This is the New Story of My Life

Last January, I made a new Word document called, “This is the new story of my life.” For inspiration, I opened a journal from when I lived and worked at L’Arche, a community for adults with intellectual disabilities. During my two years at L’Arche, every morning I would try and scribble down three “stream-of-consciousness” pages at 6 a.m. I would write as I drank coffee and waited for Isabelle’s 150 mL of Peptamen to descend from the bag hanging from a pole beside her bed through the squiggly tube that led to her stomach. Isabelle’s school bus arrived and left at 7:15 a.m. Cynthia the bus driver would not wait. At 6:27, once all the Peptamen had descended, I would unhook the feeding tube and it would be time to change Isabelle out of her pyjamas, wash her armpits and change her into her clothes. Then I would lift her into her wheelchair so that I could wash her face, and brush her teeth and hair. So many days, Isabelle would remain half asleep the whole time, smiling and laughing here and there. Despite this, rarely have I felt as connected to the rest of the world than during this hour of preparation that ended with me rolling Isabelle down the ramp to meet the school bus.

On April 27, 2007, I started a brand new journal. I had about three months to go at L’Arche. At the end of each day, I would make a big X on my calendar. On the beginning of each day, I would do a countdown. 91 days left. Then I would try to figure out what date was 91 days ago and whether it felt like a long time had passed or not. Usually it felt like a very long time had passed. I was twenty-one years old, and I’d already lived at L’Arche for twenty months.

Frog and Toad Are Friends. This what it says on the cover of the journal that I began on April 27, 2007. Underneath the words there’s a picture of a fat toad dressed in pants and a jacket, reading to a longer leaner frog, who is also wearing clothes. The frog has a finger on his lips and he’s listening intently.

Frog and Toad Are Friends

Who remembers the Frog and Toad stories? My father read me all of them. All I can remember is the story called The List. Toad decided that he would make a list of all the things he had to do throughout the day. Wake up, brush teeth, wash face. He didn’t have any hair to brush. Then there was breakfast, the newspaper, and other typical obligations of toads who wear clothes. After breakfast, Frog came over and asked Toad if he wanted to go for a walk. Frog wanted to search for mushrooms or something like that. Toad said no, because it wasn’t on his list. He went about his Toad errands. Sweeping, gardening, going to the store. Then his list blew away and he had no idea what to do with himself.

That’s the trouble with lists.

Toad was the uglier one and also the smarter one. Neither of them was particularly smart, or good-looking.

On the first page of the journal, I write about a conversation I had with the assistant Paul, one of L’Arche’s many virgin saints. Paul lived at L’Arche over ten years. After that, he volunteered at our house every Thursday, to help with baths and make us supper. Paul was an exquisite cook. He used to slice the carrots in such perfect long thin lines. And he always marinated tofu for me to ensure that I didn’t starve to death.

On April 26, 2007, we talked about a new planet the NASA people had found. It was light years away. The planet can apparently sustain life. Paul thought that humans should be able to find a way to get there efficiently before the sun dies. But in the meantime, we can build bubble like structures to shelter us when we leave the earth. Kind of like the moon hotel in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Charlie flew to the moon with Mr. Wonka and his parents and four grandparents. I think all of Charlie’s grandparents became obnoxious in outer space. They were nicer when all four of them shared a bed in a tiny shack. I never finished that book.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

A few pages later, I wrote about a picnic on Mont-Royal. I remember getting ready in the morning. It wasn’t my turn to give Isabelle her Peptamen and get her dressed. But that would mean that I would have to make sandwiches which I wasn’t very good at. Talia, my boss switched with me. “Il faut aller où sont nos forces,” she said. We must go where our strengths are. For me, this meant not making sandwiches. Talia made better sandwiches than I did, and there was something so earnest and beautiful about her. She remains one of the great people of my life. A guru of sorts. L’Arche was full of earnest and loveable Catholics. Virgin Saints, and Nun Friends.

About halfway through the Frog and Toad journal, I learn about someone else’s spinal cord injury. One Saturday, Isabelle’s teacher Elizabeth went for a bike ride. Then she hit a bump and went flying over the handlebars. She landed on her back and now she can’t feel or move her legs. I have been terrified of spinal cord injuries ever since I knew they existed. I felt so traumatized that someone who had spent her whole life working with kids in wheelchairs would end up in a wheelchair herself. Surely, it was just a matter of time before my spine endured the same fate. For weeks, all I could think about was Elizabeth and her spine. And my spine.

During a weekend off, I went to have beers with Tom, one of the volunteers. We both drank four delightful Keith’s in his bachelor pad near Guy Concordia metro. I had such a huge crush on him, not knowing that he had a girlfriend. As I left his apartment ready to bike home, I made a nervous joke about paralysis. He said that I would probably live until I was ninety-three years old, and none of the horrible things that I’d imagined will have happened to me. I’ll be jogging with all of my legs. On my death bed, I will count and feel all of my limbs, and it will be an immense relief. I wonder where Tom is now.

There were a bunch of cards inside the journal, and a photo.

The photo is of Simon, my ex-boyfriend who jumped off a building. When I started, “This is the new story of my life,” Simon was still alive. I used to think of Simon every time I started a new creative project, and it was going terribly. I still do. In the picture, Simon is smiling, posing for the back of his book cover, or for his application to be in some movie. His teeth look very large and his eyes seem kind of manic.

Simon thought I was really fucked up and hopeless, but that I had some talent for writing.

I’m pretty sure the Boatman doesn’t think I’m fucked up and hopeless.  He thinks I’m an okay writer.

Maybe one day all this will be an excellent novel. For now, it stays between the covers of my Frog and Toad journal, and here. One of the cards in my journal has a baby gorilla on it. I’ve always had a thing for primates, and this card is from my mother. She wrote it for me when I was in the psych ward in Kingston, having overdone it on the Ex-lax.

Let’s transcribe the whole card. My mom can have the last word.

“Dear Erica

                 You are a very special and

                Beautiful person.

                                I love you as do many many people.

 Remember to love yourself for all the wonderful little things that are you.

When you were a baby I could never get over the way you would lie on the bed with your feet and hands waving and how you would giggle and gurgle and laugh from deep in your little belly. You would have us all giggling.

Don’t forget that your smile can be no one else. You don’t have to do anything else but be our Erica.

Love Mom.”

The End.

Mother, Sister, Me.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor 
I Let Go 

New posts come out every Monday and Thursday. Even if all I can come up with is embarrassing.

Not Separate From All That Is

21st Century Yoga and an End to Self-Care
A Broken Body is Not a Broken Spirit
My Life's Purpose

 

Vipassana Diaries: Why I Like to Pee Outside

Kino MacGregor insists that you can’t hurt yourself meditating.

Kino MacGregor can pull her leg all the way behind her shoulder and then her foot hooks under her armpit and it doesn’t seem like this hurts her very much.

 Kino MacGregor and I are different

Kino MacGregor and I are different. Just like Margaret Atwood and I are different. Going into Vipassana, I could sit cross-legged relatively comfortably for half an hour. Still, I was positive that sitting for ten hours a day was going to break my knees, and probably also my hips, and maybe a few other parts while I was at it. When I am not meditating, I masturbate on the internet, inhaling thousands of yoga blogs. I have been devouring Matthew Reski’s series WAWADIA: What Are We Actually Doing In Asana. It’s a qualitative study on injuries in yoga. Of course I have devoured the whole thing. In one of the articles, Matthew interviews a guy who went to Vipassana. Someone this guy knew there had to do six months of physio for her knee afterwards. And I’d heard of a friend of a friend who had herniated her disc, just trying to meditate.

A phrase from the internet haunted my head, “Many meditators injure themselves meditating on non-violence.”

I was determined that this violence would not happen to me.  I spent my first two and a half days at vipassana frantically obsessing over the best and most sustainable position. Three cushions under my butt, two under each knee. Vice versa. Two under my knee with the bad I.T. band. Oh but then I’m imbalanced, what if I get compensatory pain? Yes, definitely there was compensatory pain. My vacillations went on and on. As for the pain, well, it wasn’t quite extreme, but I did feel some irritation above my left knee on the outside. And often when I got up, my hip felt sort of jammed, so I had to click it back into place. Although the sound of my hip was disgusting, I'm pretty sure my issues were mostly due to my tight I.T. band and probably not because of some surgery-requiring problem.  Even so, I fretted relentlessly. After two and a half days, I thought, the hell with this; I’m straightening my legs. I propped myself up on a mountain of cushions, and extended both legs diagonally in a v-shape with loads more cushions underneath. Smugly, I looked around the room as everyone else creaked themselves into folded legs and anatomically questionable versions of virasana. “Erica,” I thought to myself. “You have the best seat in the house.”

