Should I Do It for Charity?

As recently as 5 years ago it wouldn’t have occurred to me that what I saw last night was odd.

I stepped onto the back deck to have a cigarette, and I heard huffing and a snort. I sharpened my eyes into the darkness and saw a lone doe standing in the wooded area of our yard. The first thought I had was, “She’s beautiful.” The second thought was, “Fuck. We’re going to have to fence the garden.” The third thought was, “Why is she alone?”

So I peered around the yard while she watched me. There were no others. You’ll see a buck by himself. I almost never see a female traveling alone. I went back to looking at her and she at me, and then she realized I wasn’t leaving so she turned and bounced over the back fence and out of the yard.

A person generally learns and remembers those things that are important to them, and most everything else is either forgotten or tossed into a shoe box that ends up hidden way under a mental bed, covered with dust woofies. There have been many times when I’ve deliberately stashed things in that shoe box, encased it in concrete, and dropped it into the deep water to sleep with the fishes. When I left Borders I, who usually retain unused phone numbers in my head for decades, forced all of my code numbers for running the registers and logging into programs out of my head so hard I cannot pull them back. I did the same with every job after. When I left, I forced out the minutiae of the tasks I had performed in order to make room for new.

I have remembered many things that collected in my head over 39 years, and sometimes Rich will say to me, “How do you know how to do that?” I won’t have an answer sometimes. I’ll remember the how of things, but not the why. Occasionally I’ll be able to relate that so and so had shown me how to do this at such and such a time, but often things just stick with no context.

Why do I know how to upholster a chair when I’ve done it maybe twice in my life? My grandmother didn’t show me that. Neither did my mom or dad. How, a few weeks back, did I know how to turn a large cardboard moving box into a play mat for the kids, encased in a length of Batman fabric, so that it would collapse for storage? No one, to my knowledge, ever showed me how to do that.

Pulling pieces from many moments, maybe. Some Shop class? Some Home Ec? Watching my father build things out of small bits of nothing?

There is one thing right now I want to remember how to do more than anything. Those in the know discuss a concept called muscle memory, which is the reason why a person can climb onto a bicycle after 32 years and still remember the mechanics involved in remaining upright and making it go. This morning I was reading Coyote’s post about childhood risk taking and adult avoidance of it, and I remembered that about 9 years ago I tried to do a cartwheel one night and my body failed me.

I used to do them all of the time as a kid. I was excellent at cartwheels because they required motion. I could not stand on my head or hands without support of a wall, but a cartwheel was easy. I could do them from a run or a stop. That night I tried to do one I started at a run, leaned to the side, extended my arms and tipped my body… and I face planted into the floor. My ass went over teakettle, I landed on my back, and I sat for a split second to recover. Since I had an audience I jumped up and took a bow, because that’s how I roll, but I was completely devastated.

I actually cried in bed that night.

Know what I didn’t do, because I was stupid? Get up and try again. That night, the next day, the next time I was off- I did not try again. I accepted failure. What the fuck is up with that? I tried Excel until I got the hang of it, I practiced baking bread until I could do it in my sleep. One failed cartwheel and I was done?

I don’t think so, folks.

Before you barrage me to sit my ass down right now and not even THINK about it, given the condition of my spine, I’ll let you know that I’m dumb but not stupid. Ok, the urge is there, poking at me, to get up and try right now. I’m not going to. What I am going to do is put my old Pregnancy Yoga DVD into the new player today and turn it into a game with Livvie. What I am going to do is get my second shot on Tuesday, and maybe even a third one two weeks after that. I’ll keep doing yoga. I’ll start stretching more. I’m a fairly limber person as it is, much to the delight of my husband, but I could do better.

My birthday is May 19th.

I am going to do a cartwheel.

And I’m going to get the damn thing on video.

And after that, I’m going to follow that deer over the fence.