Jumping. How fun is that really? Jumping rope. Jumping for joy. Just plain jumping. If you are a child, the word jumping fairly calls obligation for you to do it. Jumping. Oh, inner child....just wait.
Jumping overboard. Jumping Ship. Jumping to conclusions. Jumping takes a fair amount of trust in ourselves as adults. Trust in ourselves and in the security of our environment. Trust that we will land square footedly, without injury to our aging bones. These days, jumping isn't much fun. As I have gotten older, ahem...wiser?, my trust in myself and my world has gotten weaker. It takes more courage to "just jump"....
I remember, as a young girl, springing from the roofs and balconies of homes and cottages out at the beach where I grew up. Climbing...I was a climber...and prideful of the heights I could reach. But climbing meant inevitably, jumping... and oh how I loved to jump. Springing up and off, spreading my arms like wings and landing...always landing.... on my feet, knees bent and letting my body roll with the earth and the sand ...Taadah! Jumping up with the whole joy of the flight and the edginess of solid earth, as something to be counted on, knowing I wouldn't fall farther than Mother Earth's bed.
Memories now. "Jumping" has become something respected, and even feared. NOT jumping has become my aim. Because nowadays, if I jump, it is usually not on purpose and becomes known as "falling".... Falling ends up with a painful landing, not controlled nor desired.
Now the worst jumping I do to myself is "jumping to conclusions." Which can be horribly disabling, and should be considered dangerous. The latest "jumping to conclusions" has ruined quite a few days in a row for me, ending in nightmares in which I am suffering and out of control...jumping to conclusions is not doing a damn bit of good for me and I must find a way to stop.
I have spent the last year and a half struggling to maintain the beautiful and fortunate good health I have enjoyed previously for so many years. My body is falling to pieces. Between thyroid and old broken bones and knees that ache, and eyesight that is failing...now the beautiful golden skin I have been growing on my body since before birth is betraying me. Everyone said it would. Skin is the largest organ of the human body. It is a lovely thing to have, indeed. Skin covers all the gruesome mechanics and oils and blood and guts, making life pleasurable to ourselves and to everyone else who doesn't want to see the mess underneath.
I have become aware of how horrid we could look without our skin, by watching a series called "The Walking Dead" in which lovely human people, attractive in their own right, lose bits and pieces of their skin, becoming patchworks of gore. It doesn't seem to bother them, however, since they are in fact "dead" and only the "walking" part of them seems to be alive. Oh yeah, and the part where they get hungry to eat living people, also. But I am digressing. Skin. Beautiful skin. Skin that can have cute freckles, to accentuate innocence, skin that is white and pale and fragile enough to see the pretty blue vein that reminds us of the delicacy of life, skin that is tough as leather and strong and worthy of warriors. My skin is sort of olive, especially in the summers after the sunshine warms it as I play. Dark skins, light skins... skin that can measure health by changing colors if we become ill. Skin that holds temperatures of our soul in place... hot, cold, making us aware of life itself.
Well. As I have enjoyed my skin heartily, through all of my 57 years... starting at a young age appreciating all of its benefits... especially as a teenager when it became apparent that I could actually change my color all by myself by exposing it to the amazing warmth of the sunshine. Oh, I used the clean smelling baby oil that my mom used for rubbing on my baby brother and sister...I loved the smell. And when the sun heated it up, I was in heaven. It gave me a golden color that I got complimented for, over and over again. My girlfriends and I would have "tanning contests" seeing which of us lucky girls could get the darkest and prettiest tans during our Michigan summers before school started up in the fall. I added iodine (yes, I did... thought it was a great trick that I learned from fashion magazines) to make my tan deeper and darker. I basked. I think I read about a thousand or more books every summer while I "worked" on my tan. I was a lovely thing.
As you can probably see where this is going... yup. Addiction. I felt healthier with my tan, skinnier, prettier.... wearing white and feeling really happy when neon clothing became popular... wow. Looking at some of my old pictures, I can't help but think I looked like a negative of myself. My eyebrows and my hair fairly glowed in the dark with the lightness of the sunshine while my skin contrasted like a roasted shadow of youth. Like a coffee bean with hair. Pretty attractive stuff, eh? (I laugh, in jest of youthful ideas...)
I have been lucky as I have grown up, with my skin. I exercise a lot. I eat right, most of the time. I take care of myself as well as the next person. I don't smoke (never did, never will) and rarely drink alcohol. I am consistent with my dentist appointments, and my ever-increasing doctor appointments, to maintain the health that I've enjoyed. So what's the problem?
On my last visit to get my yearly skin check by the dermatologist, there were a few "spots" that concerned me. Especially with my history and relationship to Mr. Sol... and it proved to be worthy of concern. I have an area above my right breast that will be burned out due to a cancer. Luckily THAT spot is "just" a basel cell type, which is fairly superficial, and in early stages. But it is just the beginning. Here is where the "jumping to conclusion" comes in.
I am not sleeping. I worry all the time now. I feel desperate to "do" something but am turning circles in my mind as to what and how and when. It is making me crazy. And frightened. I frantically pulled my hair back from my head to see what I would look like bald and even snipped some of my hair off in my impulse to do what Susan Surandon did when she sheared her hair marking a moment in time to reconnect with her soul in The Banger Sisters. Yeah. That went badly for me; luckily I can cover the snipped part with the top longer hair that escaped my panic. But it better grow back fast.
I guess you could say that my "jumping to conclusions" didn't do any good for me. And makes my case that it is dangerous. But in writing this, I have discovered a new thing about myself. Maybe IT can be used to do good. Maybe I can get a hold of myself, in the "jumping to conclusions" and just jump. Maybe it is what I need to wake up and start LIVING again. Really living, not just doing laundry and cleaning my little world. I need to use this "jumping to conclusion," to actually JUMP. As in Jump for Joy. As in Jumping Rope...for fun.
I have been thinking about all the things I have wanted to teach my boyz, before I depart. All the things I want to tell them. Looking at my life, and realizing I haven't done anything near to the glorious adventures I planned for myself a quarter of a century ago. This is where the jump comes in. I have climbed to the top of the roof. I needn't think about the landing, because we are all gonna land somewhere, somehow.... I am going to reach down to my inner child and find that joy of flight, of jumping, and of controlling my fear to turn it into LIFE. I'm gonna Jump.
