Where Fires Burn Up Batman Towels (Blog #1026)

This afternoon I saw my chiropractor who works with emotions and their effect on the physical body, and we ended up talking about the fire that burned my family’s home down (and killed nine people, albeit none of them were my family or friends, in the process) when I was four. Now, I didn’t walk into my chiropractor’s office WANTING to talk about the fire. Indeed, I rarely if ever WANT to talk about the fire. For one thing, it was thirty-five years ago. It’s like, way, way over. For another, I HAVE talked about it–with my chiropractor, my therapist, hell, with the internet. Frankly, I’d rather talk about boys. Or chocolate cake.

No, I’d rather EAT chocolate cake.

Yes, that’s it. I’d rather eat chocolate cake than talk about the fire.

Alas, I’m finding out that just because an event is over in reality doesn’t mean it’s over in your body. Likewise, just because you’d rather talk about something else doesn’t mean your EMOTIONS would rather talk about something else. Or eat chocolate cake.

I’ll explain.

The process my chiropractor uses involves my picking a subject (physical or emotional) that I DO want to talk about. Then–often but not always–he helps me find two emotions (one positive, one negative) that are related to that subject. From there, we work our way backwards. “When was the first time you remember feeling these feelings?” he asks. For example, the thing I DID want to discuss today was my sinuses. (I’ve been fighting an infection for three weeks. Sadly, this infection is the 102nd sinus infection I’ve had since being born. And yes, that’s an approximation.) Anyway, the emotions that came up were adore (positive) and vulnerable (negative). Thinking about how vulnerable sinus infections make me feel (because when I’m sick I can’t work, can’t provide for myself, and can’t pay for all the shit I try in order to get better), I said, “Yep, that’s the right descriptor. It’s like my body is undependable. Like I’m exposed.”

Tracing these feelings back, I landed at the fire. Well, wait. With the word “adore” I landed just before the fire, since adoration is what I felt for our newly renovated and moved-into home. They say you don’t remember much when you’re a kid, but I remember SO MUCH about that time in my life, those six weeks before everything changed. My room on the second floor. My own bathroom and the Batman towels that hung on the rack. Our toy room on the third floor, and the laundry chute that went down to the first. Finger painting in the kitchen. Playing hide-and-seek in the closets. Pitching one of those cheap plastic tents in the hallway. Having our friends Tom and Jean over and Jean washing the dishes with only a cup of water (she was a missionary).

The unfinished stairs.

My chiropractor said the fire was “a turning point,” that although my life had challenges BEFORE the that night in 1985, my worldview as a four-year-old would have sounded something like, “I can expect good things. Life is a bowl of cherries.”

“But after the fire–” he said.

“After the fire,” I said, “my conclusion was, ‘If you fall in love with something (or someone), you can expect it to leave you. Life is a bowl of pits.'”

Pointing out that not only did my family lose our home that night but that we also lost our business (my dad’s store was on the second floor, and our home was below, behind, and above it), my chiropractor said my conclusions were completely logical ones for a child to make. Also, he said that given my age and the fact that I was most likely overwhelmed by all that went on (you think?), it would make sense for “that little boy” to 1) not know how to express his fears and emotions, 2) feel that they weren’t important or urgent enough to be heard even if he knew how, and 3) consequently shove them down. Er, shove them up (into his head/my head).

Coughing, I said, “That would make sense.”

A turning point.

I wish I could tell you that everything my chiropractor did today (he has a whole process that involves clearing or reprocessing old emotions) both healed my sinus infection and made me feel safe in the world. Alas, things are rarely this simple. “Think of the major traumas in your life like a root stem,” he said. “It’d be nice to pull it out all at once, but that really can’t be done because it’s so deep and so many other smaller roots have grown off of it. Thankfully, we can get at the smaller ones pretty easily. We can work a little at a time.”

Because I’m a writer, my chiropractor suggested writing about all this, which I’m doing now. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a major breakthrough. Again, it’s the root stem thing. What I can say, however, is that I’ve had some little breakthroughs. Pulled up a few smaller roots. Specifically, I’ve recognized and felt some feelings. Not just the “I’m vulnerable ones” but also the “I adore my life” ones. This is something I’ve never really done before today, really owned who I was and what I was like pre-trauma. I’ve only focused on The After. What I mean is that I’ve known for a long time that I lost a lot of stuff in the fire, I just never stopped to fully label those losses. My sense of security. My playfulness. My belief that things will work out.

