Skip to main content

One Cell

Are we aware that we are aware?

Laying in bed on a weekend morning, knowing you have one big chore to get done right now. Well, time-wise a small every day chore of necessity, obligation, respect...

Thoughts of small enormity, embrace my mind. Do I have to get up? Do I have to do?

Of course I did my morning exercises in bed so I could arrive upright and not appear with a crippled wobble or drag into the bathroom.  My thought is... if I'm standing I can run.

As I lay there for a few moments more, I query my life. Aside from thinking of an astronomical goal, because I almost always have them. Don't worry the world is involved. They don't know it yet. I don't say anything till I need to get them involved. I lasso what I can. 

Somewhere around late 2007 my husband exclaimed, "You're out of my universe." He wagged his head and continued, "You have your own Solar System." That was in response to what I'd said after, "What if...? Imagine that..."  And this is why I keep to myself. 

Some hate me for those astronomical goals of mine. Because they had no interest in doing whatever it was I announced to hubby back then. But yet, they were upset that they didn't think of it or felt that they couldn't do it. As well, I've made them feel selfish, perhaps inefficient. Or worse yet, as my fight coach Phil Dunlap would say, "You've unmanned them." It's my rawness. It shines under those lights.

Out for coffee and sometimes the rare bite to eat with Bob an Oscar winning documentary cameraman and director. A man who has filmed pieces of my life for hours on end for the better part of a decade. Interviewed my quirky, curious world and some of those in it. One day Bob asked, "Why don't you ever bring your family to your fights?"

I replied, "I don't want to touch anyone I love intimately. Sure, I'll hug my coach, the cornermen, the fight-team guys before I enter the cage. But you see it's different. It's another world. I need to be who I am, with people who understand that piece of me. I just can't emit the same feeling of who I am around my family. It would be too unsettling for them." He responded, "You're a real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." I replied, "I have to be."

At other times on my expressing my 'astronomical' goals, some laugh. Finding me humorous. It is because as my one time Stand-up-comic, friend, doctor and UltraRunning coach Dante stated after a 50 mile training run, "You are so self-deprecating." I think I finally got Dante to laugh. I had tried before, he finally understood that I enjoy making fun of myself to get others to lighten up a bit.

And then there are those who get inspired by my persistence, and drive. Even if it doesn't sound possible by their standards. They know I will do my best and make something good of even the most negative situations. Bob had remarked, "You never appear dismayed." I remember nodding to him. Thinking, 'Boy, have I fooled you.' It was after he'd filmed me for the in-teenth time getting taken to task for nearly thirty minutes by Phil, a guy with 114 no-holds-bar fights in the cage. The attacks from Phil kept coming. Yet, my failed attempts to take Phil down after he'd riddled my body and legs with kicks and punches I refused to give-in. Why? Because I wanted those fights. 

On those astronomical goals I have had enough people inspired. I know so, it has been told to me. I think my husband was perhaps the most aggravated, yet the most inspired. 

At first, upon the astronomical goal whispered to him from me. His response was, "No. I don't see it." Mine was, "I do. Imagine the money we could raise for charity. It'll only cost us a little bit..." His near adamant response, "Jody, logistically that's a lot of work. I just can't see it." My response was not to shake the bee hive, but to rattle our ancestors. Get people to stop thinking 'Old'. I'd then set out to secretly develop a plan that he couldn't resist. Showing all would be possible. And yes, I even have scared myself. 

When it came to running I'd call up Dante and say, "Get me off the edge. Tell me why I feel fear. Convince me, it's within my grasp." And he would. It was the one cell that kept me from caving into too much doubt.

Three decades ago dealing with what I knew seemed insurmountable. The odds of failure, were perhaps life-threatening and the odds against me were well over 90% chance that I'd fail. I had respected men, lawyers told me to backout. That I couldn't win, and that I'd be harmed. My response, was that I answer to a higher authority.  

Although, everything about me hung in the balance. I knew I'd already been sacrificed publicly, so I acted as though I had nothing to lose. I'd been there before. And again, it was going to effect others on a level that I cannot express. Involving me, reluctantly so. Yet, others would benefit from my suffering. Silently, I've learned to suffer well. 

Back then, it led me to query a co-worker and friend, Eleanor just years before she was ordained a Baptist Minister. I asked her one lunchtime, "Is doubt a sin?" She sighed. Then proceeded to give me a Biblical reference. As if to say, 'doubt is neither here nor there. Yet it is human. And that is what we are'. One cell away from being obliterated, we are.

One cell of consciousness. Make the day count.----Jody-Lynn Reicher

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to

It's About the Soul And...

  ...perhaps the soles of our shoes. My father-in-law used to say the feet are what soldiers depend on, as we do food. He said that to me in 1985 as I stood in his home office.  My husband, Norman was a shoe guy. And it was all about the soles on the shoes.  For me, the way I have stayed on my feet was soul deep. Sometimes praying every step of the way, to not fall over out of exhaustion. The approximately 170,000 miles of running, many of which Norman had witnessed or known of. He wondered how I stayed standing working on my feet all day. Only to come home, and go for a second run at midnight at times.  Often Norman would give me a lecture on good shoe care. It was about the soles of the shoes. He'd point out stitching on a shoe that was done wrong. Therefore commenting, "...giving a shoe less time of wear on this earth."  He'd remark quite often. "You have to buy good quality shoes." I have to say, there was absolutely something comedic about his shoe obse