Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Seeing Red

“It’s all in your head, Jess.”

The Bohemian is smirking at me from underneath the car. He’s on his back, flashlight in hand, neck arched. His face peers closely at all those critical parts, so rarely viewed. He’s in the underbelly of our Toyota.

This isn’t the first time he’s teased me with this. It’s a remark I can’t stand to hear, though the way the Bohemian delivers it, carries just enough love to make me interested in why I dislike it so. A week ago, he was echoing this sentiment as I groaned through sleepless nights, dealing with a pinched nerve in my lower back. Right now, it’s car trouble.

Today, the car’s temperature gauge is in the red, there is evidence of a leak, and I’m wondering how our one-car family will get through five days of no transportation. Every mechanic we know is booked until next week.

Thirty minutes ago, I didn’t even get as far as a mile down the road before the temperature was reading maximum. After cooling it down and topping off the coolant, the Bohemian has been doing test drives, trying to mimic my over-heating scenario.

“I put the air-conditioning on max, ran the defrost, drove it around…the temperature looks normal, Jess. And I don’t see anything leaking under here, either.”

I can still see the faint wet spot on the floor of our garage, left over from the morning, when I first noticed a decent-sized leak coming from under the radiator zone.

“But you saw that leak this morning, right? That wasn’t my imagination.”

“Yeah, I saw it, but it’s not doing it now. Nothing looks wet. I don’t see anything wrong.” He scooches out along his back and swings his body up to sitting, smiling.. “There is no problem.”

Believe me, I don’t want a mechanical problem. No more than I want a pinched nerve in my back keeping me from morning walks and a full-night’s sleep. But I can’t deny the tingling that runs down my leg, and I’m not sure I can trust that a simple trip into town may find me, hood up, alongside the highway again.

“Will you come with me to the post office and we can see what it does?”

“Sure.”

We drive fifteen miles or so. Run the air conditioning, drive up and down steep hills. We stop, check the pavement beneath the car. The temperature runs normal. There is not a drop to be seen.

All in my head…hmm.

I like to think that this mysterious life can be some sort of out-picturing of our interior world. That we are the writer, director, producer, and star of our own movie-in-the-making. Each scene is custom-made for us, for our experience and growth. And though we all live here together, and our plot-lines may intersect, no two movies are the same.

I’ve heard it said that five people can experience a situation together, but ask each one of them, individually, what happened, and you’ll get five very different stories. Each one of us sees the world through our own unique filter, shaping our life stories just the way we need.

The ever-steady Bohemian doesn’t need reminders about over-heating. I’m the one that seems too quick to lose my cool. He’s the one with oodles of patience, when I let the small things fray at my nerves.

So did I just manifest some little overheating drama on my way to the acupuncture appointment that was supposed to calm my nerves? Maybe I’m stretching a little further out on the woo-woo limb than necessary. But as the Toyota seems to be in working order as soon as the Bohemian enters stage left, I’m pondering the power of my script.

And the Bohemian has his own movie, too. One could suggest he just needed an excuse to leave work early, put on his hero cape, and come to his wife’s rescue. That he needed to remind us both, there is no problem.

We could catalog this incident in the metaphysical files under “?”. Move on to our old routine and just forget about it. But I’m too practical for that. I’ve secured a diagnostic with the mechanic next week.

From now until then, I’ll play with the metaphors of running hot and being nervous. Though, guaranteed,  I’ll be traveling with a gallon of water, some rags, and chronically checking under the hood.

I may be making this movie, but I’m still getting to know the Muse. Not quite sure where this little sub-plot is taking me.

courtesy of Oceanworks Car Blog
courtesy of Oceanworks Car Blog
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 7 Comments

Making Dreams Come True

My unconscious self must be trying to elevate me from the ground-down stasis of my current physical challenge. The challenge being this humbling pinched nerve in my hip (detailed in yesterday’s post).

Last night in my dreams, I was ready for lift-off. The fire was lit, and I was in the basket of a hot air balloon, on the verge of launching billowing, striped colors to the sky.

courtesy of Beverly and Pack
courtesy of Beverly and Pack

It’s always good to get fresh perspectives.

Like Jeb’s, who was the one to point out my dreams. Not last night’s, but the one I had 34 years ago, back in second grade.

He and I were looking through my little “School Days” scrapbook. The one made for holding keepsakes from kindergarten through graduation. Throughout my time in school, I faithfully completed every year, inserting report cards and special awards. I filled out each year’s form, writing in the spaces about friends, favorite sports, and hobbies.

