Ageless Passions by Karen Putz

Author: Karen Putz

  • Aspire–Are You Living Your Life’s Purpose?

    The friend notification appeared like so many others.  “Kevin Hall wants to be friends on Facebook.”

    Kevin Hall?  The name wasn’t familiar to me.  I went on the internet to find out more.  A short time earlier, I connected with Chad Hymas, and discovered that they were good friends.  Kevin Hall, I learned, was a business consultant, speaker and the author of Aspire: Discovering Your Purpose Through the Power of Words.

    Intrigued, I accepted his friend request and shortly after, Kevin left a comment.  “I tried barefooting and ripped off some toenails in the process,” he wrote.  Of course, anyone who barefoots captures my attention these days.  I began visiting his page on a daily basis, buoyed by the positive quotes and sharing that he put forth.

    “Can you tell me more about you?” I asked in a direct message.

    Kevin wrote back, “My purpose in life is help others discover and fulfill their purpose. That is the objective of Aspire and we have been receiving some wonderful feedback on it. Please don’t hesitate to let me know how I can serve you. Namasté.”

    I don’t often order books since I prefer to use the library, but something inside of me told me to order his book.  I asked Kevin what made him reach out to connect with me on Facebook.

    “Probably just destiny,” he wrote.  “We are all connected Karen and we are all in this together trying to do our best to contribute and make a difference. Excited to hear your thoughts as you read Aspire.”

    I brought the book with me on my trip up to Wisconsin to barefoot with Joann O’Connor. There was no time to read, as we spent three days on the water.  After working a picnic for ZVRS, I woke up early the next day and decided to read the book and nurse my sore muscles with a hot bath.  Hours later, I finally emerged and I knew I was in the middle of a book that I would treasure for a long time.

    Kevin wrote the book centered around eleven words.  In the foreword by Stephen R. Covey titled “Finding Your Bliss,” he writes:

    The more you understand words and the layers within them, the more it helps you understand your path and purpose.

    Right after reading the very first chapter, I knew that it was indeed, destiny, that connected me to Kevin Hall.  Within the first chapter, I found a word that I wanted to share with my audience at the Family Support Conference which took place yesterday.

    “How many of you have heard of the word, ‘Genshai’?” I asked.

    Not a single hand went up.

    Genshai (pronounced GEN-shy) means simply that you never treat anyone else in a manner that makes them feel small.  This includes yourself.  Kevin kindly gave me a speech lesson via an interpreter on the videophone so that I could confidently pronounce it during my presentation.

    This word struck home with me because growing up, I measured myself against folks with normal hearing– simply because all of my friends and role models were people who could hear.  Thus, I felt small in some ways.  “If only I had normal hearing, I would do this… or do that…” I thought.  That view was occasionally reinforced by others who felt I couldn’t or shouldn’t do certain things because I was lacking the full sense of hearing.  In college, I wanted to become a labor and delivery nurse.  The counselor that I consulted gave me a hundred reasons why that profession was not right for me: the communication challenges would be too great and it would be hard to find anyone to hire me.  What a message! Of course, I felt small after leaving this session and this partly lead me to chose another profession.  A few years later, I met deaf doctors, deaf dentists, deaf lawyers… and of course, deaf nurses!

    I wanted the professionals, the parents, the deaf and hard of hearing adults in the audience to walk away with this word and incorporate it into everything they do when working with deaf and hard of hearing children.  The field is strife with communication wars, short-changed expectations and opposing camps who cannot sit down and connect with one another openly.  When you practice Genshai with everyone you meet, your mind is open to new possibilities and your heart listens.  You blaze a kinder path in your wake.

    After I closed the book, I had to ask myself, “Am I living my life’s purpose?”  I know I’m still the process of discovery with my life path.  I’ve done some wonderful things, but there’s a sense of so much more ahead– more that I want to experience and share.  I’m excited at the possibilities that lie ahead and I’m filled with joy at the things that I’m doing now.

    Thank you, Kevin, for reaching out on Facebook.

