Since mother’s passing in 2018, my sister and I haven’t seen each other much, though we keep vowing to make time to get together for lunch. There’s no particular reason for this sabbatical, just a lot of little ones. We live 45 minutes from each other, and after years of serious end-of-life communications about our mother, it’s felt good to have a reprieve from speaking. Then, the uncertainty of Covid-19 happened. And lastly, like many families, we have opposing political views, so waiting to visit until after the election seemed like a nice idea.
A Lunch Date
Last weekend, an opportunity for our much-talked-about lunch date presented itself. My granddaughter’s last track meet was scheduled to be in a town halfway between our two cities. So, I texted my sister an invite, which she promptly accepted. That would be the last prompt thing she did!
True to form, my sister was an hour late for our lunch because she got lost in a town with a total population of 26,000! If her family is reading this, they are laughing out loud right now…just as my sister and I did throughout our 2-hour brunch with Mimosas (or was it Bloody Mary’s?) at US Pizza Company in Cabot, AR.
During our visit, she asked if I really do stand on my head for circulation, as my blog post from last month stated (She is a faithful reader of my blog). I told her yes, of course. And then she said, “I figured you did because I remember when you would hang in your closet doorway, in those inversion boots.” And then asked if I still did that, too. My answer was, “Not in a while.” Here’s why …
This is when we really began to laugh.
The last time I strapped on those boots, I had just gotten out of the shower. My back felt stiff and I thought a quick hang might do me some good. As I grabbed the chin-up bar in the closet doorway and threw my booted feet up to latch onto the bar, I found that I no longer had the stomach and arm muscles needed to perform such a feat. Not to be deterred, I devised a plan to use the nearby chest of drawers as a ladder. I pulled each drawer out and kind-of walked up the drawers with my feet until I was partially inverted, and my feet were closer to the bar. Then, throwing my legs over haphazardly, I just barely succeeded in hooking the boots on the bar, before losing my momentum and strength. Victorious, I let go with my hands and swung down. And there I hung: naked, alone in the house, and felt the release of back and body tension. It was nice, just as I remembered.
After a few minutes, I was done and reached up to unhook my feet from the bars. That’s when it dawned on me. If I didn’t have the strength to get up there, how was I going to get down? OH NO!
My mind raced. I have heard of people dying from hanging upside down and remembered a story I read about the Kung Fu actor, David Carradine (aka “Grasshopper”). Didn’t they find him dead, hanging naked in his closet? I began to panic. I knew it would be hours before my husband came home from work and found me, hanging naked in our closet, and purple in the face.
Just as it is designed to do, my adrenaline kicked in and I found unknown strength that saved my life and dignity.
It’s Important to Reconnect
And so, no, sister; I don’t hang in inversion boots in the doorway anymore, but I wish I still could.
Visiting with my sister was nice and reliving that story was fun, but it would not have happened without memory jogs from longtime friends and family. I will be glad when the world gets back to normal and we can all visit again. Until then … hang on!