In second grade, “Additional Information” contained a wish.

2014-11-19_balloon wish

Jeb turned the page to third grade.

“Hey, the next year you wrote: ‘I love…Gerardo?…I want to ride in a hot air balloon with him.’ Who’s Gerardo?”

“Ah,right. He was a boy in my class from Mexico, who didn’t speak much English. He was really quiet, but I liked him.”

“You wanted to ride in a hot air balloon for two years in a row, Mom.”

“And I haven’t yet.”

So to wake this morning with dreamtime memories of lift off, makes me think it’s time this little fantasy comes true.

No hot air balloons in Hawaii. But how about the Czech Republic?

Our family is slowly planning a summer trip back to the Bohemian’s homeland. A quick online search this morning reveals a company in Prague that offers hot air balloon rides, year-round. You can float above ancient castles, and see a bird’s eye view of the countryside and forests.

Maybe no Gerardo (though I hope he is well, wherever he may be). But a hot air balloon with my two other dreams-come-true: my son and my husband? Airborne in Europe? Well, that’s more than I could have imagined when I was seven.

2014-11-19_second grade

Sounds like a Must to me.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 6 Comments

From Ow to Now

It started with a dull ache. A few days of pain, that then culminated to one day of a downward spiral into paralysis. My body ground down to a halt, the nerve endings of my back and hip pulsing with a discomfort that made any posture hurt. Standing, sitting, horizontal- no positioning would allow me to get around the ow.

Two weeks later, with multiple bodywork and acupuncture sessions employed, I’m beginning to emerge from the haze, climbing (slowly) out of the pile of pillows, ice packs, tennis balls, and icy heat lotion. I think I can now safely shelve the bottle of ibuprofen.

It’s unnerving to have a pinched nerve. In that one is in a state of nervous panic about when/how the pain will end, feeling utterly out of control. Simultaneously, this lack of power (punctuated with chronic sting), breaks one down to a point of surrender, not unlike when your big brother pinned you down and made you cry “Uncle.”

The pinched nerve scenario seemed to play out mostly at night. Something about prolonged periods of being in one position made sleep possible for only an hour or two at a time. With a little help from the healing arts, I got to a place where I was able to function pretty well during the day, though my left side is still completely numb from hip to knee.

It’s fortunate that I have been able to move about during the day, as pre-incident, when I was still fit-as-a-fiddle, I had signed up for two volunteer shifts at the school concession stand, selling snacks in conjunction with Jeb’s fifth grade play. The production was a five-day run, requiring daily commutes to cast calls, entailing drive times of an hour and half, round-trip.

Once on location, I’d stash the tennis ball (which had been wedged between my low back and the car seat for added acupressure relief), and enter the theater space to see many-a-parent bustling about backstage with costumes and make-up.

I did not limp through the door, I just moved more deliberately. But there was nothing to let on that my thigh was not only novocain-numb, but that the skin was tender to the touch, as though crisply sunburnt. There was work to be done and brownies to sell. No time for woes. So I simply sorted the red vines from the cupcakes and made sure my front-row seat was saved, my camera, picture-ready.

After the final curtain call, we were left with white frosting smears on the counter tops and stage props to be disassembled. I had to tell a parent that I shouldn’t do any heavy lifting, mentioning this ‘pinched nerve thing’. It was embarrassing to have to bow out.

“I’d never know you were hurt. You look great. You seem fine,” she said.

I may have been swept up in the bustle of exchanging dollar bills for chocolate chip cookies, and, of course, I was a proud mother snapping shots of Jeb on stage. But the truth was, I felt far from normal. I was a moving body in a soup of tenderness, completely out of balance, fragile and unnerved.

And no one knew.

How often do we see one another, completely ignorant of the discomfort or unease that is residing just below the skin of our fellow humans? It may be a literal, physical ache, or just as uncomfortable, something emotional. Yet, we pass each other, smile and orbit, unaware.

Injury is humbling. And as the feeling in my leg slowly returns, I’m left with compassion for anyone in chronic pain. Whether of the soul or of the body, it is so hard to be hurting.

We are all going through something. Working out the kinks. Often, these processes are going on beneath the surface of our vessels, unseen.

Let’s remember this common, human thread we share. We all feel. Sometimes it hurts.

We can be gentle with ourselves. With each other.

Be mindful, that there is often more than what we see.

mark-twain-kindness1