Surely, I’d be spared of both agony and surgery. Well, you’ll see how that went. On Day Four of the course, Goenka introduced the Vipassana technique. Up until then, we’d been luxuriating in Anapana, the delightful task of observing the breath below our nostrils. During this time, I alternated between being very bored, being very sleepy, being very hungry, being very obsessed about how I would starve because there was no dinner, and being very pissed off at a number of people, including Sri W Ham Wrap who once said that my yoga practice was violent and harmful. (I just wrote Hamful by mistake. How funny.)  What a blast. Then the Vipassana technique opened up a whole new exciting world. Instead of being stuck on our nostrils, now we got to move our attention from head to feet.  It was like going from no internet to suddenly getting a U.S. Netflix subscription. I remember walking out of our first session with immense relief. Thank God, I thought almost laughing. No more nostrils. But it felt like my sit bones had punctured through my ass. And I wondered if maybe my hamstrings were being overstretched.

On Day Five of Vipassana, Goenka wanted us to start cultivating adhittana, which means “strong determination.” Apparently the best way of doing this is to endure one-hour sits of extreme stillness three times a day. No opening your eyes, no opening your hands, no changing your legs. Having taken refuge in rules from a young age, I was all over this. Though my legs were uncrossed, I sat like the stillest Buddha in the world. The stillest and the stiffest. It usually took 25 or 30 minutes before my sit bones started to pierce my ass flesh to such an extent that I thought my ass might start to bleed. The rest of my ass wasn’t doing well either. I could feel intense stretching on either side. One of Matthew Remski’s case studies was about an unfortunate Ashtanga yoga teacher who tore all her glute muscles off her hipbone. She had been doing a bunch of hip openers to deal with a knee injury. Then one day after meditating, she did a tiny wide legged forward bend and pop, pop, pop, went all the muscles on her ass. At the end of Day Six, I felt certain that my injury would be even more serious. Both sides of my ass seethed in horrendous agony. Lying in bed around 9:30 p.m., I decided that all my butt muscles were pulling at my sacrum.  It was only a matter of time, likely just five minutes, before the muscles dislocated from my sacrum, my spine went to hell and then Erica’s greatest fear of being in a wheelchair would come true. I sobbed, alone, in my cubicle of a room.

“It’s going to break.” I said out loud, breaking the noble silence to announce my imminent spinal cord injury. My roommates in the other cubicles weren’t allowed to say anything back. I kept sobbing. “Sorry,” I said. I lay down on the floor, stunned by the torture. Finally the day of my Big Catastrophe had come. Ever since I was really small, I’ve been waiting for the day when something horrible and irreversible would happen to my body. Broken spinal cords, esophageal cancer, the flesh-eating disease. I’ve been anticipating my disaster since my parents took me to the Niagara Falls wax museum and I saw the wax statue of Terry Fox who only had one leg. Now my disaster was happening on Day 6 of jolly old Goenka’s vipassana retreat.

Within about twenty minutes the spasms or whatever was going on in my ass finally stopped. Later, I learned that during that night, I’d called out in my sleep. “I knew it!,” I’d yelled. I don’t remember saying this, but I do remember dreaming about Katy Bowman. Katy Bowman is a biomechanist and author who advocates as much natural movement as possible for the benefit of your pelvis and all the cells in your body. And she thinks that almost everyone in the Western World needs a stronger butt.

“Yah, I was at Vipassana,” I told Katy in my dream. “But it was too much.” While I was dreaming, I also remember having the very clear intention of doing a bunch of butt exercises. Sadly, the time and location never worked out. The butt exercises kept getting postponed. (Kind of like Butt Club in Mysore).

The gong rang at 4 a.m. Although I was quite relieved that I wasn’t yet in a wheelchair, I felt absolutely ready to trade in both yoga and meditation for a lifetime of butt exercises and/or anything else.  My ass didn’t hurt as much, but now I felt certain that there was inflammation behind my right knee, the one without the I.T. band problem. Upon careful examination, I realized that the bulge was merely my hamstring tendon.

I dragged myself to the meditation hall late and left when I had to shit. Instead of returning, I went for a walk in the little loop in the forest. It was pitch black. For someone terrified of a spinal cord injury, this wasn’t the most logical behaviour; however, I figured I’d already survived yesterday’s very close call and I wanted to work on my night vision. After a couple of times around the loop, I had to piss and so I pulled up my skirt and peed in the woods. I thought that this was quite scandalous for a vipassana retreat. I did not get any pee on my sandals.

