mindfulness

A Walk in the Woods

Evelyn Herwitz · October 13, 2015 · 2 Comments

The leaves are turning later this autumn. Warm weather through September has delayed our annual New England spectacle. The sugar maples are just beginning to splash streets and forests with their glorious golds and oranges and crimsons. And the brightest leaves are just beginning to fall, as they must, as the flow of sap slows and the trees harden off for the winter ahead.

With the trees’ annual cycle of endings have come losses for friends. Three have bid goodbye to parents in the past few weeks–aged 89 to 98. It’s been a time of cooking for shiva meals, joining in evening prayers, hearing stories of long lives, well lived. The last funeral was yesterday, October 12.

Yesterday would have been my mother’s 93rd birthday. She died 16 years ago. She always enjoyed the fall. As leader of our Girl Scout troop when I was in grade school, she took us on camping trips in the woods, where we would sleep in big canvas tents pitched over wooden platforms. I’m sure those adventures nurtured my love of walking in the forest, especially at the height of autumn.

I was thinking of her as Al and I hiked in a nearby state forest on Sunday. My joints began to ache and my legs were heavy by the time we emerged from the trails, but the view and the scent and the refreshing air were worth it. So, Mom, these pictures from our hike are for you. Rest in peace.

Evelyn Herwitz blogs weekly about living fully with chronic disease, the inside of baseballs, turtles and frogs, J.S. Bach, the meaning of life and whatever else she happens to be thinking about at livingwithscleroderma.com.

Moose Tracks

Evelyn Herwitz · October 6, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Last Friday, a moose found its way to a street in our neighborhood, a few blocks from our house. It was clearly lost, an adolescent with only the beginnings of antlers, wandering past Colonials and Capes, trying to find its way back home.

(If you can’t see the embedded video, click here to see it on YouTube. Video by A. Stephenson, 10-2-15.)

I missed all the excitement, but apparently the moose caused quite a stir, galumphing across busy streets, passing near the campus of Worcester Polytech, and eventually disappearing somewhere into the woods. Police and animal protection services followed it all day without capturing it. The moose got away, but not before it made the evening news in Boston.

Friends were talking about it over the weekend, sharing a video of the wayward moose on YouTube. People interviewed on the TV report smiled with excitement at the idea of seeing a moose strolling through the city. For a brief moment, we all forgot our adult worries and cares. Just the notion of a moose on the loose—harmless enough as long as it didn’t cause any property damage or car accidents—turned us all into little kids.

Somehow this seemed a fitting end to a week that began with a lunar eclipse. Viewing conditions were perfect here the previous Sunday, as we stood outside with friends and watched the moon transition from a brilliant spotlight in the dark night sky to a copper penny. As we gazed skyward, we sang Moon River and Shine on Harvest Moon and Moon Over Miami—every moon song we could remember.

A sense of wonder is a powerful antidote to all the sad, bad, upsetting news in the world. There is always more than enough to worry about—another school shooting, extreme weather, wars, disfunctional politics—and, closer to home, the day-to-day pressures of work and challenges of managing my health.

Then there is the big annual adjustment to fall. Cold, rainy weather this past week dampened my mood. Back to sweaters and leg warmers and layers, wool coats and hats. I turned on the heat pumps for the first time in months and made oatmeal for breakfast. I tried not to think about the winter ahead.

So it was refreshing, once the rain finally ended, to go out for a walk and retrace part of the path that the moose had followed, which is along my normal route. No signs of the recent visitor, but the maples are beginning to turn the color of a lunar eclipse. Acorns and small red crabapples carpet the sidewalks and streets. I noticed a squirrel digging in a flowerpot on a porch, as a dog inside barked madly. It made me laugh. I’m not sure why. Something about the innocence of it all—squirrel taunts dog, dog gets upset, squirrel ignores it and keep doing its thing.

A moose wanders down a quiet city street, looking for home. No one shoots it, except with a video camera. No one captures it. It dodges traffic and disappears into the woods, without a trace.

I wish I’d been there to see it pass by.

Stuff and Nonsense

Evelyn Herwitz · September 15, 2015 · 2 Comments

The older I get, the less stuff I want to own. Al and I have been married for 30 years, and we’ve lived in our current home for 16. When we moved here, we brought a lot of boxes with us that we have yet to unpack. Since then, we’ve acquired more stuff. When you have the space, you fill it.

But a lot of that stuff is no longer needed, no longer functional or just plain in the way, collecting dust. The stuff in good condition that’s outlived its usefulness for us could be beneficial for someone else. And whatever can’t be repurposed or recycled just needs to be tossed.

So, fueled by our recent bedbug scare—a false alarm, thank goodness, but enough of a scare to make me realize it’s high time to declutter—Al and I devoted a day-and-a-half over Labor Day weekend to getting rid of stuff. We’re far from finished, but we made a good start.

My first goal was to purge my wardrobe. I targeted anything that no longer fits (time to stop deluding myself that I will someday be able to wear clothes from when I was 10 pounds thinner), that I haven’t worn in years or that I really don’t like but have held onto for sentimental reasons. I not only went through my closet, but also every drawer in my bureau and nightstand.