I hope I don’t sound hopeless. I certainly don’t feel hopeless. Rather, I feel hopeful. Hopeful that it’s possible to feel secure again. Even in a world where fires burn up Batman towels and feelings of adoration. Hopeful that it’s possible to feel playful and trusting again. To feel at home both in my body and on this planet. Hopeful that I can finish building this house–the one where my heart resides–and live here a while at ease. That there will be another turning point.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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If another's perspective, another's story about you is kinder than the one you're telling yourself, surely that's a story worth listening to.

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On Feeling Safe (Blog #697)

When I was born, we lived on Seventh Street. Since we didn’t live there too long, I don’t have a lot of memories from there, but I do remember our dog, Bootsy, having puppies in our backyard and my learning to ride a bike in our driveway. I remember trick-or-treating on Seventh Street; our neighbor had the best popcorn balls. On a less exciting note, I remember burning my hand on the muffler of another neighbor’s go-cart. (That’s what you get for trying to help push.) I remember cutting the inside of my leg open on our metal slide. A screw was sticking out. I could still find the scar until sometime in my thirties.

When I was four, we moved to what we called the drugstore house. My dad was a pharmacist, and his store was on Main Street in downtown Van Buren, the same place my dance studio would be twenty years later. The store itself was on the second story of a three-story building, and my parents had converted the rest of the space into our new home. As I recall, it was fabulous. My sister and I had rooms in the back on the second floor and a playroom on the third. We had laundry shoots that went down to the laundry room on the first, where the kitchen was. That’s where we used to finger paint.

I have a few other memories of the drugstore house, but shortly after we moved there, it burned down, the result of a bad accident involving a semi-trailer truck and a station wagon. Thankfully, we were all gone that night, but everyone in the vehicles died. Nine people altogether. I remember standing in the front lawn of my grandparents’ house blocks away and seeing the smoke, and that’s it; nothing else comes to mind. It was three months before my fifth birthday. We’d lived there six weeks.

Last night I read a blog article by Seth Oberst, a physical therapist in Atlanta who specializes in the mind-body connection and how trauma affects the body. The article’s worth your time. In short, it tells the story of one of Seth’s female patients who suffered from a number of problems–upset stomach, multiple sclerosis, back pain. In the course of her therapy, Seth asked, “When was the last time you felt fully relaxed?” Her answer? Almost forty years ago, when she was small child, playing with her stuffed animals.

As I understand it, when a person has experienced trauma, their body can get stuck in “there’s a threat” mode or “something bad is going to happen” mode. This means their muscles are often tight, ready for action, and their nervous systems are on red alert. Of course, this can cause a lot of problems when there isn’t actually a threat. Again as I understand it, the idea behind a lot of body-based therapies (yoga, somatic experiencing, even massage) is that they retrain the brain to recognize that the threat is over. The ideal outcome? The body relaxes and is better able to heal itself.

Getting back to the article, Seth says that part of his client’s therapy was for them to find positions in which she felt safe, like when she had pressure on the tops of her feet or shoulders. Eventually she learned to move without tensing her pelvis. Then get this shit–her back pain went away.

In reading Seth’s story, I confused the part when he asked his client when she last felt fully relaxed with the part when he helped her to feel safe. That is, the question I asked myself when I went to bed last night was, “When was the last time I felt safe?”

Hum, I thought. That’s a good question. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt safe. I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t afraid of something, worried about something on some level. Seriously, I racked my brain and couldn’t come up with a single example of feeling at peace here, definitely not in the last twenty-five years. But then I thought of my life before the fire. During that six weeks at the drugstore house, I had this white tent, one of those plastic poles, snap together deals. I think it was dome-shaped, and I kept it in our playroom, although I remember it also being downstairs. Regardless, I remember feeling safe there. And yet, something changed that night in my grandparents’ front yard, that night my white tent and almost everything else I owned went up in smoke. It was like I gasped and forgot to start breathing again.

Today I’ve been asking myself, Do I feel safe? Do I feel fully relaxed? Personally, I think they’re the same thing. And whereas my answer’s been, No, I haven’t felt safe and fully relaxed in thirty-four years, I’m working on getting back there. It’s tough when you’ve lost so much at an early age. There’s all this proof that the world is a terrible place. Still, I’m working on letting go of unnecessary tension. Tonight the sky was clear for the first time in weeks, so I spent fifteen minutes stargazing and spotting new-to-me constellations. And whereas it didn’t last forever, there were moments when the sky itself arched over me like that dome-shaped, white tent, moments when the brisk night air wrapped itself around me like a cocoon and I exhaled.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It’s hard to say where a kindness begins or ends.

