It has been suggested that I have led a privileged life. I wouldn’t disagree. I had two major traumas in my early childhood. The first was when my parents refused to believe I needed glasses. The second was when a teacher decided to hate me. That was in 6th grade.
By the time I survived my traumas, I was 22. I had spent my college years skiing, drinking, protesting, and having sex. I graduated with a BA in Sociology and found my degree to be useless.
My savior was Howard Higman, Professor of Sociology. One day his secretary, Betty called and asked if I wanted to go to grad school. Higman had selected 15 students for a new program that would combine Sociology with Business. We would take classes in the business school as well as arts and sciences. Each of us would receive full tuition, a stipend, and jobs as teaching assistants. If we passed, we would receive Masters Degrees. If we wanted to continue to the Ph.D. program, we could do that.
I had nothing better to do so I said yes.
Now it doesn’t surprise me that Higman reminded me of my grandfather, Louis. He even sort of looked like him: short, stocky with an aggressive walk and manner. Prior to Higman, the most important person in my life was Louis. He was a rough and unpolished man who emigrated from Hungary around 1910. He was a gambler, hunter, and a womanizer. He was the absolute head of our family, and no one disagreed with him. No one could penetrate his outer shell except for me. He bought me my first horse when I was 5. He put me in the child-size Western saddle, slapped the horse on the rear and said, “Hold on, Felicia!” He and I were soulmates. We loved challenge. We loved to dare. We loved to disrupt. We loved to be right. To be smart.
None of these attributes endeared either of us to anyone. We didn’t care. Each of us knew our egos were strong. We couldn’t be shattered. That’s what we thought.
We were wrong.
After years building up his business in Denver’s stockyards, Louis lost it all to the Platte River Flood of 1965. The buildings, equipment, yards, fences, and animals all perished in the flood. My family who had known prosperity for so many years was suddenly broke. My unbreakable grandfather was now broken.
We were poor.
My mother went to work to support me through college. My dad found another job. Louis languished after a heart attack and then died after a Passover stroke.
Grad school was, for me, winning the lottery. Suddenly I could work in a professional field. I could support myself. I didn’t need parents or a husband. I had me.
My first and last government job was in Manhattan Kansas. I moved there with my dog, Cruiser R Roozer and cat, Piwackett (creativity in cat names came to me with my second kitty). While there I gained an intense hatred of humidity, insects, little slimy frogs, tornados, ice storms and ear mites that infected my dog and cats’ ears. I swore never again to work for government. I kept that oath. I also gained another cat, Mean Beanie Diamond.
I returned to Colorado when my contract expired. I couldn’t wait to walk through air that I didn’t feel any more. The high-country air is invisible, unweighted, and sweet smelling. And it never creates a barrier. The mid-western air of Kansas constantly got in the way of a simple walk. It was heavy and cumbersome. Once I left it, I never missed it. Not for a minute.
I’ve mentioned before that I accidentally became a lobbyist at the Colorado state legislature. That particular accident became my number one rule: accidents, sure but one can control one’s own life. Over the years, I created organizations, re-constituted them, and re-organized them. I found millions of dollars to support them. I loved my work. I loved it. I had found a niche within small organizations. I could look at an organization flailing and help it find its wings. I could help people focus on their mission again. GB refers to my talent for making things happen as “conjuring”. Like I’m a witch. That’s okay, too.
There have been so many things that I conjured. I guess the most significant is when Alba was supposed to arrive in Denver. Immigration had picked her up in Brownsville Texas while we waited for her to deplane in Denver. The airline informed us she had never boarded. Around midnight we received a call from Immigration. They had detained Alba who had informed them she was coming to live with us. We had guardianship from her parents. I calmly stressed to the immigration officer that she needed to continue her trip. He said, well he just couldn’t do that. She’d have to be sent back to Nicaragua. I then played my conjuring card. I suggested he contact Dick Lamm, the Governor of Colorado. I gave the officer the Lamm’s private residence phone number. There was silence at the other end. “You want me to call the Governor of Colorado in the middle of the night and get a reference on you?” “Yes,” I said. More silence. “Lady, I hope I never play poker with you.” Alba went on the next flight and we picked her up that morning.
Oh, you want to know what Dick Lamm would have done? He would have hung up and what career I had would have been extinguished. I doubt he would have known my name much less provided a reference. That’s conjuring. Some call it something else. That’s okay, too.
Sometimes, though, bodies decide to rebel. In 2010 mine did just that. I underwent a series of spinal surgeries to correct a host of issues including kyphosis. Kyphosis is an outward curve in the spine that forces people to become hunchbacked or permanently bent at the waist. The threat of a lifetime of looking at the ground when I walked was a dealbreaker and I agreed to the procedures.
The surgeries, however, didn’t go well. A piece of bone graft was chipped and ended up in my spinal column. A week later, a third surgery was performed to dig it out. After 18 hours of surgeries, I was left with a permanently damaged spinal cord and a disease called Arachnoiditis. It has nothing to do with spiders except that the arachnoid band is a protective webbing over the spinal cord. If it is perforated it goes into a permanent and progressive state of inflammation. It’s considered a rare disease, but I suspect its more common than medicine acknowledges. There is no cure. My diagnosis came 7 years after the surgeries that caused it. I was relieved to have a word to call my constant pain companion.
For the previous 7 years, I had awakened each day in pain. Some days worse than others. Shooting, aching, throbbing, lightning bolts of pain would slip out of my lower back and shoot into my toes. My legs alternated between numbness and pain. My feet were in a grotesque state of neuropathy that made it impossible to walk barefoot. Each step was like walking on broken shards of glass. Each day I woke up and thanked God for shoes. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to walk. With them, I could join the world.
I recognized something was wrong when, after the surgeries, I was in greater pain than before. I spent a good deal of time feeling sorry for myself, taking opiates, and dealing with the horrible side effects of the drugs. Worse was the inertia. I had accepted this condition.
I had let my body accept defeat.
After a few months of that acceptance, I found I could no longer, well, tolerate the acceptance. So, I got up and volunteered at The Urban Farm, a Denver nonprofit. I began mucking stalls. I dragged GB out in the middle of sub-zero weather to break ice so horses, cattle, sheep and goats would have water. I even bought winterized overalls. Work gloves. Work shoes. And, as I worked, I became healthier. My pain was diminished. By the time of the 2017 diagnosis, I was healthy. I had returned to skiing. I worked in my garden. I built muscles. I still had pain but I had created a body capable of dealing with it.
And, I built ego. I also began identifying what would diminish pain; how I could control the disagreeable parts of my body. The first step was suggested by my neurologist. He enrolled me in a pain therapy program in which I would talk with a therapist weekly. The therapist was trained in neuroscience and throughout the three years we were together, I learned how to connect my brain with my body. The second steps were those taken by me. I learned to take a nap every day from 3 – 4 pm. I went to bed at the same time every night. I got up at the same time every morning (at dawn to take care of the chickens). Oh, yes. We got chickens and that added to my physical work. Coops need cleaning, straw needs changing. During the years when I was learning to control my body, we had the chickens, four dogs, Paulina the precious conure loved by Alba and Pikachoo, the little parakeet. We expanded the garden. We eliminated the emergency duck pond and replaced it with the Woodlands: that copse of trees originally envisioned by Jane Silverstein Ries 45 years earlier. With the help of Evelyn Alton, a master gardener, we planted veggies and restored our perineal garden.
I bought season passes for skiing. My body resented the intrusion of cold weather and reconstituting ski muscles.I struggled through January and February in order to greet the real reason I ski: Spring skiing.
This was a life that just kept on getting better.
So, when GB began disappearing, I found I simply couldn’t, wouldn’t accept it. Not at all.
Now I’m ready for tomorrow. Monday, November 18.
Air. 
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