Identity

Self-Definitions


Last evening as we were driving home from city, Rob and I got to talking about how widowhood should not be an experience that defines us. He is feeling a little angry about how Shelley’s death has impacted his life and changed its course. Understandably so, we all feel, or have felt, that way from time to time. It’s impossible to silence the “what ifs” and “why me’s” completely. Human nature is such that we usually take situations that upend our lives as personally. I can honestly say that I didn’t spend much time asking “why me”. I don’t see Will’s illness or his death as something that happened to me. It happened to him, and Katy and I were impacted because we shared his life. I know many people who have let tragedy completely make them over. Some positively. Others negatively. Life is about change and we are the sum of our experiences, but no single experience should dominate to the exclusion of all others. Letting widowhood hog the center stage for too long is a recipe for stagnation. At some point, Will’s death should recede to it’s proper place in my life’s history and memories. What that place will be is something I am still working out, but I am closer every day. I think all people who suffer tragedies spend time putting the event into perspective and taking from it the positives that will add to who they are. Or at least they should. Still it’s not easy.

One of the more galling lessons of a tragedy is that we are not always allowed to chart the course of our life independently and free of interference. Destiny allows us free reign only up to the point where what we want clashes with what it has already decided. It’s difficult not to resent that. After all, what was wrong with the plans I had that made God’s or Fate’s so much better? I think though that it is not a question of better. Will’s time was up and that had nothing to do with me even though it effected me greatly. I am okay with the fact that I am not where I planned to be not almost eight years ago when Will and I were married. Where I am at is every bit as good. That doesn’t mean I don’t have as yet unrealized dream and plans. I do. I think most everyone does. Complacency, in my mind, is the worse kind of getting stuck. I don’t want to let that happen, and I know it is far too easy to do. 

Ten days from today would have been our 8th wedding anniversary. I had hopes and dreams that day. Heading into the second month of marriage with Rob, I have new hopes and new dreams. It would have been easier to lament what I have lost. To not hope or dream again. Let my pain and loss become who I am. What is gained by doing that? I don’t know. I do know that much would have been lost.

I was a widow, a mom and a teacher, and though I will always be widowed, now I am a wife, a mom, and a writer. While I can’t control all the events in my life. I can always decide who I am. 

Running Again


When I met my late husband I was running somewhere between 8 and 10 miles nearly every day. I was weight-lifting once or twice a week. I had joined a local Tae Kwon Do school because even though I had given up my training after earning my first degree black belt, for reasons that only make sense to me, I missed training. The school offered a kick-boxing fitness class that I hit about 3 times a week. I had also discovered deep water running, which I hope to start again soon here. Was I a fitness freak? Maybe some would see it that way. Some women like shoes. Some clothes or jewelry. Others find that changing their looks by altering hair color and style makes them most happy. I like being lean and strong. Will always told me that I didn’t have to be thin for him, but it wasn’t about him just as it isn’t about my husband, Rob, now. It is, and always has been, about me.

I started running in college. The university had this absurd idea that forcing its Liberal Arts undergrads to take P.E. classes would round us out as people and start us on the road to lifelong healthy habits. Then, as now, the idea that physical education does anything more than reinforce self-esteem issues is ridiculous. I didn’t mind the requirement. I had never disliked “gym class” really. Probably because I have always been a rather natural athlete.  I was never left standing unpicked and humiliated on the sidelines. I may not have had an overwhelming enthusiasm for every game I was required to participate in (dodge ball comes to mind), but I played and usually did quite well.

The jogging class, as it was called, was a quarter semester class like all the others. We would met on the green in front of the student union, and the instructor would give us his spiel of the day and then assign the laps and miles for the hour. I actually listened to most of what he had to say. I had tried running before but various problems from shin splints to sore feet to never being able to build up mileage had always dampened and then doomed my attempts. I learned quite a bit about shoes, stride, and training, but mostly I was just forced to run. Daily and far. After the class ended, I continued to run. It was difficult to do really. No one I knew ran. Truthfully, no one I knew exercised at all. All of my friends were of the genetically gifted class of short, thin and pretty. Although I lost weight when I went off to college, and continued to do so for most of my time there without much effort; I was tall, sturdy and plain. I admit that some of my motivation in the beginning was to be thin like everyone else I knew. As time went on though, I just grew to like it. The time spent in solitary pursuit of the next mile. Breeze blowing by. Tunes in my ear. Lost in my thoughts, daydreams mostly, but sometimes very good ideas or solutions to problems were worked through to a finished product. The best thing about running by far however was the freedom.