In the afternoon, I went to see the meditation instructor. It was nice of her to view my body hysteria, not as severe, neurotic dysfunction, but rather as my sankaras coming to the surface. Sankaras are deep-rooted mental or behavioral patterns that tend to lead you into the same types situations over and over again. (The yogis often call them “samskaras.”) Some of my sankaras that fall into similar categories include going to the emergency room to see if my ingrown pubic hair is Herpes,  or imagining having to get my esophagus replaced with a piece of my colon, or worrying about getting a foot infection in India that will end with me losing my legs. When I told the instructor about the spinal cord injury scare, she suggested that maybe I was a bit too strict with myself. “Torturing yourself, this is not Vipassana," she said. “Vipassana is not the posture.” She gave the option of a chair, or a back support, if it got too painful. I considered becoming a chair person, but one of my life’s biggest rants is about the dangers of sitting in chairs. It’s up there with potty training, and sun salutations, and maybe also pubic hair waxing. I decided I would try one more day on the floor. If my sacrum seemed at risk and I had to sit in a chair, well then, so be it. The rest of this story is about how I ended up sitting cross-legged and sort of relaxed for about seventeen minutes. You are probably better off reading this excellent zine that the Boatman bought called, “Why I Like to Pee Outside.” It is so great. I even brought it to India with me and read it to some wonderful Canadians I met in the line-up to register with Sharath.

Zine: “Why I Like to Pee Outside,” by Amanda Stevens,
bent from its long trip to India

The Author Amanda Stevens made the zine at a 24-hour Zinemaking Challenge in Halifax in 2008. “Why I Like to Pee Outside” describes the Unnamed Protagonist’s journey of how she grew to love peeing outside. It is full of informative and compelling diagrams, lists and essential techniques. The unnamed protagonist used to be afraid of peeing on her pants or on her shoes. She even considered getting “one of those spouts that make peeing outside easier for people with vulvas.” But she practiced and practiced and now she can do it the way it’s meant to be done.

Peeing Outside, the way it's meant to be done. Watch out for pee splattering off the ground

“It’s a bit of a thrill,” says the Unnamed Protagonist. “It feels slightly transgressive and unladylike, especially when there’s a possibility of being seen doing it. It also makes me feel like I’m getting back to my natural self.” This is how I felt when I peed outside at vipassana. Thrilled, transgressive, and unladylike, and more like my animal self. 


Peeing outside: Thrilling, Transgressive and Unladylike

As fate would have it, peeing outside happens to be excellent for your pelvis, butt muscles included. Katy Bowman recommends peeing outside as often as possible. And I think that she would be happy with Amanda’s squatting diagram.

At the end of “Why I like to pee outside,” the Unnamed Protagonist dresses up as a Girl Guide for Halloween and her friend makes her a badge for peeing outside. Overall, “Why I like to Pee Outside” is a thoroughly satisfying read. I tried to contact Amanda about where people can find more copies. If you’re in Mysore, you can borrow mine.

If you have interesting techniques for peeing outside or a peeing outside story to share, you should email Amanda at redheadwalkingas@yahoo.ca. And/or share them at the end of this blog.

In India, people pee outside all the time. In Mysore, for the most part, you only see dudes.

The End.

I’m not sure how I mentioned so many things in one blog.  Perhaps to some of you, this is not all that surprising.

I don’t have time to edit because my father and his girlfriend are visiting and they are way better tourists than I am.

Oh well, think of all the people I promoted:

Kino MacGregor

Margaret Atwood: Once I wrote a story called, Why I am Different From Margaret Atwood and What I Don't Gain From Humping Duvets. It used to be all over the internet. Now I can only find a version with very strange formatting. Well, if you're dying to read it, I can hook you up, perhaps for the price of three coconuts. Haggling welcome. 

Goenka

Matthew Remski: Check out the prospectus for his WAWADIA book. And/or Contribute to his Indigogo Campaign

Terry Fox: Legs

Katy Bowman Katy's Cool Blog My Raving Review of her new book, Move Your DNA

Sri. W. Ham Wrap

Amanda Stevens, author of “Why I Like to Pee Outside.” I messaged her on Facebook raving about her Zine. Unfortunately, I got the wrong Amanda Stevens. Better luck next time.

