Confessions of a Tin Man

Well, it’s March in the Southwest, and yesterday afternoon I went running in shorts. Generally speaking, though, spring isn’t a time of ease in Santa Fe: The winds whip, the dust flies, and tumbleweed goes on the offensive. Steve calls it “dirt in your mouth” weather.

I’m not at ease, either. The other night at yoga, I was as creaky as the Tin Man. My old body was gone and I was now in possession of an entirely different one. Everything hurt. The instructor was a substitute, and spoke yoga in a crazy exotic French accent that was almost impossible to understand. I do know she kept talking about our kidneys. As in, “Open through the kidneys. Feel your kidneys. Soften your kidneys.” I don’t know where my kidneys are nor can I feel them, but they seem fraught with danger lately, on account of my dad’s kidney cancer. All the kidney talk made me clench even harder to the stress I’ve been holding for the past few months.

During the 10 weeks my father was sick, I wore my stress like a heavy coat. It draped over every inch of muscle and skin and bone. I swear I could feel it pulsing through my cells and blood. It was everywhere, insidious. My upper back—already sore from nursing baby M—began to hurt so much I was certain I had some rare form of spinal cancer. My wrists ached. The top of my head felt prickly, like I was being scalped. My hair began to shed—I could pull out small handfuls in one sitting. I was pretty sure that I was dying, too.

After each trip home to the East Coast, I’d come back to my husband and daughters and try to wrap my brain around being a daughter and a mother at the same time. I didn’t know how to do both separately, so I multitasked, and took on my dad’s pain as my own. Grief is contagious, and unbearably physical.

Now the grief comes and goes, like swimming through a murky pond. You’re out of the weeds; then you’re back in again. The other night at yoga, I went back into the weeds. When I’m not cloaked head-to-toe in stress, I tend to hoard it in my upper back and shoulders. I know this about myself, but I was still surprised when the simple act of trying to rotate my ears to my shoulders made me dizzy and discombobulated. My neck had rusted shut—how had this happened?

If vulnerability is our greatest strength, how can I use this bottle neck that is my neck—my point of weakness—to morph from a worrier into a warrior? How can I move through the anxiety of fear into the ease of letting go? A friend of mine, when I’d get stuck on something, used to ask, “What does easy look like?” These days, I don’t need easy, but I will happily settle for ease.