  • Writing for the Chicago Tribune TribLocal

    The email came out of the blue.  It was titled, “DeafMom Tweets.”  It was from Amy Alderman, a staff reporter and producer from the Chicago Tribune TribLocal.

    “Dear Karen,” she wrote. “I just wanted to write to say I really enjoy your tweets. By any chance, are you based in the Chicago suburbs? I work as a reporter and producer for the Chicago Tribune’s TribLocal online and print news, and I’m looking for new bloggers for our sites.”

    Would I be interested?

    I love when new opportunities like that pop up.  So I said yes.  I was a little scared to take on more work at a time when I was completely overwhelmed, but writing for the Chicago Tribune TribLocal has been fun.  I have been writing online and in print for various publications for years, but there’s something about being able to pick up the newspaper on a Thursday morning and see an article in there that I’ve written–well, that just puts a smile on my face.

    This week, I wrote about how Facebook and Twitter have brought me many wonderful opportunities to meet people online and face-to-face.  I had a blast barefooting with Dan Tanis and Jeff Hoekstra on Cedar Lake:

    Here are the three articles printed so far:

    Karen Putz Debuts on TribLocal

    Barefoot Water Skiing with a Senior Citizen

    Adventures with Facebook and Twitter

    More to come!

  • Officially a Mom of Three Teenagers

    Today’s a big day.  This is the day that Steven turns thirteen.

    It’s official.  I’m a mom of three teenagers.

    How did the time go by so fast?  I can remember his birth as if it was just yesterday…

    When I was pregnant with Steven, I had the brilliant idea of ripping out our bathtub and putting in a large soaking tub so that I could labor comfortably in it.  Joe went along with it.  It was only a few hundred dollars for the tub and we figured we could do most of the work ourselves.  Never mind that it involved removing half of our double sink and putting a toilet in that space.  Such a simple job, we thought.

    The work was moving along slowly.  Joe framed the bathtub and we hired a plumber to do all the pipe work.  A friend helped tear down the tile and we hired someone else to tile up the side of the tub and walls just days before the birth.    When the midwife and naturopath arrived, Joe was working on the floor.

    I was a bundle of nerves and I couldn’t quite get settled that week.  I had no doubts about doing a homebirth, but there was an unease inside of me, a lot of it had to do with concerns that I didn’t recognize until much later after the birth.  Someone had advised me to pray to St. Therese for this birth and I learned that this saint answers prayers with “a shower of roses.”   As we got ready to take a walk that evening, the midwife casually mentioned that she received a beautiful bouquet of red roses from a mom who had homebirthed with her.

    I knew that was my sign.  From that point on, I was enveloped with an amazing, calm feeling.  I simply focused on each breath and dove into the hypno-birthing from that point on.   During the pushing, I was using Christie Lake as a focal point in my mind.  At one point, the naturopath was applying fundal pressure and I saw a sparkle of blue lights.  It was as if I was floating on the lake on a beautiful summer day and the lake was twinkling in the sun.  I recently learned that it’s a sign of Mother Mary being present.   There definitely was some divine intervention for Steven’s birth, because I was given Cytotec at the beginning–which can cause ruptures and is very unsafe for VBACs.   I did not know this at that time.  I later wrote an article about the dangers of Cytotec which was published in Midwifery Today and DON’T CUT ME AGAIN! True Stories About Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC).

    The day that Steven entered this world was an amazing one and I do have lots of good memories of his birth.  Despite the medical aspect, the midwife and naturopath tended to me well.  They sang, they cooked, they did laundry, they soothed and they supported me.  If I could do it all over again, without a doubt, I would have homebirthed all three kids.  I was fortunate to attend several births since then, including a home waterbirth and a winter solstice birth.

    So here I am, thirteen years later with a house full of teenagers.  You know all those horror stories that everyone has about teens?  Hogwash.  The teen years are the best years.

    “Mom?  Can I go to Buffalo Wild Wings with my friends?  I need some money.”

    “Sure, honey.  I’ll give you fifteen bucks.  But first, mop the kitchen floor, clean the upstairs bathroom and do a load of laundry.  Then you can go.”

