Monday, September 3, 2012

Bright Beads

I have not have vertigo since Saturday afternoon! I hope I am coming out of this.

On the other hand, I am losing more sensation in my fingers. And the pain in my legs and feet has been intense.

I got another calling yesterday, which makes two plus visiting teaching (letter route, because my RS Pres understands my situation), plus my demanding un-calling of interpreter. But it was sort of a trade. Play the piano in Primary instead of interpreting in RS. 

Primary pianist is one of my favorite callings, possibly my very favorite. You show up, be with the kids, do music, do not need to manage behavior. Primary music is a piece of cake to play. I was a little concerned with the effort it would take to sit up on the bench. That turned out to be a little hard but definitely manageable. What I did not expect:

-It was difficult to read the music. Music is like language. My brain has lost so much ground with information processing. I got mixed up sometimes. I had trouble decoding the notes fast enough to play them. 
-It was extremely difficult to keep my arms up and move them around quickly. I was dragging behind the chorister, working as hard as I could to keep up. After the first song I was tired, and after the second song, I was exhausted. I barely made it through music time.
-My hands did not have the instinctual correctness they once did ("once" being about a year ago). I think it was a problem with proprioception, knowing where your body parts are in space. When you play the piano, you look at the music, not at your hands. You come to know the distances between the keys. Some of my mistakes were because my hands thought the note should be in one place, when it was really the next note up or down.

So it is not a piece of cake anymore. I cannot believe how much I have lost in such a short time. I still hope I was regain my skills and my health, but as time goes on, it seems less likely.

I will pray for help to manage that calling. I do not want to give up on it after one try. And I love music! Before church, I heard the choir practicing and longed to join them.

Today I am having a good day. I dragged out to yoga this morning. It was so hard! My left leg is still weaker than my right, and it often feels like it will drop me. But I push, push, push through. Not to pain! Yoga teachers always say to find your edge and not go over it. But I usually do not have to worry about pain, because I am pretty flexible (they call it "organic"). Weakness is what I have to be careful of.

My yoga teacher read a quote about life being like a string of beads. Each day is a bead. Many are beautiful, brightly colored. Some are cracked with crisis. Some are cloudy with grief. But when you look back at the days, examine the string of beads, you can say, "I love my life." So that was the theme today. This particular teacher happens to be my favorite, because she selects great poses, and she has a great outlook on life. And yoga. When we are ready to drop, she will say, "Now joyfully extend your leg." Or, "Ready for the other side? Yes, Kathy, we can't wait." She answers herself with what we should say, which is funny. But the willingness and the joyfulness makes an impression on me.

Despite how hard it was and how often I nearly collapsed, I felt better after my yoga class. The 10-minute savasana helped. But the pose sequence and the spirituality really helped. It is odd that I feel so much more refreshed, calm, and strong--physically and emotionally--after yoga than after church. Maybe we should have savasana at the end of church. ;)

Today is the bead is kind of cloudy but at least not cracked. Looking at my string, most of the beads are bright and colorful. But there have been about 400 cloudy or cracked beads in a row. I hope that when the string is complete, there will be so many bright beads after this that it will not matter. Or maybe they will all be cloudy after this, and it still will not matter. Maybe cloudy is just a different kind of beautiful.

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