And Myself:

The Vipassana Diaries: Bus
The Vipassana Diaries: Day Zero
The Vipassana Diaries: Food Belly
Vipassana Diaries/Ashtanga Memoirs: You Cling To Things Until They Die (Ham Wraps, S.I. Joints Etc.)

Do Not Kill Your Baby

 

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, my $2.99 self-help book
Don't forget to send me your peeing outside stories!!!

 

Our lives will never be the same, Part Two

So folks, today is the day.

Friday’s brilliant segment of the Vipassana Diaries was hijacked by my Twitter feed. I did a search for “Air France” to see how the strike was going. There wasn’t much there. One out of two flights were being cancelled. Pilots were threatening to extend the strike if unions couldn’t come to a resolution. Some travellers had pissed off things to say, although not as many as you might imagine.

Then I came across a Vanity Fair article called, “Should airplanes be flying themselves?” It was about Air France so I thought I’d take a look. And guess what? An Air France flight from Rio de Janiero to Paris crashed in 2009. I only let myself skim over it, but this was enough to make me reverberate and tremble. If my flight on Monday ran, which was only 50% likely, then well, imminent death for me.

Reverberate, reverberate.

I was sitting at Just Us Coffee. Everyone else was sipping their lattes, happy and chatty. My gluten free espresso chocolate chip cookie was all gone. Soon I would be too.

Reverberate, reverberate.

I called the Boatman. He didn’t answer his phone.  Probably he was doing something important at work.

Then I went outside and happened to run into a friend who was happy and surprised to see me since I was supposed to be in India. I walked her to work. And I calmed down.

The other night I was going on and on about the people with spinal cord injuries that I had seen at the bus station and/or seen on the Internet.

I was close to tears worrying about spinal cord injuries and what the man at the bus station and the man on the Internet were doing at this very moment.

“What if they’re all alone and they can’t move?”

“Babe, you’re freaking me out,” said the Boatman.

“I can’t stop thinking about this,” I said. “What should I do?”

“Well,” said the Boatman, “You’re a bit neurotic. You sound like Woody Allen.”

“What does neurotic mean anyways?” I told the Boatman that he should look it up in the dictionary.

This is what dictionary.com says

Neurotic

1.       Also called psychoneurosis, a functional disorder in which feelings of anxiety, obsessional thoughts, compulsive acts, and physical complaints without objective patterns of disease in various degrees and patterns dominate the personality.

2.       A relatively mild personality disorder typified by excessive anxiety or indecision and a degree of social or interpersonal maladjustment

The Boatman laughed and became extremely satisfied. Because it was so me.

Well, the Boatman’s neurotic darling is finally heading to India today!

Me and the Boatman on the Happy Stairs

Air France’s strike ended up being extended.

I tried really hard to stay really calm.

On Sunday morning, I woke up early and did 108 sun salutations for the Fall Equinox, which is sometime around now. Then I got on the phone with Air France.

They had a marvellous alternate itinerary that stopped in New York, Atlanta, and then Dubai before going to India. The customer representative said I’d be in the air for 21 hours. My father generously purchased me some magical circulation socks. Still, 21 hours sounded a bit hideous.
So I called the online travel agency to see if I could refund my ticket and get something better.

Not so much.  That last minute, the prices were pretty mediocre considering the amount of time I had to spend in Sri Lanka. Plus he was had to confirm details about the refund with Air France and he was on hold with them for over 45 minutes. Probably an hour and fifteen minutes in with him was when the first tears came.

I decided to try again with Air France. Maybe Dubai wouldn’t be so bad. Once my brother-in-law did a concert for a royal family in Dubai, and they gave him a really nice watch.

After centuries on hold, I asked if they could plug me in for the Dubai itinerary. The nice lady on the phone tried to, only the flight from Dubai to India wasn’t going through.

“I can’t get stuck in Dubai. My mother will lose it.”

She talked to her supervisor who suggested that maybe I take an Air Canada flight to Paris on Wednesday.

“And then what?”

“Well, maybe a flight will run to India. Half of our flights are running.”

No, no. This sounded like not a good plan. All of my flights so far had been cancelled. Now, more tears.

“I’m sorry, I just find this very stressful.”

The customer representative was very understanding. She said that it had been very stressful for many people. Maybe I wasn’t the first to cry on the phone.