    Happy Birthday, Steven Michael!

  • Driving a 1952 John Deere Tractor

    I was winterizing the jet ski when Dad came out of the garage.  “What happened to your trailer?” he asked, pointing to the wheel crank. The handle was bent.

    “I jackknifed two years ago when I backed it up for the first time,” I sheepishly explained.  “I left the back door up on the truck and I couldn’t see the end of the trailer when I was backing up.”

    He threw his head back and laughed. Because you see, I have a history of “accidents” with motorized toys.   I once broke off the handle in the back of the snowmobile while whipping Joe on a sled in the middle of the lake.  A couple of years ago, I backed the ATV out of the shed and forgot about the snow plow attached in front.  The plow caught the door frame and I pulled the entire front of the shed off the foundation.  Fortunately, Dad didn’t lecture me too much as we pounded the shed frame back into place.  Another time, I was pulling the pontoon out of the barn with the ATV and forgot to put it in four-wheel drive and I snapped off the hitch.

    “Let me go get some wrenches and I’ll fix the crank for you.”

    In two minutes, he had the handle straightened out and the crank working again.  He went back in the house as I continued to winterize the jet ski.  I ran the anti-freeze through, fogged the engine and shut it off.  I went in the garage to look for a socket wrench and after a few minutes, I found the size I needed to remove the battery cables.  I went back in for an adjustable wrench to remove the battery from the housing.  If there’s one thing you should know about my Dad, he has every tool imaginable.  However, finding what you need when you need it is a challenge:

    I went through every drawer, but I couldn’t find the adjustable wrench in the size that I needed.  So off I went into the house.  “Where’s the small, adjustable wrench?”  I asked.

    Without missing a beat, he said, “Second drawer.”

    It took a bit of digging, but sure enough, I found the wrench buried deep in the second drawer.  I finished up with the jet ski and drove it up to the barn to put it away.  The neighbors had put their boats away earlier and I slid the jet ski in the empty slot in the back.  I noticed that Dad’s tractor was sitting outside.  The neighbors had dragged it out of the barn but there was no way to put it back without starting it.

    “Hey Dad, the tractor is sitting outside,” I explained when I arrived back at the house.  “I think it’s time for you to teach me how to drive it.”  Dad raised one eyebrow, but he agreed to teach me the next day.

    Dad received this 1952 tractor as a gift from Tom Pursley, a local builder who built my parent’s house.  The tractor was one of the first two-cycle diesel engines with a gas pulling motor. The pulling motor stopped working, so the only way to get the tractor started was to tow it until it kicked into gear.  I hooked the strap up to the hitch and hopped into the truck.  “Put it in low,” Dad reminded me. “Tow me toward the road and when it kicks in, you can take the strap off.”

    I moved the truck forward and tightened the strap and then gave it some gas.  Nothing.  I tried again, and the wheels spun.  The tractor stayed in place.  I backed up a bit, gave it some more gas.  The strap tugged the truck back.

    Turns out, Dad left the brake engaged on the tractor.  Score one for me!  At least it wasn’t me messing up this time!  I pulled ahead and the tractor rolled forward.  We hit the road and the tractor started. But I celebrated too soon.  I had moved the truck to the side and put it in park and jumped out to release the strap just as Dad let the clutch out too fast.  The wheel ran over the strap.  The strap was too tight to remove.  Dad ended up putting the tractor in reverse to release the tension and I unhooked the strap.

    I parked the truck and hopped on to the tractor for my lesson.  It turned out to be pretty simple to run a tractor.  Put it in gear, release the clutch and off you go.  Pull the clutch along with the brakes and you can stop the thing.  I had fun driving it around with Dad hanging on. I think I’m ready to chop some corn down in a field.

    Well, kind of ready.  I let Dad put it back in the barn.

  • From Waterskiing to Barefooting

    Ann C wanted to know, how does one go from water skiing to learning how to barefoot:

    As a kid, I’ve water-skiied and slalomed on water to the point I could do a quick turn-’round and jump the wakes, also slalom with eight other ppl on ski’s, weaving in and out under and over the ropes. The latter stunt required a boat with a lotta horsepower. Also powder skiied on slopes for several years. I’ve had my share of flat-facing both on water and snow, heh.

