In Praise of Forgiveness

In 1963 in my small town, nobody I knew had parents who divorced.  Mine did. It was messy, public, and humiliating to a 13 year old who had no idea about family dynamics, personalities in a marriage, and changes of heart.  I just knew that my dad left. I felt abandoned and I felt shame.  It was a tough time, and in those days, nobody talked about it---there were no divorce seminars for parents and no counseling for kids.  I cried. A lot.  And it affected me in ways I didn't even realize until much later.  Visitation with my dad became more and more awkward, and in the end, I just didn't want to see him. He was busy and had a new life, and I didn't really fit into that scene.

For many years, I barely spoke to him. And he didn't seem to mind.  He missed my wedding, the birth of my two daughters, and I missed lots of life with him. I thought I moved on, and I figured he had moved on-----because if you don't communicate, you truly do not know what the other person has in his heart.

Then I had a similar experience in my own marriage which required forgiveness, and I realized I needed to reach out to my dad as well. It didn't happen overnight, because when you foster that much resentment, it takes a lot of work to unravel the web of bitterness that you have been weaving.

So I decided to write my dad a letter asking for forgiveness and to tell him that I forgave him too.  It was hard to write because my pride wanted to change every sentence to "It's all your fault". And I had talked myself into believing that for so many years, because I kept waiting for him to jump in first.  I remember how I felt when I put it into the mail.  I was self-righteous and proud of myself.  I had done the "right thing".  So I went on with my busy life thinking I would not hear from him but at least I had done what I could.  But that's not what happened at all.  He wrote back and said he would love a relationship with me and that we should meet soon.  Not what I was expecting!  Now the ball was in my court again and I really felt that I had to follow through.  My kids were watching, and I felt that God was compelling me to respond.

We met in Memphis, with all of the family in tow, and if you know my dad, you know he will put you at ease in any situation.  For the next 20 years, we did not dwell on the past, but enjoyed each other in the present.  I am so blessed to have taken the step to reconcile with my dad and to have had him for the bumps in my road when he could be the cheerleader I needed, and I hope I was the same for him. Sometimes people say that they "lost" their loved one when they pass away, but I can't say I lost my dad. Because even in his death yesterday, as I was kneeling beside him, I knew I had found him.

The Results are In!!!

For 4 weeks, I have stayed the course on what I said I would do except for two lemonades and a handful of chocolate chips at Leah's.  The first week was a little hard, but I stayed on the diet (my GI tract was in shock). The second and third weeks, I was at Leah and Paul's but I stayed on the diet.  When I came home, we ate out several times but I stayed on the diet. After four weeks, I don't think I can go back now.  I feel too good, I have more energy than I have in a long time, I have dropped 9 pounds........and ..........wait for it..........My total cholesterol has dropped 100 points!!! That's right, folks, from 320 to a not so scary 220.  My LDL dropped from 235 to 148!!  YAY!! I am super excited and really committed to following this nutrient rich program that is making my arteries smile.  I am going to give a shout-out for Dr. Joel Fuhrman, whose book, EAT TO LIVE, was recommended to me by my son-in-law, Paul, and my daughter, Leah.  The book basically says that if you eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans for 90% of your diet, you can eat other stuff for 10% and you should be good to go.  Well, I decided to skip the 10% and go for it.  And it paid off.  And now that it worked, am I going to go back and eat cheeseburgers now?  NOPE.  I am a believer that you are what you eat.  And it is a life decision, not a "diet".  And anyone can do it.  In the last month I have learned so much about our American diet and how we are so sadly malnourished and how our arteries are sick because of the way we eat. And now that I have lived it and experienced feeling better, I will not go back. I still have some numbers to crunch, my LDL goal is  to get to 100 or less, but I feel that I can do that in the next months ahead, and I love a challenge!  So there you have it folks, a testament to eating healthy and gaining huge benefits with no meds!!! Didn't see this one coming either!!  Anybody want to raise a cup of green tea with me?????

PS I do not find it necessary to use psyllium husk.  The fiber I get from fresh fruits and vegetables and oatmeal is more than enough for a healthy digestive tract.  I guess if you were not eating  a large amount of fruits and veggies,you would need it.  

