Nurture

My earliest memories are of pain. Slapped hands. Age two. “No! We do not put our fingers in wall outlets.” I cry, but not from the sting, but rather from Momma’s scowl. I fall down the basement steps. Still age two. I see the tiny blue stars, and smell the gun metal. Why the gun metal odor? I don’t know, but it seems synonymous with bumps on the head. I hear Momma’s fast, heavy steps coming to the rescue.

Age five. More slaps. Sticking a metal knife into a toaster is a bad idea. Same year- I had my first encounter with the horrific sensation that my head was growing, growing, growing, and would soon explode. I ran to Momma. she heard my cries, and was out of bed before I reached her. she held me close, sitting on the floor of her and Dad’s bedroom, rocking me calm. There’s a spider’s web in the corner. It’s comforting to think it may belong to a spider named Charlotte. A psychiatrist told me many years later that the head swelling thing was a symptom of panic disorder, which he said I had, although I just thought I was crazy. Maybe it is he who is crazy, and I’m the normal one. Who’s to say?

There are memories without pain too. For my fifth birthday, Grandma bought devil’s food cookies with fine bits of walnuts on top. She allowed me two, but I kept pestering her for one more until I had eaten all eight. She said I could have as many as I wanted because it was my birthday. They were the best cookies I ever ate. I tried to find the same kind many years later, but even with the hundreds of choices available in any grocery store, I came up empty.

Mom and Dad gathered my sister and I for our Monday through Friday morning trip to Grandma’s. The vinyl-covered back seat was freezy cold, no matter how long Dad warmed up the car. But we didn’t have to suffer the cold but for a couple of miles before we arrived at Grandma’s where we sat against the front of her old oil heater, its warm air caressing the back of our heads and necks. I could feel the heated vents pressed against my back. sometimes I would nod off until Grandma called me to breakfast of home-made biscuits, fried eggs, and coffee.

It’s a standard belief that what happens to us in our “formative” years, say up to age five, has a great deal of influence (nature vs nurture argument insert here) on who we become, i.e. our personality, how we interact with others, our likes/dislikes, etc. I’m no scientist (God forbid), but I wonder about the correlation between who I was, and who I’ve become.

I have a very high tolerance for pain, I believe, as compared to my fellow humans. Physically speaking, that is. I’ve been cut, bruised, and battered in all sorts of ways all of my life, yet that kind of pain doesn’t bother me very much. Falling down a flight of steps can smart pretty good, but although I remember vividly that tumble at age two, the pain is not what I remember.

Mental pain is another story. I remember it, and I’m afraid of it. Even at age five there was enough cognitive activity there for the seed of worry to germinate. I’ve fought severe anxiety and depression most of my adult life. If I had experienced it less as a child, would I be different today? Would I handle it better because the fear wouldn’t have been initiated so early in my life? Or would I have gone off the deep end early on, ended up in an asylum or worse because I didn’t become more associated with the battle against it? I fell out of trees. This didn’t cause enough fear to quit climbing them. So why should a little aberration like a nightmare cause me such mental anguish? I have been so afraid of fear and uncertainty, that I haven’t been able to leave the house. This seems so illogical, given my high threshold for tolerating physical pain. If there is a mind/body connection (which there definitely is), how is it that someone can be so strong in the face of physical pain, and yet a coward with mental suffering? Or can it be that I’m really not a coward or weak because I have endured it all? I’m a survivor. I’ve over-come, adapted to the point that I can face any challenge, even if I’m still afraid of it. I seldom feel that I can move forward, but I always do.

I think of support systems. I had a very good one. Mom, Dad, grandma, sister, and friends. Comfort from others seemed to work really well with the physical jolts. I used to believe that it didn’t with the mental, but the older I get, the more I realize the people who loved me helped me through all of it. Possibly I would not be alive today if I hadn’t  had that support system early on. Maybe that’s a key difference in those who survive and those who don’t. Maybe it’s not just the “formative” years that make the difference. Maybe it’s every day we wake up, take a deep breath, and crawl out of bed.