    Gotta ask ya, how does one start at a barefoot, off a dock or pulling outta the water literally? Hey, pulling outta water on slalom ain’t easy, takes a lot of balance and knowing if the boat has got enough horsepower. If one were to go from skiing to barefooting, how’d one start?

    I gotta tell ya, Ann, the easiest way to learn barefoot water skiing is off a boom, from an experienced teacher.  When I went down to the World Barefoot Center this spring, I used a boom for the first time and my first thought was, “Wow, this is a lot easier than behind the boat!”

    You can move from the boom to learning a deep water start off the five-foot rope extension strapped to the boom.  To do a deep water start, you grip the handle near your hips, place your feet on the rope and lie back in the water.  As the boat picks up speed, you sit up on the water, place your heels gently and stand up. Once you master the extension, you can move the deep water start to the long line behind the boat. Take a look at Joann O’Connor (61-years-young!) doing the start:

    To learn to barefoot behind the boat with a 75- or 100–foot-rope, you can either start off on a wakeboard/kneeboard or by kicking off a ski.  I learned with a kneeboard and I never really mastered barefooting off a ski– I face planted half of the time!

    I highly recommend the World Barefoot Center if you’d like to try barefooting for the first time.  The WBC team is great to work with and they even have a swing to sit in off the boom for first-timers.

  • Missing More Than Just a Conversation

    Today’s post is a guest post by The Hearing Company.  I asked them to share some funny stories and they did not disappoint.  Read on!

    MISSING MORE THAN JUST A CONVERSATION…

    Guest article for DeafMomWorld.com from UK based high street hearing aid retailer The Hearing Company

    As hearing aid retailers in the UK for more than 50 years, The Hearing Company is well versed in the need for crystal clear hearing.

    But for an example of someone ‘learning the hard way’ look no further than Brazilian Valdemar Lopes de Moraes.

    The 39 year old was suffering from ear ache but ended up receiving more radical treatment from his doctor – a vasectomy.

    As reported by news agency Reuters, staff at the clinic had really called out the name Aldemar, who was actually scheduled for the snip, but hard of hearing Mr de Moraes headed for the treatment room instead.

    When asked later why he didn’t complain, the father of two said he thought his ear inflammation “must have spread downwards.”

    Travel a bit closer to home and quirky cases still prevail, though perhaps with slightly less significant consequences.

    A favourite of staff at The Hearing Company comes from the casebook of one of its hearing aid dispensers.

    It is standard procedure to follow up any delivery of a brand new hearing aid with a visit to monitor the customer’s progress and to offer advice and help if required.
    This particular customer used her visit to express real concern over losing her hearing aid.  She concluded that the dispenser must have mistakenly taken it with him when he had met her the previous week.

    Calmly he confirmed that he did not have her hearing aid and perhaps it would be a good idea for the lady to retrace her steps to see if the device was nearby.

    As the pair checked the kitchen, the customer recalled a recent and particularly upsetting encounter in the room with “the biggest snail ever”.  A morbid fear of snails had led her to stamp on the offending creature and throw it out of the back door.

    No prizes for guessing what the plastic debris outside really was. We are only grateful the customer didn’t find an actual snail and pop that in her ear instead…

    The moral of the story? Take good care of your hearing and act quickly (and with caution) if you encounter a problem. And for those who do wear a hearing aid, take good care of the device that helps you hear…and perhaps consider taking a sight test as well!

  • When Fear Holds You Back

    “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

    This quote by Eleanor Roosevelt is something that I remind myself of every now and then.  Fear is often the emotion behind the reason we hold back.  “What if…”

    One of the hardest things for me to do with my boys was to let them play football.  It wasn’t that I detested the sport (slamming others to the ground, ugh!), it was the idea that they could lose more hearing by butting their heads into someone else’s.  We have a family history of people losing their hearing from knocking around our heads:

    For many years, my family was unique when it came to stories about hearing loss. Everyone in my family, for five generations, was born with hearing in the normal range. My Mom started losing her hearing as a teen. She became deaf at the age of 27.

