In her youth, Sister Bernadette had likely been a petite woman, probably close to my height. Age and some progressive form of bone or maybe muscular disease had rendered her a disquieting figure. With her head bowed down to her chest and her chest bent nearly to her thighs, she was less than four-feet-tall.
More than her physical appearance, what took me aback was our ensuing conversation. Sister Bernadette’s condition forced her to literally cough out her words in short, halted utterances. Reluctant to ask her to repeat herself, I leaned in closely, laboring to understand her words. I simply nodded and semi-smiled at what I couldn’t comprehend, which was nearly everything.
As I wheeled Sister Bernadette to the music room, I shook my head. My very first resident encounter and already I’d failed. It was too soon to give up though. I had hours ahead of me and a couple dozen more people to assist.
All the residents I met had their own challenges and distinct personalities. In one short day, I grew to know and appreciate each of them.
Paulette had a neurological condition. She cried easily and often, for no obvious reason, but music seemed to comfort her. Within minutes, I developed a special soft spot for her. A smile from Paulette meant everything.
Father Louie, in his eighties, was a smart-ass retired priest who kept me laughing. As I led him from his room, I had a difficult time maneuvering his wheelchair, which seemed to have a bad wheel. “Wow,” he deadpanned, as I bumped the wall while rounding a corner. “That was a close call. We almost didn’t make it.” Father Louie never let me forget this. On the way back to his room, later that afternoon, he leaned his head back toward me and murmured, “I hope you’re a better driver now.”
Two of the residents were each over a hundred years old. One was completely nonverbal, but she managed to communicate through gestures and facial expressions that she wanted to sit through both chime choir and the subsequent music therapy session, as well as the dice game that followed in the activity room.
Chime choir proved difficult. This wasn’t due to the residents’ physical or mental challenges. I soon realized the weakest link was me.
I tried to follow along with the written music and my marked parts, but I didn’t know several songs and could also never figure out when it was my turn to “chime” in. The residents were patient with me, providing lots of encouragement even when I couldn’t keep up.
I didn’t recognize a few songs during that afternoon’s music therapy session either. One of the participants offered to sing them first, to give me some guidance. Once I was trained and we were each provided with a musical instrument, our informal concert began.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t a Catholic hymn or a forties tune that proved to be the resident fan favorite. The most popular song? “YMCA.”
Even those in wheelchairs stomped, clapped, or moved their arms along with this apparent classic. The Village People had nothing on this geriatric crowd.
I watched Sister Odie interact with the residents. She was extremely organized, if not a bit strict. I soon realized this diligence was necessary to keep the group involved and on track. And she clearly wasn’t lacking a soft side. She told me later how she loved her work and how music therapy truly seemed to help the residents.
“It’s important to keep them engaged, to be active participants in life,” she said. “They need that now more than ever. That’s why I’m here.”
A few of the residents echoed that same thought. Activities like music therapy and chime choir made them feel sharp and purposeful.
“You know,” one of them told me, “some of the other residents never even leave their rooms. Some can’t, and some choose not to. I feel bad for them. Activities like this mean so much to me.”
I passed by rooms of other residents who were either too physically or mentally impaired, or else too despondent, to participate in OLA’s activities.
I mentioned this to Sister Odie. “That has to be disheartening,” I said.
She nodded and said that some of the residents, including a couple members of the chime choir, were “slipping.” Her expression grew sad, yet she shrugged. “It’s inevitable. I just stay focused and keep doing my work. I help as many as I can.”
When you work in a nursing home for so many years, you are forced to witness many people, including those you’ve come to know as close friends, decline physically and mentally. I admired Sister Odie’s matter-of-fact strength. It was a necessary trait in order to encourage each of them to thrive—and for her to carry on.
When I approached Sister Bernadette to take her back to her room, her face lit up. I realized that throughout the entire day, I had never seen her without a smile. She grasped my hand, peered up at me, and whispered something. I didn’t understand what she said, other than one word: “happy.”