I googled British airways and found a flight leaving Monday. I read it out to her.

I reverberated for approximately one more hour and forty-five minutes and then it was a done deal.

The Boatman was proud of me, generously praising me for my independence and for being a lot less hysterical than usual.

We are leaving for the airport soon.

Our lives will never be the same.

The End.

At Vipassana, the best part of every evening discourse was when the camera zoomed out and you could see Goenka’s wife, usually sitting in a chair. Behind her huge glasses, her eyes were always closed.

When the discourse was almost over, Goenka would do some of his melodic chanting. It was nice to see the chant come out of someone’s mouth. After the chant, Goenka would say, “take rest for about five minutes, then start again.”

The screen would switch to blue and huge ghetto letters read,

“May all beings be happy.”

I wish I had a similar screen for you. Instead I have this face. That fanny pack.

 

Okay, the Boatman is coming soon.
Good-bye.

Deep love.
The End.

Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook 
My $2 Self-Help Book: I Let Go

More from the Vipassana Diaries:

 

Our lives will never be the same

Last Practice Before Vipassana

Bus 

Day Zero

Food Belly

 

"A broken body is not a broken spirit"

Ever since I knew they existed I have been terrified of spinal cord injuries.  Having been active my entire life, I cannot imagine ever not being able to move or feel any part of my body.  One of the most traumatizing events that ever happened to me was someone else’s spinal cord injury.   I was 21.  It happened towards the end of my second year living and working at a l’Arche home, where people with and without intellectual disabilities shared their lives together.  At L'Arche, there was only one woman who had a physical disability as well as an intellectual disability.  Her name was Isabelle, and I’ve written about her a few times before.  Isabelle didn’t have a spinal cord injury, but she was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that comes in all sorts of manifestations.  For Isabelle, it meant that she was mostly paralyzed and needed help eating and changing her clothes and brushing her teeth.  She always sat in her wheelchair or lay on her bed with her hands held out to the side, her fists clenched and her  forearms forming 45 degree angles with the sides of her body.  Sometimes she said, “aaaa-aaa-aaa,” and often she laughed and smiled looked up with her eyes.  Looking up with her eyes meant “Yes.”  Looking down to the right-hand corner of her eyes meant, “No.”  She hardly ever said no.  Most of the time she was smiling and laughing and looking up. 

Isabelle at the river

It was easy to make Isabelle laugh and smile and look up more.  I knew all of her favourite songs.  I think everyone thought they did, though we were always singing different songs to her. Her very favourite was the ABC’s but she also liked Puff the Magic Dragon, Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” James Taylor, the Beatles, Christmas carols all year round, and anything about Jesus.  Isabelle also liked it when you talked about her friends.

 Her favourite friend’s name was a like magic word.  If you talked about Elizabeth*, Isabelle would squeal and laugh, squeeze her hands close to her sides and look up with her eyes, over and over again.  "Yes, Yes Yes."  Elizabeth was a teacher at the Montreal School for the Blind where Isabelle went to school.  For around thirty years, she’d taught children like Isabelle, taking them swimming, singing them songs, reading to them, and helping them to communicate and gain as much independence as possible.  Though Isabelle had been in her class a number of years back, Elizabeth made the effort to keep in touch, stopping by Isabelle’s classroom regularly and organizing visits to Isabelle’s home.  During her visits, she’d drink tea and eat cake, take Isabelle for walks and read her poems. Elizabeth also recorded Isabelle tapes of her reading stories and poems.   She had a soft voice and lovely British accent.

“Hi Isabelle,” the tapes would begin.  “It’s Elizabeth.  I’m going to read you some poems.”  Isabelle loved Elizabeth's voice and she loved everything that rhymed.  One of her favourite Elizabeth tapes had Elizabeth reading William Blake’s songs of innocence and experience.  At the lines, “Tyger Tyger Burning Bright, in the forests of the night,” Isabelle would crack into joyful hysterics. 

Back when I used to live in the home, Isabelle cried about once a year, when all her friends went home from her birthday party.  All we needed to do to make her feel better was put on the Elizabeth tape. 

One Wednesday evening in the spring, I biked back to the home in pouring rain at the end of my day off.  Nathalie, my Francophone house leader was washing the dishes in the kitchen. “Quick,”  she said. “ Read the letter on the fridge.  I don’t know what it means.  It’s about Elizabeth.”  In my soaking wet clothes, I ran to the fridge. Over five years later, I have the letter memorized. 
 