    “I was at a family BBQ and all of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t hear anything,” Mom shared. “I could see that lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.” Just like that, my Mom became deaf. Her five siblings also were deaf or hard of hearing.

    I have four older siblings. My sister, Linda, was almost three years old when she fell off of a chair and hit her head on the corner of a baseboard. Later that week, my Mom noticed that she wasn’t responding to people. She began to stop talking. She was diagnosed with a profound hearing loss. My brother, Dennis, grew up with normal hearing and at the age of 36, he was hit on the head by a wooden beam at work and woke up in the hospital with severe hearing loss. My sister, Jeanie, grew up with a unilateral hearing loss and around the same age as my mom, began losing more hearing. In her mid-forties, she slipped on a rug and became profoundly deaf. My brother, Kenny, developed a moderate hearing loss in his late 30’s.

    I became very sick with a high fever as a child and my parents believe it was that illness which triggered my hearing loss when I was in elementary school. My first hearing aid was given to me when I was nine– but I only wore when at school. I found that it caused headaches and tinnitus and I often took it off after school and never touched it during the summer. When I was 19, I was water skiing on my bare feet at a high speed and fell sideways into the water. For weeks, I thought I just couldn’t get the water out of my ear. I had become profoundly deaf. From that point on, hearing aids were a constant thing in my life. Years later, my brother Kenny also lost some hearing from barefooting.

    Whenever I would share my family’s story about how we all became deaf and hard of hearing, people would be incredulous at the events that lead to hearing loss. “Y’all need to stop banging your heads,” one person remarked.

    Joe and I had long, deep discussions about whether or not to let the boys play football.   We both agreed that we didn’t want this gene to hold our family back– after all, my Mom went deaf in the middle of a conversation–she had done nothing to provoke the hearing loss.   My sister did not agree with our decision, she felt we were taking too much of a risk in allowing the boys to play a contact sport.  The kids have always known they could lose more hearing at any time, but I didn’t want them tiptoeing through life.

    Last week, I found myself facing a little bit of fear that surprised the heck out of me.  I was up in Wisconsin spending three days barefooting with Joann O’Connor. We were kicking back after a great day of footin and had just finished dinner.  Joann casually suggested that I try some wake crossing the next day.  All of a sudden, I felt like the wind was knocked out of me.  “I don’t know about that,” I said.  “After all, that’s how I ended up falling and going deaf.”

    Like I said, it surprised the heck out of me.  I had long ago accepted the transition from hard of hearing to deaf and was quite comfortable with my life.  There was a little tiny piece inside of me that wanted to hang on to the little bit of hearing that I had left with hearing aids.  I already knew what it was like to be stone deaf once the hearing aids hit the nightstand.  Was I ok with being stone deaf if I whacked my head again and all of it went poof?

    Joann and I discussed it and I told her if I lost the bit of hearing that was left, I’d be ok with it.  I still wasn’t sure if I was going to tackle any wake crossing though.  Heck, I spent the entire summer trying to conquer a deep water start and I just wanted to learn to get back up on the water.  I had spent the afternoon trying one deep water start after another with no success.

    It was 6:30 a.m. when Joann and I reached for the wetsuits and headed for the boat.  “Here, try the shoe skis,” Joann suggested.   No sooner did I stand up on the shoe skis then my feet went off in two different directions and I face planted.

    “Hey, you stood up too fast!” Joann explained.  I gritted my teeth and leaned back in the water for a second try.  This time, I patiently planted my feet and got up slowly.  I could see Joann grinning from the boat.

    I looked at the wake and all of a sudden I said to myself, “What the heck!”  I went for it.  I crossed over once, crossed over twice and by the third time… I was grinning back at Joann.

    “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

    Good ole Eleanor was right.

