashed an offer ~

Connected.....but only barely
Disconnected.....for sure
Try to reconnect......‘signal not accepted’!
Tidy the kitchen, get lunch ready......
oops  - A beeping alert
Screen flashes an offer
Connected......not really - just static
Disconnected....again!!!
Keep working in the kitchen with.......
A purposely LOUD ringing alert...
Connection!!! 
At last 17 minutes of uninterrupted visiting about 
a recent family visit and memories of camp until.......
silence and a final dropped call.
So I resorted to texting to clarify this annoying dropped phone call.

Technological connections may be unclear or uncertain
but not connections between family and memory.

“Cherish your human connections; your 

relationships with friends and family.”

~ Joseph Brodsy