Reminiscing the Barbells and Dumbbells

Received an email from an old weight-lifting dude this morning. He was asking me to share my experiences of training in cold weather. I explained that I’ve always lived in Virginia, so my experiences with really cold weather do not compare with the stories of those who live in the North. I went on to tell him of the times I trained in a 100-year-old barn, the cold wind coming off the river,  finding every crack and crevice. I wore layers of sweatshirts, long johns under my jeans, boots, stocking cap, but no gloves. The cold barbell felt good in the hands. Maybe not so good if I were in a blue-belly state.

Anyway, his question sparked other thoughts- my beginnings of  a love affair with the iron.

I was eleven when I discovered the rusty barbell and cracked vinyl weights in my Grandpa’s dirt-floor basement. Maybe they were cast-aways by my uncle who no longer lived there. I didn’t know any specific exercises, but I knew those things were for lifting. All I remember doing was curls and military presses. I don’t know where I learned them, maybe it’s part of the male instinct. “Ah, a barbell; I shall press it over my head.” I do remember the musty smell of the earth as I strained against that first resistance, surrounded by shelves filled with oily old tools and Ball jars packed with peaches and other fruits and vegetables.

I was a chub then. One of my teachers called me “Fat Albert”, which was totally unprofessional, but I didn’t know that at the time. I don’t know whether to go kick his ass or thank him. Maybe both. Anyway, I started pushing and pulling on those weights, and running laps around the house. I gave up the peanut butter sandwiches, and soon I was doing pull-ups from the rafters in that low-ceiling dungeon. All summer I did this primitive regimen every other day. I kept a pencil underneath the high end of the front porch for making marks for the laps I ran. Mom and Dad bought me a 110 lb. Challenger weight set and bench for Christmas that year. With the weights came a booklet of drawings showing how to perform the basic exercises. I became an altar boy in the church of strength training. By the time eighth grade rolled around, I was lean, fast, and strong. No longer the fat kid picked last for pick-up soccer and football. Now the coaches were begging me to play.

Thirty-five years have passed since I fell in love with the weights. Or should I say, I fell in love with the training, and its by-products. There’s the pushing and pulling itself- a kind of rhythmic poetry of the body in motion. This activity done religiously over time produces not only strength of body, but of mind. Some people think of the weights as enemies to be moved to places they don’t want to go. They resist every muscular contraction, wanting you to fail so they can go back to the racks or the floor, and lay dormant in their domination of flesh and bone. But I see them as friends in the battle against myself and the world. Our greatest enemy is us. We are prone to laziness, always looking for the easy way out, the path of least resistance. The weights are a faithful challenge to our lesser selves. They wait on the racks and floors of basements, garages, and good gymnasiums, hoping to be handled, hoisted, pushed and pulled. Their purpose lies in the hearts and minds of men and women who desire to be better. Their value is in the courage they produce against the inevitable challenges of everyday life. They DO resist, but they are not burdens. They are friends or good teachers who encourage us and hold us accountable so we learn and become more productive, happier human beings. Because I pushed that barbell over my head three more times today than I did the day before yesterday, I know I have improved. I have more confidence because I  have set a goal and reached it. My shoulders are stronger, my heart is healthier, my blood pressure is better. I feel good mentally and physically. There is less fatigue to face the day’s struggles. Challenger- a fitting name for my first barbell set.