It didn’t matter if I couldn’t comprehend everything she said. I understood what she was feeling. Hugging her, I told her I was so happy to have met her. And I meant it.
Even given all my initial misgivings, Sister Bernadette and so many of the nursing home residents made me smile that day. They also gave me inspiration and hope—through their continued determination, vibrancy, and wit.
Maybe the opportunity and ability to enjoy life doesn’t need to end when our body and mind begin to fail. If we remain open and positive, perhaps more pleasure and purpose lie ahead.
I had already managed to change and enrich my life a bit at age fifty-two. I could only imagine what I might pull off by the time I was one-hundred-and-three.
Chapter 22:
ZIP-A-DEE-DO-DAH
I’d lost count of how many times I found myself mid-step into a new situation speculating that it wasn’t such a terrific idea after all. Yet I’d never passed the point of no return and still been consumed with such fear that I prayed there was some way, any way, out.
Not until I was strapped upside down into a harness, dangling seventy-five feet above the ground, with only an inch-thick cable to save me from crashing to my death.
I’d never been afraid of heights, per se. I could stand and gaze out, with only minimal heart palpitations, from the observation platform on the top of a high-rise building. If my feet were planted firmly on a stable surface that wasn’t moving, and if the odds appeared slim that I’d find myself moving—in a fast downward spiral—only then was I good to go.
But I’d been plagued by a lifelong aversion to falling. It’s that physical feeling of falling—specifically, the sensation of your stomach rushing up into your throat as you dropped. Dear Lord. That. If the subsequent thump on the far-below ground didn’t kill me, I knew I’d suffocate. The autopsy would find my stomach lodged tight in my windpipe.
I learned to just say no to rollercoasters and to cope with air travel by downing a pre-flight Bloody Mary. One drink usually sufficed to soften the blow of my presumed impending death.
The idea of zip-lining, suggested by a thoughtful friend who knew my fear all too well, gave me nightmares and day terrors for a week. My friend, Murf, and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Leah, appeared giddy about joining me. I figured Leah, a college freshman, still possessed that teenaged sense of naïve invincibility. But Murf, whom I’d known since grade school and who clung to her comfort zones as tightly as I did? I could only assume her middle-aged mental faculties were slipping.
We’d signed up for a zip-lining excursion in the gorgeous Hocking Hills region in southern Ohio. The company’s website listed a handful of options, each ensuring a beautiful experience we’d “want to do again and again.” I suspected this PR spin held as much real promise as a plastic cup of poisoned purple Kool-Aid. But I succumbed to the zip-lining cult, nonetheless.
Based on the brief descriptions, we chose the Super Zip option over the full Canopy Tour. The listed specs indicated that the Super Zip was the cheapest and shortest ride: perfect for our budget, our schedule, and my hope to minimize the duration of agony.
Upon our arrival, however, we discovered the Super Zip was also the highes
t, steepest, and fastest zip-line of all.
Final score? Research: zero. Stupidity: infinity.
Imminent death laughed in my face.
We had little opportunity to contemplate the true terror of our half-assed planning while we plodded across the first of three steep rope-and-wood bridges leading up to the tower platform. We were too busy cringing and cursing as the sharply inclined bridge swayed with our every step. The website never mentioned precarious bridges. Probably, I just glossed over that section. As I do.
If I didn’t fanatically study every footstep while clenching the rope railing, I knew I was certain to roll backward, knocking down both my friends in a deadly game of human dominoes. Fear was one thing; but I was a pansy with piss-poor coordination.
By the second and higher bridge, even our fearless leader, Leah, paused. She steadied herself while gripping the railing, and suggested it wasn’t too late to back out. We huddled up, gave each other a pep talk, and stumbled onward.
We managed to cross the final bridge, reached the tower, and then climbed a few flights of steep steps to the top platform. By then, we’d already experienced ample thrills and chills for the day. Surely, now we could turn around.