An Experiment

How do you begin your New Year?  Do you make resolutions that you try to stick to?  I used to do that, but realized I was over them by March.  So I quit making resolutions. But ----- this year may be a little different:

I begin each new year with my annual physical.  I didn't do that on purpose--it just fell on January because of insurance. I certainly wouldn't decide to start each new year getting stuck and prodded.  So this year, as usual, I went for my appointment,  and having fasted, got my blood drawn.  We have been watching my cholesterol levels, because my total level runs high.  But my HDL has always been high, too, making the ratio to my elevated LDL in the safe zone.  
Uh, not this year.  The next day, I get a phone call from the PA.  "Corlea, everything looks great on your blood panel......pause....except  your cholesterol ----and it's out the roof!" (I love how she started with a positive tone.) "Your total is 320 and your LDL is 235!" The LDL alone was higher than a healthy total of both LDL and HDL.  My reply was a cuss word and then an apology. Now, Clark and I eat pretty healthy--I seldom eat meat, we eat fresh vegetables and fruit every day, and in an attempt to eat "right" we run up a bill at Whole Foods that looks like we feed a family of 10.  But there's always room for improvement, and I will admit that I ate whatever I wanted during the holidays--butter, cheese, pie, cake,--well, you know. But I think the biggest piece of my elevated LDL is the fact that I have not exercised regularly for about 2 months.  My exercise class was off 2 weeks during Christmas, I had the flu for a week, and I just got out of the habit of walking.  So since my half marathon last year, my LDL has jumped 80 points.  And after some major googling I am changing some things, substituting others, and giving up some conveniences.
Here is what I am doing:  I made an appointment with an internal medicine doc for February.  I am not going to eat anything from a package with the exception of oatmeal, and am declining eating anything who had a mother except for the occasional fish. I am substituting the plant or vegan margarine for what I was using, giving up pimento cheese,( which is my favorite sandwich), and omitting the color white from my diet.  I am going to try to do some sort of exercise every day until my appointment in February.  More beans, tea instead of coffee,  psyllium husk, and a big salad for lunch are awaiting my consumption on a daily basis.  By the way, the psyllium husk is fairly nasty and has some other "side effects" that I won't go into on this blog, but you can imagine what swallowing 8 grams of soluble fiber every morning is going to do to you the rest of the day.............
But, I have to get my numbers down, and I thought I would just try all of this clean eating and exercise and see what happens to my numbers in a month's time.  I know I need to have a diet and exercise plan that is sustainable.  And I know that I will cheat on occasion, but NOTHING is more of a motivator to eat better and exercise than a heart attack waiting to happen!!!
If I lower my LDL just a few points in a month's time, I will feel like this way is the best way to be.  I have a family history of heart attacks and strokes, so the elevated LDL is also probably a gene thing, but I have to try, right?  And what person doesn't enjoy a bowl of bean soup washed down with a nice cold glass of soy milk?

The Nose Jar

About once a year, Clark and I gather up all of our change around the house and set off to find a grocery store with one of those change machines.  We usually get enough money to go out for a nice dinner.  As we were pouring the change into the machine last week, I flashed back to a time in my past when I was all about saving money in a jar.  

