Skip to main content

Chop Wood, Carry Water




This morning my mind gives in as I wash a dish... "Give me hope (love), give me hope(love). Give me peace on earth. Give me light. Give me life. Keep me free as a bird(free from birth). Help me cope(Give me hope), help me cope with this heavy load..."---George Harrison (his words)

No. I'm not a Beatles fan. I'm more of a classical fan like that of Chopin, Verde, etc...

As I stare out my kitchen window awaiting deer to enter the fray. I know nearly all my chores for the day are done. Chop Wood, Carry Water... I have training yet to do. However, it's remained light for the better part of the past two years. Due to circumstances beyond my control. Every day repeats itself to a large degree. Chop Wood Carry Water...

My regular job/career I've had for the better part of nearly three decades. It's spirit, left over a year ago. Yesterday, I pondered thoughts as I'd attempted to figure out any correlation between the massive amounts of exhaustion in my legs, as well my whole essence. It's not that I hadn't had this before. I can tell you, I can trace it back to end 1978 into the spring of 1979. Yes, I was in high school. I'd felt a little in 1980 hang over my head like a cloud that summer. As well, tortured with fatigue, allergies, birth defects, injuries, and illness burdens seemed unrelenting even then at that time. 

Yes there appears to be a mathematical formula in time to this. However, yesterday I realized it was also another formula not necessarily of a mathematical equation, per se.

Yet, with each major change of career, along with a shift in outside sources that were distracting and not ordinary, exhaustion would arrive. Yet, I would continue as business as usual. Chop Wood, Carry Water. 

This time, although I've calculated a downturn in my biorhythms every seven years. Which coincides with some of this in my life. I realized that it was everytime I had major life changes, usually a career change. After a career change I would struggle in complete exhaustion. So, this recent change in career arrived from three directions. I knew it was time to change my career again. I spoke with a priest eight months ago and said, "My spirit in this has left the building. Not one ounce of me feels it. Maybe it's too much caregiving involving death for me at this point..." 

Oh, three directions... a personal loss, the physical debilitating pain of the destruction my career did to my hands. Such pain began in 1998. Then finally, the last six years of work I began to hear my hands snap and grind as I worked. Chop Wood, Carry Water.

 First it was occasionally, then it was once a week. Then it increased to more. Shooting pain ensued the sounds. And finally the third, people not wanting to be honest with me about their exposures. It took only one scare, really. I knew I was fine because I abided by the new protocols and I didn't go back till I knew it was clear I could. But still, at that point I was a new widow and with that now a single mother of two teenaged daughters dealing with our 'Strange Times'. Chop Wood, Carry Water. 

My physical contacts before March 13th, 2020 had been reduced by nearly 85%. Work slowed, clients suddenly could not recover from their flus. Doctors didn't know what they had either. And as my spouse had suddenly become terminal, I quit doing anything aside from work, chores and going for a run outside. It's not that I was ever truly social, no. It was that I was enjoying a dojo for BJJ to improve my ground fighting skills in a different style. Chop Wood, Carry Water. 

Then came the Covid shut down in March 2020. By then I was already on my way for another career change. Becoming my fourth career change in about forty years. Chop Wood, Carry Water. In that time I had three athletic career changes, by 2010. It's always been Chop Wood, Carry Water. 

But today I pondered: Is every day the same? Same worries? Same feelings? Why does it feel so different now? 

This strange place I seem to reside in. 

Others are residing in it. That is if they're recognizing the temporary changes and the permanent ones. That is only part of each individual's evolution. As well, Humanity's evolution for a better world. It's an evolutionary cross-roads of humanity. Chop Wood, Carry Water. 

Whether we want to admit this or not. And word has it, I have been known as 'tougher than a $2 steak'. But even I have to admit it. So, it is the stress felt by ALL in this historical passage of time. It is inescapable. Just like, Chop Wood, Carry Water. ----Jody-Lynn Reicher 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2023 Holiday Letter from the Reicher's

Well, I didn't think I'd be doing a Holiday Letter this year, but here goes... The Spirit of Norm is in the air. As the wind whips with minus a true snowstorm.  In hopes the Farmers Almanac was correct, I pray to the snow gods. Rain ensued the month of December thus far. We have nearly tripled the amount of rainfall usual for December in New Jersey. And I've witnessed its treachery. Storms such as these hit us hardest in July. Then remained fairly intense through til about early October.  Our daughters are doing well, Thank God.  Their Dad would be proud of them. Our oldest Sarah, now a Junior at UCLA pursuing her degree in Chemical Engineering. She's digging the whole California scene. Which I thought it was for her. She's had some good traveling on her off times from school. For her March 2023 week off, she drove her and a few friends out to Lake Tahoe and went downhill skiing for a first in nearly 5 years. She had to rent the ski equipment.  Funny enough when
3 comments
Read more

Sledging the Hammer

  "You could have a steam trainIf you'd just lay down your tracks..."---Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' lyrics. This is not the tune that lay in my mind this morning as I reminisced about yesterday's volunteers to help on trail crew.    However, as I looked up the proper definition of sledging that song popped up. I say sledging, which is my own take on swinging a hammer that we call a "Double Jack". The Single Jack is six pounds. I know that because our regular crew of five including me and one staff supervisor are handling Harriman State Park Trails, and have to carry about four of those, two shaping hammers, along with a hoist, belay bag with heavy equipment, first aid kit, double Jack, three 18lb rock bars, a lopper, three buckets, three eye to eyes, two burlap straps, two green wrapping straps, two pick Mattox, a roe hoe or two, a bar for either the two ton or one ton hoist, the feathers with pegs for splitting rocks that we drill... s
Post a Comment
Read more

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.
Post a Comment
Read more