Most people regard aerobic exercise as punishment, and jogging or running certainly tops many a list of least favorites when it comes to getting in shape. Personally, I would rather grow to my sofa than participate in the types of alternatives that many of my peers prefer. Exercise classes of sheople dressed in Flashdance attire are akin to being put in a cage to me. Give me the open road, my walkman (now iPod), and a pleasant evening, and I was the happiest of women. The thing about running is that the motivation has to come from within. There is no one with a headset, plastic painted on smile and Stepford wife voice to shame you on. You have to push yourself. No one likes to push themselves, even when it has to be done, and most people reason that when it comes to exertion there is no such thing as “has to”.

After my daughter was born, I tried to get back into running. I missed me. I was okay with the weight I put on and would retain as a necessary part of pregnancy and nursing, but I missed the time with my thoughts and my music when no one could interrupt or impose. Those runs where more than “exercise”, they were a time to recharge and detoxify myself. I am not a loner, nor would I make a good hermit, but the time I spent with people, and the kinds of people I interacted with, wore on me. I needed to be free of my confining existence and when you can’t do that physically, the mind takes flight. Running gave my mind and soul their escape route.

I have been running again for maybe a month. I can run a mile and a half non-stop on a good asthma day. I try to run at least two miles all together and walk a few more. I know I will never run ten miles again and that’s okay. I have selfish desire to save my knees for my old age. I would like to run outdoors again though. Four miles maybe. Along a bike path on a sunny day. I wish I could put into words the true release and renewal that running for miles on end can be. It’s like breaking free of skin and bone and flying in certain respects. Running is soul food. And maybe that is an acquired taste.

Manscaping


In the Edmonton Journal today there was a piece in the Life section about the grooming of male body hair, particularly of the back variety. I read with great interest for a number of reasons. First, my husband is quite the furry mountain man. I remember vividly the first time he took his shirt off and I ran my fingers through all that hair. My inner teenager was shocked at just how pleasurable an experience it truly is.

I don’t know about all women but this woman was once a 15 year old girl who sat aghast with her best friend watching the shirtless neighbor mow his lawn. At least from that distance we could tell he was shirtless. From a house or two farther away, he just looked like a crazy man sweating in a coat as he struggled to finish his yard-work in the mid-evening summer heat. At that point in time, I couldn’t think of a single bigger turn-off than back hair, or front hair for that matter (and just to complete the tmi here, I didn’t yet know about the amount of hair below a man’s belt).

The second reason I read the article was to ascertain if I was truly a freak for loving my man with hair. And it turns out that I am, though I should have known this upon reading the posted responses on the widow board when one of the women posted a link to a dating profile where the gentlemen posed shirtless and proudly furry. The ewwwww chorus was unanimous and unequivocal. I wanted to chime in at that point with a comment about the utter sexiness of body hair on a man, but figured it would be lost on most of them. They still see themselves as 20 somethings and secretly envision taut and hairless young men in their mind’s eye. Back when I was so young and so much more inexperienced, they were the type of boys I thought attractive too. How I got from Shaun Cassidy to big, brawny and hairy is a mystery, but here I am.

The final reason I read the article was to  ascertain what, if anything, men did about too much hair in places that women found unattractive enough to make them self-conscious. The answer is little. There is shaving, waxing, exfoliating with depilatories and zapping the little guys with lasers.

My husband firmly discounts them all. I am not sure my enamored reaction to his fuzziness has sold him entirely on having become, in his words, a “sasquatch” because he would frankly have preferred it not to appear in almost direct proportion to the loss of hair on his head. Still, he is far too much of a man to care overly what the world at large thinks about his appearance.