It was a Friday night in middle school.  (We called it junior high in those days.) A bunch of us had met at the movies --it really didn't matter what was featured--we were there to see who else was there.  Anyway, as the lights went down, and we settled back into our seats to watch (or talk in my case), one of my friends leaned over and said, "Did you know that you have a bump in your nose???"  I was so glad it was dark, because I turned 10 shades of red.  And of course I didn't know.  It had probably grown that way the day before.  You know how quickly your body changes during your early teen years, and you also know how self-conscious I was about my nose from that night on.  My finger flew up to cradle the bridge of my nose, while I set my elbow awkwardly on the armrest of the theatre seat. I became an artist at trying to avoid my profile in any situation.  All because of a snarky remark from a middle schooler. And that's the part of growing up that no one  I know wants to revisit.  I am sure that I had my own versions of snark as well;  I just remember this incident because it happened to me and it became an obsession.  I never asked anyone else if they noticed my bump because I was too embarrassed to set myself up for more humiliation.  I would take a mirror and put it at different angles at a larger mirror to see how to hide my terrible imperfection.  Make-up was not going to work here.  And I couldn't do a comb-over in the middle of my face.  I was doomed to ugly.  I was giving Vanity a nod, and she was winning. 
 So what do you do when you are 13 and you are ashamed of your appearance?  You save money in a jar for a nose job.  That's what you do.  And where do you keep the jar?  You bury it in a brushy area next to the railroad track about a quarter of a mile from your house.  Because if your mother discovered you were saving money in a jar, she would ask questions and then tell you that you were beautiful just like God made you and you would never make it to the first appointment of the plastic surgeon.  So I kept the jar a secret except for my cousin, Grace, who would visit the site with me to add coins and bills.  
The site where I kept the jar was a small overgrown thicket, but once inside, I could not be seen.  I even found a tiny shovel hung on a branch, as though someone had left it there for me.  I dug a hole just deep enough so that it was convenient to unearth when I was ready to add to the jar. 
I think I added to my collection for over a year until I finally realized that my babysitting wages at 75 cents an hour were just not going to cover the price of a new nose.  I also discovered that plastic surgeons in those days had  limited "noses" to choose from, and the one size fits all theory was not going to work in my case.  I just couldn't imagine having a ski lift nose on my face.  So I gave up on the surgery idea, tried to talk myself into thinking that my nose wasn't so bad after all, and decided to shoot for a girls' summer camp fund. 
The camp idea, too, was a little unrealistic after I found out how much camp cost, so I just decided to save the money for something I might need in my future.  
Imagine my horror one morning when I looked out of my window and saw that the railroad company had set fire to the overgrown brush next to the railroad in order to keep it from growing onto the track.  By the time I got dressed and ran to the tracks, I was disoriented because all of my landmarks were either in small piles or smoldering next to the track.  It would seem like hours before I came across the tiny shovel that was stuck in one of the piles, so that I knew that I was close to my "burial site".  I dug through the warm ashes, found the jar, and dashed home before the men working there could ask me any questions.  

And what began as a quest for a change in my appearance ended up as a  purchase of  the iconic "Meet the Beatles" album.   And besides, Ringo had a bumpy nose and he was the cutest thing ever!!  A much better use of the nose jar indeed.  

Jumping Back in Time

Riding in the back seat of my car at the moment is a maroon and white megaphone, vintage 1968.  The letters BHS are neatly printed on one side and Corlea, written in script is on the other side.  I am going through my closet in my mother's house in Blytheville and decided to clean it out as much as possible.....something my mother has asked me to do for the past-uh--say--40 years.  I just never had a place to put my school memorabilia, but now that we have a large basement, I have no excuse.  Anyway, that megaphone brought back a bunch of memories about how I got it.  

I had been in the band since 7th grade.  My plan was to learn a musical instrument, and then, when the time came, try out to be a majorette.  But the time never came.  I was scared to death to twirl a baton in front of the band all by myself, and when I practiced, I dropped that silver stick more times than I could spin it around.  Alas, I was not going to follow in my mother's footsteps.  (She had set the bar high having been a majorette at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.) 

I had gotten tired of the practices after school in the heat, the same John Phillip Sousa marches we played over and over, and the itchy wool uniforms with the big hats and their plastic chin straps.  But I just couldn't give up 5 years of playing the flute without something else to fill the void.  So a friend of mine suggested I try out for cheerleader.  Which I did.  And I lost.  So I continued in the band, but I was over it.  And something I have learned is that once you are over something, it is best to move on.  I had asked a friend of mine who was on the cheerleading squad what it would take for me to make the team the next time tryouts came around.  She said my jump was pretty pitiful and uninspiring.....nothing that would stir up a crowd.  So I began an eleven month long jump fest.  I decided that I would have the best jump I could possibly have and took every measure possible to ensure that.   It was a scene from SNL.   My picnic table in my backyard became my platform for jumping.  And I cannot begin to tell you how many hours of jumping off that table I spent in my quest for the perfect jump.  I was going to have such a terrific pike that I would have to be elected my last year in high school.  And I was elected.  All that time jumping off the picnic table and jumping in front of my mirror paid off.  And then my dreams of a date every weekend would come true.  But reality bit.  I had around 5 dates my entire senior year, did not have a date to my prom until I asked someone myself,  and hid from the band director when I saw him in the hall.  But  I had a hell of a split jump and that's something you can always use, right? 