At the top of the tower, however, Leah regained her courage. If she hadn’t been there, I undoubtedly would have scrambled back down. As I watched the people in front of us being snapped onto cables and sent flying through the air, my stomach rolled in waves. I came damn close to tears.
But the line moved quickly, and in only a few minutes we found ourselves next up for this suicide launch. The zip-line crew told us we had two options. One was to sit upright in a harness-type swing. This comfortable, almost nonthreatening position was the one I had seen in online photos and the same one a few of my readers had experienced and enjoyed.
The other option was to sprawl facedown, with our arms and legs extended, dangling vulnerably in what the crew called the “superhero” position.
Seriously? I was so not Superman. Super Chickenshit summed me up more accurately.
I hugged myself and murmured that the sitting position looked less terrifying.
The zip-line cable guy, a twentyish rugged sort who probably bungee-jumped and hopped out of airplanes every day before breakfast, shrugged. “Do you want less scary or do you want less dangerous?”
He held up a simple strap harness. “This is what you wear in the sitting position. With the superhero position, you wear that, plus this, too.” He held up a military looking vest with an assortment of straps, buckles, and hooks.
I didn’t have such a great history with safety harnesses and cables. More than thirty years ago, I had been talked into rappelling down a cliff, right here in Hocking Hills. Halfway through my descent, I realized the harness and cable were entwined within my T-shirt. Every step I took down the face of the cliff yanked my shirt higher. By the time I noticed this, my shirt was already hiked above my belly button. My choices were to either slip out of the harness and fall to my death, or to keep descending. So, the crowd eventually got a peep show, I plopped safely onto the ground, and I gave up that rappelling shit for good.
Embarrassment, however, was the least of my concerns while zip-lining. I wrung my hands as Cable Guy explained my two options. Seriously? Did I look like a moron? Yes, give me two safety harnesses! Give me twenty!
All three of us opted for the double-harness superhero version.
As I secured my helmet and was hitched into the mega-harness, dying remained a fairly big concern. And vomiting, before I ever took this dive, also seemed inevitable. Apparently, I would crash to my death while puking. Talk about a lose-lose situation.
I wasn’t the only one petrified. “Oh my God, look,” Murf said, holding out her hand. It was visibly shaking.
But while she and I contemplated our mutual terror, a grinning Leah was swooped away from the platform.
We watched as Leah took flight, and then Murf swiveled her head back at me. “That’s my daughter out there,” she said. “I need to follow her. I have to go!”
Oh, the mighty pull of maternal love.
As my friends were whisked off through the treetops, I knew I had to see this through, too. It was do or die. Or, more likely, do and die.
I assumed the position. Lying stomach-side down, I was hooked onto the cable. My feet managed to locate the back edge of the platform, and I flexed the toes of my shoes securely around it. I’d be damn certain to guarantee I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. What had I gotten myself into? Apparently, it’s easier to scribble an obscure idea on a to-do list, many months in advance, than it is to finally find yourself in a ready-set-go position.
Cable Guy asked me twice to pry my feet from the platform. I begged him three times to check all the buckles and hooks.
Once I loosened my ankle grip from the back edge, I was yanked upward and then forward, just enough for my head to extend past the platform and hover in thin air. The zip contraption paused, sadistically, right there. My body swung, upside down, from the cable. I eyed the ground far below for a mere moment before I squeezed my eyes shut.
I took a deep breath. I told myself I wasn’t really doing this. I tried to step outside myself, to pretend I was simply observing someone else in a scene in a movie. I’d done this before, say, during a Brazilian wax, and surprisingly, I’d found it could work.
Cable Guy counted down quickly: “Three, two, one.”
The cable yanked me off the platform, and I flew through the air.
I started off slowly before picking up speed. I awaited that sickening free-falling sensation I expected to endure just before death. But, oddly, it never struck me.
As I soared through the sky, I finally opened my eyes. Zip-lining was much like the flying dreams I’d had all my life—the same spread-arm position, same treetop vantage point—and surprisingly, the same exhilarating sensation. I began to feel secure in the harness, growing confident I wouldn’t fall to my death after all.