On Saturday afternoon Elizabeth Freeman went for a bike ride and somehow crashed.  She endured several jaw fractures, but more important, was injured to the spine.  She has already had several operations and although it is too soon to make a prognosis, she may have done permanent damage.

For weeks, this letter was all that I thought about.  Why would this happen to someone who had devoted her life to empowering children who use wheelchairs?  Why would she have to be in a wheelchair too?  It was too absurd, too ironic.  I was devastated for Elizabeth, but also terrified for the fate of my own spine.  I rode my bike every day. It was just a matter of time before I would become injured to the spine too. 

 A month or so later, Isabelle was graduating from her school, since all the students graduated the year of their 22^nd birthday.  We’d prepared cake and a thank you song for all of the teachers.  It rhymed and was to the tune of "Puff the magic dragon."  The teachers were touched and delighted.  Isabelle had been a big star at the school.

Still at the rehabilitation hospital, Elizabeth hadn’t been able to make it.  But she made Isabelle a tape for Isabelle to listen to at her party.  I have the words of the tape memorized too.

 “Hi Isabelle,” she said.  You could still hear her British accent, but her voice was a bit muffled.  As soon as she heard her voice, Isabelle started smiling and looking up.  “If I sound a little funny, it’s because my jaw is stuck together with wires and an elastic band.  As you know a little while ago, I had a bad, bad bicycle accident.  I was riding long and my bicycle hit a bump.  I went flying over the handlebars and landed on my back.”  Matter of factly, she went on to say that she couldn’t feel or move her legs.

“So like you Isabelle, I have a wheelchair.  And the people here use a lift to get me out of my bed and into my wheelchair.  It was scary at first, but I’ll get used to it.” She said that her arms got tired from pushing herself in her wheelchair, but that too she’d get used to.  Then Elizabeth said that she was sorry she couldn’t make it to Isabelle’s good-bye party, and that they’d have to get together sometime soon.  Isabelle laughed and looked up.

“Yes, Isabelle,” Elizabeth said. “Some day when it’s really nice outside we’ll get together and we’ll go for a walk.  I don’t know how, but we’ll manage some way.” 

Since that party, Isabelle and I have had several visits with Elizabeth.  She’s truly a delightful woman. At one point there was hope that the swelling in her spine would go down and allow for more movement and sensation, but that window of possibility has probably passed. 

“Of course, I would love to walk,” she said to me.  “But I know that people can have valuable and enjoyable lives in a wheelchair.”  Then she looked over at Isabelle.  “Right Isabelle.”  And Isabelle laughed and said yes with her eyes. 

A couple of times, Isabelle, Elizabeth and I went swimming.  Elizabeth was lowered into the water on the chair lift first.   Isabelle went next and I waited to catch her in the water.  Before her accident, Elizabeth had taken children like Isabelle swimming so many times.  She would have loved to help Isabelle swim again.  But how could she if she couldn’t make her feet touch the bottom? Elizabeth didn’t complain, but I just thought of all the other people in the world who would never think of taking Isabelle swimming.  It wasn’t fair. To this day, I might be less accepting of the whole ordeal than Elizabeth is.

After I moved out of the house for people with disabilities, I started to practice Ashtanga yoga every day.  Although having the opportunity to practice was a total grace, I remember feeling immensely conflicted about it.  Headstands, backbends, all this was meant to take me deeper into myself.  But how could they be that important when other people couldn’t walk?  How could these postures relieve my suffering when wonderful, giving people like Elizabeth were stuck in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives?  What will happen when I fall off my bike and everything goes to shit? 

Over five years after beginning a daily yoga practice, I try to be grateful for my life and my body as it is right now.  Despite this, I often feel frustrated by my body’s trivial limitations, and terrified that all of its abilities will be taken away.  And I feel guilty for feeling all this, because it seems shallow and not very spiritual. 

Yesterday, I came across this beautiful TED talk by Janine Shepherd, an Olympic hopeful who was severely injured during a training bike ride.  

 
I highly recommend that you watch Janine’s magnificent story.  Her talk is called, “A broken body is not a broken spirit.”  It's a really good reminder.
 
The End.

*Name has been changed for privacy.  If you meet Isabelle and would like to know the real magic word, let me know and I'll tell you.

Isabelle looking angelic.
A broken body is not a broken spirit. And what does broken mean anyways.
 
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