I am not an Athlete

I wish I were.  I have always wondered if there had been sports for girls in Blytheville when I grew up, could I have been involved in something--anything-- besides band and cheerleading?  And of course Rockie Smith Dancers--can't forget that.  Twice a week might have been more fun if I hadn't been so scared and intimidated by my teacher. For 10 years I dreaded going to dance.....doesn't make for a good childhood memory, really.
Anyway, I have tried to keep healthy as an adult in various ways: aerobics in my 30s, tennis in my 40s and hiking in my 50s.  By the time I hit 60, it came down to walking...and I'm not knocking walking but it had become boring.  So I decided to set a goal in January:  a half marathon in April. Dash for Dad was for a good cause:prostate cancer, and the date would give me plenty of time to train.  Leah told me about a training app called WallJogRun that would give me exercise routes, timing, and a routine personalized for me.  So I began in earnest.  But around March, I hurt my back gardening and slowed down the walking.  I still went to exercise, but I completely quit the walk routine.  So when the race was this past weekend, Clark, who was all in with me, wanted to know if we were going to do it.  And I decided to pick up our packets and with all the excitement of everybody talking about it at the pick-up point, I knew I had to try.  Oh, and when it came my turn to receive my packet, the young man said," 5 K?"  And I was so proud to say, "No, half marathon please."  I showed him.  
Saturday morning arrived.  We got up at 6:00 in time to eat breakfast and get to the race in plenty of time.  The first words out of my mouth were, "Let's don't go."  And Clark told me after we looked at the race route that we could hang a right after 3 miles and walk home.  It was a mere half mile from the route to home at that point.  So we dressed, put on our numbers, ate and got to the race early enough to get the lay of the land.  I have never been in a race before, and the excitement was infectious.  I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I saw very few people our age with the half mar numbers on.  There were plenty of people in our age group with the 5-K tags.  And I started rethinking again.  And then Clark reminded me we could get off the route whenever we wanted.  No shame in that.  But for me--there was.  So when the starting gun went off, and we jogged out and the youngins were passing us like a Corvette vs. a Volkswagon bus, I knew I was in for the long haul.  It did not matter if I finished last, ( which mortified Clark by the way) I was finishing this damn thing.  
By the time we hit mile 6, we were fine. Even mile 9 was OK.  But something happened at mile 10.  We were over 2 hours walking, lagging behind and barely ahead of the last group of folks.  The self talk kicked in:  "You are too old to be doing this--what were you thinking?" / "You have to finish--it's a matter of pride"/"Who cares if you finish or not, you don't know a single person in this race and they are all at home drinking gatorade by now anyway"/ "Just 3 more miles"/"You've come this far, don't quit now"/"This sucks, I'm going to die"
Clark told me that I was like a woman in labor hitting transition, and it's funny that he said that because it was a similar feeling.  I didn't want to talk anymore, I didn't want to look at anything but the route ahead, and I didn't want him to touch me or ask how I was.  I just wanted it to be over.  And I wanted to quit---big time-- but I just couldn't.  And when our names were announced over the PA as we crossed the finish line hand in hand, nobody knew us and nobody cared about some old codgers who didn't even run.  But I did.   

Pitiful attempt at a smile

Farcebook

I've decided I'm not suited for Facebook.  I had a honeymoon period when I first joined and I actually connected with some people I have enjoyed knowing about.  But basically I joined because I didn't want to be left out.  I thought it would be fun to reconnect with friends from the past and stay in contact with current friends, since I seem to be constantly moving around the South.  And  I wanted to know what people were talking about when they referred to FB.  But, alas, the love affair is over.  Even after I put everything in order on my timeline, it is not satisfying enough.  And even though I post something almost every day, it is beginning to be a drag.  So, I am considering giving it up.  Throwing in the FB towel.  Calling it quits.  And here's why:  I have friends I am not even friends with in real life.  I have friends I don't even know.   And then there  are the friends who will say anything and will post ridiculous and downright stupid/inappropriate remarks and  links, and I have to hide those posts, because I don't want to hurt their feelings by unfriending them.   But mostly,  I find that FB is somewhat addictive and I am scrolling down and looking at pictures or comments of friends of friends and I don't have a clue who they are.  It is a mindless waste of time.  Yet I do it.  And lots of times I'm afraid to say what I really think, especially politically.  Because people will jump you on FB.  Like my friend Beckett says, "I just don't need to invite stress into my life".  So I am going to give up FB for Lent.  It will be a trial period.  I will do something more productive in the time period I  would have been on FB.  And I will see if I can do it. For good.  So, I'm sorry if I forget your birthday, or don't comment on a wall post or don't tell you how adorable your kids or grandkids are.  Because I will not be back until after Easter.   Uh,  how long is that???????? Hmmm.... I wonder if there is a FaceBook Withdrawal Support Group online. You know,  a place where you could connect with other people... and they could comment on how they are doing...... and you could write back........ and they could post pictures.................