Sadly, today, most of the iron has been replaced with all the fancy machines, treadmills, ellipticals, and total gyms. Sure, these modern marvels are pretty in their own way, shining and sleek with comfy seats; just what the soft 21st century American is looking for. “Hey, I can sit down while I exercise.” Gym personnel wipe down these chrome-plated contraptions frequently. “Let’s not sweat on the machines.” It ruins the gloss. I once saw a sign in one of the leading fitness clubs that read: “Profuse sweating is prohibited”. Seriously. If you are fortunate enough to still have barbells and dumbbells and squat racks in your local place of “fitness” (which is rare), take a look over in the corner where they’ve been pushed aside.  They have a beauty all their own. Olympic bars with knurled grips etched into metal that warms to the touch. Black plates of varying poundage that make a sweet clang when slid onto the bar. There are solid iron dumbbells that settle in the grip like the strong handshake of a trusted brother. Curl, press, extend, squat, contract, breathe, sculpt, grow. Make some noise. By all means, SWEAT.  These are the same tools, the friends that made men strong and respected 100 years ago. They’ve changed little, still simple- bars and plates. They out-live, out perform all the pretty machines, always providing the best way to discover the magic of muscular development.

Ah, that Challenger barbell set from Mom and Dad; two of the vinyl plates have survived the numerous moves and drops of 35 years. Though cracked and worn like their owner, they are still old friends, pressing on.

Chekhov

I got interested in Anton Chekhov in a round-about way. I “discovered” him in a book written by Maxim Gorky called Reminiscences. A magnificent little book, full of Gorky’s memories of various Russian writers (Leo Tolstoy, Leonid Andreyev, Alexander Blok, and Chekhov)  Of course, everyone has heard of Chekhov, but I knew nothing of him. I hadn’t read any of his stories or plays of which he is famous. He is arguably the greatest of the short story writers. One can not help but forget all surroundings and circumstances while reading a Chekhov tale. They are absolutely mesmerizing. If your mind ever wanders when reading a story or novel, you’ll find the problem solved by reading Chekhov. But it was in his letters to Gorky that I fell in love with the man before I fell in love with the writer.

“I’m getting to the end of the second volume of Chekhov’s letters. They are such a joy to read! I can’t put them down. What a delightful, clever man he was! A real charmeur! And what a pity that I have only got to know him properly after his death!” -letter from Sergey Rachmaninov to Sofia Satina, 29 January 1933

If you are only familiar with Chekhov’s stories, you are surely missing out on another wonderful world of his writing. Over 4,000 of his letters have survived, and they are quite easily come by now in many English translations. My two favorites:

Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters edited by Rosamund Bartlett, translated by Bartlett and Anthony Phillips. Copyright 2004 by Penguin Books.

Dear Writer, Dear Actress: The Love Letters of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper edited and translated by Jean Benedetti. Copyright 1996 by The Ecco Press.

Truly, reading Chekhov’s letters reveals a man with a deep concern and passion for his fellow human beings. He is “straight up” with his views and advice. He is tender in his diagnoses’, whether at the bedside of a patient or giving writing advice to a friend. He comes across as one of those special people who you want to know, and spend endless evenings talking with next to  the fire in the hearth.

“Chekhov achieved and extraordinary amount over the course of his short life, which came to a n end when he was only forty-four. In between working as a doctor, supporting his impecunious family, travelling the length and breadth of Russia, contributing to famine relief and the national census , building three schools, sending regular parcels of books to the library of his home town and planting trees, Chekhov managed to write a detailed and frank account of the lives of convicts on the island of Sakhalin (the most notorious penal colony in Siberia), nearly six hundred short stories and more than a dozen plays. He was also one of the world’s great letter writers. It is no wonder he used to complain of his fingers permanently aching from all the writing he did.” -Rosamund Bartlett

If you love Chekhov’s stories, read his letters. If you love his letters, read his stories. Read all the Chekhov you can get your hands on.

Winter meditation

For me there are only three good things about winter. There’s Christmas. There’s more time to read, especially Chekhov. And, there’s watching the Steelers, which is especially fun if they are winning. Well, Christmas is over, and the Steelers haven’t  been playing like the defending Super Bowl champions.  This season they have caused me, and a bunch of other black and gold wearing, terrible towel waving rascals to want to cry over our hot chocolate. They started off pretty good at 6-2. Then a five-game losing streak. Talk about a lot of crying, and I’m not even on the team. I had given up hopes of the playoffs. But, I just finished watching them squeak by Miami, leaving them with a slim chance of getting in. They need help from three other teams, all of which are not favored against their prospective opponents.