And I found a lot of stuff to give away: mom jeans, sweatshirts and T’s, a couple of favorite jackets that I’ve tired of, shoes that I’ve loved but can no longer wear because my feet are so sensitive, hats that once looked good on me but don’t now because my face has thinned with age and scleroderma. I parted with some scarves that had been my mother’s, which I’ve never seriously considered wearing, a good overcoat that dwarfs me, silk blouses I haven’t touched in years. I filled ten bags.

At the same time, I also found some clothes that I was happy to rediscover: some silk liners that will keep me warm this winter and my good dance sneakers, which I thought I had lost somehow. Now that I’ve been walking more and building up my endurance, I’m planning to give Zoomba another try, with the right shoes.

We also tackled some of the clutter in our basement. Al had the brilliant idea of bringing a big box of old looseleaf binders to a neighborhood youth center, where kids study for their high school equivalency diplomas. I went through the very stuffed top drawer (out of five) in my old filing cabinet and reduced the contents to about two inches of papers that I want to keep. (No, I really don’t need to save every single student paper I graded during my years as an adjunct writing instructor at Clark University in the 1980s.)

After all that sifting, sorting, tossing and bagging, we brought a carload over to Goodwill, including my clothes, some of Al’s, bags of wire dry-cleaner hangers, old purses and knapsacks, and other miscellaneous stuff. Al set out bags and boxes for recycling on the curb. It was all gone the next day.

There is still a lot to do. It’s a project that will take us well into the colder days of fall. But it feels so good to be down to what I really enjoy owning, rather than holding onto stuff just out of habit, laziness or misplaced sentiment, that I’m inspired to keep at it. It’s true. Less is more

Letting Go

Evelyn Herwitz · September 8, 2015 · Leave a Comment

School’s back in session, election season is upon us (here in Massachusetts it’s Primary Day for local government races) and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is just around the corner. It’s a season of new beginnings—and a time, for me, to take stock of where I’m at, where I’m heading and how I could do/live/be better in the coming year.

With that in mind, I share the following animated video, which I saw this past weekend at a program at our synagogue, in preparation for the High Holidays. It’s all about dealing with people who have hurt you one way or another. Well worth the ten minutes, and the theme is universal. Especially when living with chronic illness, we need to use our energy well and manage stress. I hope you find it as thought-provoking as I did.

Animation, story and voices by Hanan Harchol (in case, for some reason, you can’t see the embedded video below, you’ll find the link here):

P.S. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Yiddish, a schmendrick is a stupid person, a fool, a nincompoop.

More from Hanan Harchol can be found at jewishfoodforthought.com

Orange Moon

Evelyn Herwitz · September 1, 2015 · 1 Comment

With August now behind us, signs of fall are everywhere. On recent walks I’ve noticed that our neighbor’s sugar maple is just beginning to shed a few leaves. Nights are cooler. It’s already getting dark by 7:30.

But I’m not quite ready to let go of summer. So it was a gift on Sunday—a beautiful, sunny, warm day—that Al and I made it to one of our favorite beaches on Block Island, just off the Rhode Island coast.

As a child, I loved to swim in the ocean. Our family would vacation on Cape Cod, and I’d always beg to go to Nauset Beach, part of the National Seashore on the Cape’s eastern coast. There I would play in the waves until I turned blue and my teeth chattered. Nothing could stop me from swimming and body surfing.

Decades later, I still love the ocean, but it’s been many years since I could get in the water. Most of the time, it’s simply too cold and not healthy, given my Raynaud’s. But even when the water is warmer (yesterday at Block Island it was 73ºF, pretty comfortable for the Atlantic up here), I can’t risk immersing my finger ulcers in the sea. Too high a chance of infection. One year, when the girls were young, I tried fastening latex gloves around my wrists with duct tape so I could swim, but the water still seeped in.

So I’ve learned to appreciate the ocean in other ways. While Al swam yesterday, I finished reading a novel. We took a long walk up the beach, examining pebbles and rocks, searching for sea glass. I dipped my toes in the water. I took some pictures. I listened to the mesmerizing sound of the waves. And I breathed in the wonderful moist air, which does wonders for my too-dry nose and scarred lungs.

The water is an endless source of fascination, ever changing. Then there are all the birds to watch. One particularly bold—or indifferent—white-and-gray herring gull strutted past me as I read, its yellow eye scanning the sand for leftovers, close enough for me to touch it if I’d dared. (I didn’t.)

As the afternoon shadows grew long, I bundled up in the various layers I’d brought—sweater, sweatshirt, blanket, hat. We left the beach, reluctantly, around 5:30, and walked back into town to find a place to eat dinner. It was still warm enough, away from the shore breeze, to dine outside.

Later, on the ferry back to the mainland, we sat on the top deck and watched the dark shapes of the island’s dunes slip by in the night. Even with the breeze created by the ferry’s forward motion, I was able to stay up top and enjoy the stars. As our boat neared Point Judith, we turned around to see the nearly full moon high over the horizon, casting a glistening shadow across the water. It was huge and orange, the color of summer sunsets and fall harvests.

I couldn’t have asked for a better ending to a great summer.

mindfulness

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: