Keep it Moving

Musing

Rodger wants to play catch and, having only an easily irritated adolescent sister around, he settles for me.

My good throwing arm always dazzles him and I decry him back saying “Oh you’re always so shocked and amazed that I can throw and catch a ball.” I played girls softball until my mother persuaded me to quit with the league change. She would not describe that foggy memory life event in that manner, but I would. She said it gets too competitive in high school softball leagues. I said ok, consented to quit, and that was that. Just a gentle parental manipulation.

The Iwatakis are not sports players. I was the closest they come with 3^rd-8^th grade girls softball. I liked it too. Rodger refuses to play team sports, but I hope this refusal shakes free of its anxious self eventually. He’s very good with his hands, body and the velocity of hurled, caught, hit and kicked balls. He’s fairly magnificent. Just like his father.

Erik was a dedicated Naperville Little Leaguer who tried out for the high school baseball team freshman year and was told “You played really well, but you’re just too small right now.” This is not a wound that healed quickly, or ever. The scorch sent him deep into his rock band and his hard-driving illustrious percussion playing, but still. Screw you, Coach Seiple. By the next year, Erik had grown a foot taller, but he was done.

While Erik and Rodger play catch together with whipping aggression, I gently manipulate my son to throw nicely at me by challenging us to get to 10 mutual catches, then 15, then 20, then 25, 30 and so on. We agree on small shared goals and playing catch remains entertaining, and a bit more civilized.

I enjoy working out, moving this body, but there have been periods of life where it was best not to think too hard about it. Driving to the budget gym after work when I was alone and unsure what the evening ghosts would bring. Doing elliptical cardio meditative, repetitive. Just start. Press play. Just get to 10 minutes, then 20, then 30. Racing the sunshine in the early morning streets, after having babies, just ticking off 3 mindless and healing miles, bolstering the nervous system to survive the day.

Some mornings now, facing the impending inevitable workday, it’s the same. Just lace up shoes and start. Just get to 10 minutes, 15, 20, 30. Stretch, push ups, breathe and feel God’s ghostly arms reaching for me in a morning savasana prayer from the flat basement floor. Rehydrating water. The down dog bliss stretch in the calves and the skull all blood refreshed and sighing. I feel a lot better.

Aging well must contain an ability and gentle commitment to simply keep it moving. I glimpse a gray bearded man cruising the sidewalks on a recumbent bike with a colorful flag. We see our elderly neighbor strolling with the little white dog multiple times a day. I love them. Keep it moving.

I start to push a wheelchair at the DuPage Care Center, where we volunteer once a month asking residents if they want to join us for worship, and the gentleman turns his face to say to me, “I can go myself. My legs work pretty well,” and off he goes, one foot in front of the other. I’d say he’s worshipping already, right there in eager motion to live. Another woman passes right by me in her wheelchair with her feet flying. I say “Wow, you’re speedy. You’re like the wind,” and with a wise smile she says, “I enjoy showing people what I can do. Not bad for 88, eh?” Not bad at all.

An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion…

I’m not sure every split second thought that keeps people from using their bodies to throw balls, walk long, or stretch down and roll shoulders back. It is very important healing I can feel in my stomach each dreadful workday at 5 AM. The problem may be that “should” thinking. The constant condemning refrain from some imagined scolding abuser. It’s not a “should” thing. It’s a sweat healing pool we can bathe in whenever we want to. I’m unhappy to be whipped at, but I’m happy to be tossed.

So I throw the ball back and forth, back and forth and resurrect times of coping and resilience building. May God use the motion of my body today to draw close to him and spread the seeds he gave me. If I am loving myself, I am caring for me in a manner that is nutritious nourishing restful moving in sweat, grace and doing all that keeps the channel open— the channel through which my spiritual development culminates and connects.

Tai Chi will be my elderly park side pastime. I can picture myself now, barefoot in the grass and slowly gesturing through all that I don’t know yet. Breathe in. Breathe out. I will keep it moving. I intend to throw as long as I can and catch myself out of timidity and inertia.

And if I’m not enough to do it for – if it’s not self-care that lights my lazy feet afire, well then it’s for Brad, my dear friend who walked 3 miles every morning with his dog in the rising sunlight, fresh breaths of cycled purity wise old action, and now cannot due to terminal illness. I do it for the frenetic ones compounding nervous energy on the couch with phone gazing clicking while the sun goes down stunning out the window and they don’t even look up to see it.

The nervous energy could get expelled, kaput, exhaled, dropped by the grass and evaporated to the air of wonder, awe and rest. Real rest — not the bit fingernail kind, not the dopamine face scratching click click kind, not the sweet and salty eat your feelings kind. The deliverance glimpsing kind. The kind that is sore, stretched and lively. Floating in cycles of deep breaths and activated. The glory of being created and alive. That’s what I keep it moving for while I’ve got it to move.

 “Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh….The magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.” - D.H. Lawrence

Let us move our bodies as a condition of living. Let us just do 10, 15, then 20, 30. It’s over so quickly and it’s good to be alive. It’s good to be alive and it’s over so quickly.