Two hours later: Baltimore won. Good night, Steelers. It’s still dang cold outside with a lot more to come. Good thing I still have Chekhov.

Comments on 2009

Here we are again at the end of another year.  Seems customary to recount some of the things that happened- things that seem to have meant something, things we will never forget, things that hurt us, things that made us better.

The Bad

The worst thing about 2009 was losing Opal, “a precious gem”. Her loss will affect the rest of our years. We will always miss her. We will carry beautiful memories of her in our minds and hearts.

The Good

Another fine year with Debbie.

Jake grew bigger and taller than me. He’s still not as strong or smart.

Met Dave Draper over the internet. He has become a favorite inspiration and source for encouragement. I read his column every week at davedraper.com

Still lifting weights, but with renewed enthusiasm. Learning more about my body, and how different exercises affect it, especially as I approach that half-century mark.  I’ve been lifting regularly for the better part of 30 plus years, and just now figuring out how to do it properly. I’m really enjoying exercise for the first time in my life.

Memorable books I read in 2009:

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS by David Guterson (Now in my top-five favorite books)

IRON ON MY MIND and BROTHER IRON, SISTER STEEL by Dave Draper

BORN TO RUN by Christopher McDougall

FLANNERY: A LIFE OF FLANNERY O’CONNER by Brad Gooch

OUR MAN IN HAVANNA by Graham Greene

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS by Ernest Hemingway (3rd reading)

GIRL, INTERUPTED by Susanna Kaysen

84, CHARING CROSS ROAD by Helene Hanff

THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coelho

PARTING THE CURTAINS: VOICES OF THE GREAT SOUTHERN WRITERS by Dannye Romine Powell

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS by Philip Roth

UNDEFEATED: ROCKY MARCIANO, THE FIGHTER WHO REFUSED TO LOSE by Everett M. Skehan

DERBY DUGAN’S DEPRESSION FUNNIES by Tom DeHaven

SCAR LOVER by Harry Crews

Chekhov is always on the list.

There were a great many books I started, but failed to finish. This is seldom the author’s fault. Many times, I get interested in something else. There always seems to be a stack of half-read books with sticky notes showing in various locations in the house- by the bed, on top of the book shelf, kitchen table, bathroom. How unnerving. So many books. So little time.

Miscellaneous

We had 26 inches of snow two weeks ago. The largest amount in Charlottesville in December. At least, since they’ve  been recording such things. VDOT and the city did such a horrible job cleaning the mess up, it’s still very difficult to get around for us folks who do a lot of walking.

After almost 20 years, I worked my last day at Stubbies on 23 December. I haven’t a clue as to what 2010 holds for me job-wise.

Miss Jewell and I kept our mail correspondence going. That has been a treat.

Got up to the heaviest I’ve ever been (196), but have now lost 25 of it, and feeling much better.

Although the doc has helped a great deal, I still have plenty of pain. A bone-spur on by spinal column seems to be the main culprit. I think it’s been  five years of almost daily back pain, but it has improved. I do stretches, and other exercises everyday to relieve the tension on my right side, but the pain never goes completely away. Also injured my right shoulder 4 months ago, and still having problems with that on certain exercises. The doc says it’s bicep tendonitis. Whatever it is, I hope it goes away soon. I’d sort of like to go back to bench pressing, and dips. I can do the bench press with light weights, but it hurts. I can’t do dips. The pain is excruciating.

Debbie has been pumping the iron as well. She’d never touched a barbell before. Now she’s doing supersets, ala-Dave Draper. I’m very proud of her progress. Now, if I could get her to drink water, and eat more protein…

Ben and his theater group won the state championship. We were there. One of the high-lights in any year. Go Nelson!

Got my picture taken with Ron Thomason of the Dry Branch Fire Squad at the Gettysburg blue grass festival. I sent him a copy, and he autographed it.