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Everything Is All Right (Blog #123)

Currently I’m in Springfield, Missouri, at the Savoy Ballroom, where for the last two days I’ve been eating and sleeping upstairs and dancing downstairs. This afternoon I took a nap. (Please alert the media.) Y’all, naps should be a required activity for adults in America. What a shot in the arm. I feel like a kid again. My brain is working. What a great life. Honestly, the only thing that could make this place any more magical would be a fire pole. Just imagine–wake up from a nap, slide downstairs, dance.

Perfection.

Last night my friend Matt (who’s teaching dance now and in the photo above) and I rearranged furniture and decorated the dance studio in the upstairs apartment. The challenges were 1) the room has a lot of weird angles, and 2) the room is really four rooms in one–a dance studio, a guest room, an exercise room, and a “the rest of our crap goes here” room, and 3) we couldn’t put any furniture in the middle of the room because people have to dance there. So Matt and I scratched our heads for about an hour (no, THAT won’t work EITHER), and finally decided to “do something even if it’s wrong.”

It took a few hours, but we finally figured it out. I don’t have any “before” pictures, but here’s what we ended up with. This is the view when you walk in the room. The “dance/music section” is on the left (partially pictured here) and extends to the middle of the room. The “exercise section” is in the back right corner. My most favorite part is the Apple poster with Pablo Picasso that says, “Think different.” Notice how his shirt matches the piano keys beneath it. Because the wall behind the piano is concrete, we decided to hang the poster by fishing wire from the exposed pipe behind the air duct. It was our way to “think different.” I said, “We’re just following directions.”

This is the view from the back of the room. On the left (on your right as you walk in) is the “guest room section.” The screen on the far right is by the doorway. To the right of the TV is an old wooden music stand with a book on it called From the Ball-room to Hell, which is no-kidding about the evils of dancing. Maybe it could be subtitled Dancing Your Way to Damnation (And What a Way to Go). I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s quote, “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”

As Billy Joel said, “The sinners are much more fun.”

Here’s a close up of the “dance section,” to your left as you walk in, straight across from the couch. (You can see it in the mirror in the picture above.) Isn’t that the cutest thing you ever saw? The dress is the one Anne wore for the opening night of the Savoy.

This afternoon after my nap, Anne and Andy and I went next door to eat Peruvian food (yum). Next door! In the course of conversation, we talked about what it was like living with my parents. I said, “You know, Mom and Dad are pretty cool. Of course, sometimes they (and by they I mean Dad) know how to push my buttons.” Then Anne said the best thing ever.

“Well sure they know how to push your buttons–THEY MADE THEM.”

Seriously. Is she right or is she right?

Now there’s a flash mob class in progress. I met one of the couples (Della and Dusty) before when I was here for a sock hop. They recognized me by my name because they used to live in Van Buren in the eighties. I guess when our house burned down, it was a pretty big deal. (It was a pretty big deal.) Anyway, Della told me tonight that her husband had gone downtown (where the car accident and subsequent fire happened) that evening, but he hadn’t called to say he was okay. She said she was sure he’d been hurt. Then she said, “It’s really amazing you weren’t home that evening.” I said, “My parents went to dinner and had planned to get a babysitter for me and my sister, but they couldn’t find one. Several years ago a lady who used to take care of us told me my parents called her that evening. She said she lied and said she was busy so that she could hang out with her friends.”

Let’s hear it for liars (sometimes).

Today I’m fascinated by how one life touches another, how a tragedy that happened in a small town over thirty years ago can create a point of connection for two people, and then how those same people can be brought back together in a beautiful ballroom long after the deep sigh of relief that comes with surviving a near-miss has been breathed. Still I’m fascinated how part of me remembers the fear like it was yesterday, how even writing about it now makes my eyes water up. I look around at all the people dancing and it’s still such a relief–everything is all right.

Earlier tonight I watched Matt teach two of his students how to do the frog jump, which is an aerial I taught Matt a few months ago. I watched him talk about how to take time to prep, how the girl’s hand needs to stay under her belly button for support, how they need to do a rock step when it’s all over. And whereas I’m not Matt’s only instructor, I feel like it’s fair to say that most of that came from me. Watching Matt, I felt like a proud dance parent. Watching his students, I felt like a proud grandparent. Naturally, everything I know came from someone else, so I think that just as one life touches another, we can never really say how far our influence goes. Truly, our story goes on and on in both directions. Truly, we are infinite.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Ultimately, we all have to get our validation from inside, not outside, ourselves.

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