  • The Kronewitters– A Blast from the Past

    I drove to Huzzy lake last week with great anticipation.  I had connected with the Kronewitter family via Facebook and for the first time in about 25 years, I was going to see them again.  The family was celebrating Andy’s birthday and I brought along a super soaker pump as his gift.  Not only was it a tribute to the fourth of July boat parades of the past when we would go around and soak the other boaters, but it was also a gift for traumatizing him as a kid.

    In my teen years, I hung out with Andy’s sisters, Tammy and Tracy.  The three of us spent entire summers together on the water, sometimes skiing up to eight times a day.   In a previous post, The Older I Get, The More Adventure I Want, I wrote about them here:

    Then there were the ATV toys that the Kronewitters brought into the picture.  They had two ATVs and a Dune Buggy.  The very first day that we unloaded the brand-new ATV off the truck, the youngest Kronewitter rode it into a tree and bent the foot rest.  That didn’t stop us. Tammy, Tracy and I would pack a lunch and hit the roads around the lake.  We explored abandoned houses and got lost a couple of times.  We built a dirt ramp in a field and borrowed Tim Brown’s dirt bike to add to the mix.  At one point, I had to go to the bathroom, so I rode the dirt bike home and headed inside.  Mom stopped me at the door.  “Whose motorcycle is that and why are you riding it?”  She was not pleased.

    Fun was the operative word of my childhood.  Tammy, Tracy and I often came up with crazy ideas to pass the time.  We did an all-girl pyramid with me at the top.  We did three of us on two pairs of skis, with me riding in the back binder of each.  We tied ropes around black truck inner tubes which folded practically in half when pulled, but we hung on.  We boat jumped (don’t even ask).  We attempted to jump over each other with kneeboards–which ended right after I knocked Tammy in the head.  We settled for pulling up on the rope and jumping over the rope instead.  And one day, we had a competition with another boat on the lake, to see which boat could pull the most skiers.  We won, with eight.

    (Tracy and Tammy on bottom, me on top)

    One day, I drove up to the lake by myself for the week.  I invited a bunch of friends over that night and we sat around playing cards.  Suddenly, they all jumped.  “What’s going on?” I asked.

    “There’s a noise coming from the bedroom,” one of them explained.  They all jumped again and some of them started to scream.

    “Ok,” I said.  “Follow me into the bedroom and we’ll see what’s going on!”

    I grabbed a monkey wrench and Tammy grabbed a broom and we all crept into the bedroom.  I flipped on the light.

    Nothing.  We all relaxed a bit and then suddenly, the screaming began again.  The girls rushed back into the kitchen with me following behind.

    “It’s coming from outside!” one of them said.

    Another one screamed.  “It’s coming from that window!”

    “Ok, we’re going outside,” I said.  “Jenny, flip on the floodlights and let’s head out.  If we all go together, whatever it is, we can handle it together.”

    As soon as Jenny hit the lights, we saw them.  It was Andy and his friend, Billy.  We chased after them but they took off into the darkness.

    So what do six scared girls do?  They plan revenge.

    The next night, we removed a screen in Tammy’s house and crept inside the window.  We were armed with duct tape and ropes.  We tiptoed over to where Andy and Billy were sleeping and we pounced on them.  Duct tape went over their mouth and rope on their hands and feet.  We hauled them outside and tossed them into the rowboat and set them loose, minus the oars.  We sat on the bank and watched them wriggle loose as the sun came up.   As soon as they started paddling to shore, we took off.

    Later that day, we held a meeting and declared a truce.  They never messed with us gals again.

    So when I saw Andy again, I promised to reimburse him for any therapy that he needed as a result of that kidnapping.

    “I sure hope you weren’t traumatized by that,” I chuckled as we reminisced.

    “I’ve got some duct tape and rope around here to return the favor!” he said.

    Tammy and me

    Tammy and me on bottom, Tracy on top

  • Turning 45 and Celebrating

     

    Last year’s birthday and this year’s birthday– quite a difference!  Last year, I sat in the pontoon and had a moment of looking back on my teen years and crying.  At the age of 44, I figured the best years were over with.  No one was barefoot water skiing on the lake anymore and even the younger generation wasn’t taking up the sport.