I soon determined, however, it was the trees that would kill me. Huge branches loomed just inches from my body. It was a jungle out there, and I couldn’t avoid it. No helmet or double-harness would save me when I smacked straight into a tree.
Yet, as I passed through the forest, I tried to reason with myself. Not one of the riders before me had been whacked by a branch, and it was doubtful the trees had repositioned themselves in the last few minutes.
I slowly relaxed. I half-smiled. And then, I began to wave my arms, as if I were indeed a superhero or else a bird. I was flying! If not an eagle, maybe I at least was an ostrich.
I glanced around at the hills and valleys and trees below. From this bird’s-eye view, the autumn foliage proved to be a gorgeous sight, indeed.
As I approached the landing platform, I remembered to pull in my arms and tuck my chin to my chest, as we’d been instructed. I swooped down, and a crew member guided me to a soft landing.
No vomiting. No crash landing. No sudden death. A triple bonus.
“So, what’d you think?” he asked me.
“Once I relaxed, well… Wow! It was really kind of fun!” I couldn’t believe these words came from my mouth. The horror of all my expectations aside, I actually had enjoyed the experience. Not the portion leading up to the flight. Or the moments of being strapped into the harness. But I rather fancied the flying part—and especially the not-dying part.
Leah was eager to head back out, as soon as we landed. Murf, who wasn’t so certain that dodging a tree wasn’t just a lucky break, announced she would never, ever go zip-lining again.
Me? I still needed some recovery time from the pre-flight trauma. But I knew it was at least possible I might return to fly through the trees again, another day.
Our adventure in Hocking Hills didn’t end on that landing platform. It culminated in an unexpected phenomenon at the bottom of a cavern.
With a few hours of daylight remaining, Murf was eager to hike one of the park’s trails. Leah and I were far less enthusiasti
c. The rain had started right after we finished zip-lining, and it showed no sign of ending. After we sat for a half hour in a shelter house, my relentless friend finally convinced us to head out. We set off on a muddy trail, with rain hoods, a single umbrella, and only one of us possessing a good attitude.
About a half-mile along the trail, we encountered a group of people ascending a makeshift set of stone stairs cut into a cliff.
“It’s beautiful down there,” one of them told us. “You really should check it out.”
I glanced down at the narrow, winding steps that were slick with wet fallen leaves. Leah and I exchanged frowns. We’d already zip-lined, hiked, and oohed and ahhed at the scenery. Whatever lay at the bottom of those stairs, even if it were hidden treasure, could not be worth the effort.
Despite our misgivings, Murf—the friend who once convinced me to let her drive my mother’s car on the sidewalk in her college town—soon talked us into slogging down the steep and slippery steps.
We maneuvered our way downward, Leah and I grumbling and grasping the rocky walls for stability. As we neared the bottom, Murf paused ahead of us.
“Wait. Do you hear some kind of music or singing?” she asked.
Yes, we heard singing, growing stronger with each step we took.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, which opened into a huge cavern. We gazed around to discover the cave was filled with Amish people. Dozens of men, women, and children in traditional Amish clothing surrounded us. Most were seated upon the huge half-circle of rock floor, while the rest stood behind them.
Every one of them was singing.
My friends and I listened, mesmerized. I’d never heard such perfectly harmonized singing, not in any church choir or Broadway chorus.
As they finished the last refrain of “Amazing Grace,” I felt compelled to break into applause. But clapping seemed somehow inappropriate or even sacrilegious: an inadequate and anticlimactic response to the magical moments we had just witnessed.
Just as the crowd began to disperse and we started to walk away, a man at the center of the cavern stood. He began playing the bagpipes. It was a haunting and soulful song. Everyone stopped and turned around to listen. As the music echoed through the cavern, my friends and I shook our heads and exchanged glances of silent disbelief.
Finding My Badass Self Page 10