    Then the hubby sent me a fateful link to Judy Myers, the “Old Lady” who is now 67-years-old and competes in barefoot water ski tournaments.  In fact, she’s in Germany right now, competing in the World Barefoot Tournament.   Earlier this year, I went down to the World Barefoot Center and met Judy and Keith St. Onge and as soon as I put my feet on the water, I was bitten by the barefoot bug again.

    I have been working up in Michigan this week and every day, I’ve been barefooting.  I accomplished one successful deep water start this week, my fourth one this summer (one step forward, twenty steps back, but I’m getting there!) Yesterday, I managed to pull a muscle in my back on my second run– I lost my balance on the kneeboard just as David hit the throttle and silly me, I pulled back trying to salvage the start. Ouch.

    The best part of getting back into barefooting has been a surprising one.  My older friends are starting to rethink the process of getting older and changing some choices– they’re looking ahead with hope and inspiration– instead of the same resignation that I experienced last year.   I tell them stories about the 61-, 67-, 75-, 82- year olds that are out on the water.  And about Banana George who barefooted at the age of 94.  Inspiration is like a ripple: start one and the ripple goes on.   The stories aren’t about barefooting, they’re about challenging the “I-can’t-do-that-because-I’m-too-old” mentality.

    Next week, I will be barefooting with 61-year-old Joann O’Conner, who learned to barefoot backwards just a year ago!  How’s that for inspiration?  And to top it off, she has a fused ankle!

    So this year, I won’t be crying in the boat.  Instead, I’m going to calculate how many Motrin it’ll take to hit the water again.

  • Grabbing the Last Bit of Summer

    It’s that time of the year again.  The “winding down” days of summer.  Summers at the lake are measured by the number of days that the pier stays in the water and as my family gets older, it seems like we take the pier out earlier each year.

    But we’re not there just yet.  This week is family week– my cousins are up from Missouri and it’s a week of making memories.  My cousin Cheri and I have grown closer over the years.  We didn’t know each other much growing up, but we’ve fostered a friendship as we’ve gotten older.  I love her like a sister now.

    As most of you know, my Dad is working on kicking cancer in the rear end.  He kicked it in the corner for a while, but we just learned that it has spread toward the lungs.  The doctor has suggested starting chemo again in a month.  Dad is going for a second opinion on my birthday and I’m hoping the new doctor will come up with some better ways to kick it back in the corner.

    Speaking of my upcoming birthday, I won’t be crying in the boat like last year.  I’ll be celebrating on the water instead, barefooting and wakeboarding.   I took up wakeboarding for the first time a few weeks ago.  When I announced that I was going to try it, David raised his eyebrow.  “Are you sure you can handle that, Mom?”

    Ooo, the kid rankled me up inside.  “Watch me!” I said.  I strapped myself to the board and got ready for a dock start.  David gunned the jet ski and I took off.

    I faceplanted right into the water.

    Uh oh, I thought to myself.  What have I gotten myself into?

    Back on the dock, it took two more tries before I found myself balancing on top of the water.  I felt like a 12-month-old toddler who had just learned to walk.  I wobbled back and forth, trying to get used to the rocking board.  I didn’t get too far before I found myself embracing the water again, face first.

    David circled around, expecting to pick me up and take me back for another dock start.  “I’m going to get up here,” I said.  I thought I saw David’s eyebrow raise again, but he caught himself in time.  He gave me some pointers on how to get up.

    I popped right out of the water on the first try and had nice run.

    Take that, son!

    “I’m going to do a 180 tomorrow!” I announced.  David laughed.  This time, he definitely raised his eyebrow again.  “All right, Mom, I’d like to see you do a 180.”

    I did the 180 on my first try and attempted a second one, but fell.  The dang kid missed the whole thing.  “I didn’t see it!” David said as he circled around.

    “What do you mean you didn’t see it!  I did it!”

    “You gotta do it again.  I want to see it,” he insisted.

    I got up again and I made sure David was looking back when I swung the wakeboard around the water.  I did it a second time for good measure.  Then I promptly lost my balance and fell on my rear.

    “Never doubt your Mother,” I told him.