Tag Archives: breath

This Blue Sky Is Not Beautiful Because…

As I walked between buildings this morning with my face in my smartphone and my head filled with project deadlines, housekeeping minutiae, goals and dreams and regrets that make up the miasma that sublets my head, a red rosebud caught my attention.  I turned off the phone for a second.

I took a deeper breath and pushed it down through my tense muscles, all the way to my feet. My feet sent back the message that I was walking on a pebbled path made of gentle curves, passing under five old oak trees.  My brain wafted down the word “psithurism”–the word for the sound that wind makes in trees.  I couldn’t help but smile.

At the end of the path, I stopped on the sidewalk to let a car pass, even though I had the right of way at the crosswalk.  Reflexively, my mind clicked over to berating the car’s driver for not seeing me…but I stopped and chose to breathe again.  I lifted my eyes, and this is what I saw:blue sky

Such a surprise, to SEE the sky and accept with grateful wonder that I get to live in a place on a day in a moment when that color is right there for me to see.  No charge, no ticket required, no restrictions apply.

At that moment, what words popped into my head?

“This blue sky is not beautiful BECAUSE of anything.  It just IS. It is and it is beautiful.

Not because I have a job.

Not because my clothes match and smell nice.

Not because my son’s potty training is on or off track.

Not because the scale said a certain number.

Not because I met that deadline.

Not because I wrote today or slept last night or ate the right balance of carbs to protein or remembered to take the school supplies to the teacher.  All those things that fill my mind have nothing whatsoever to do with this blue sky that brings me such delight.

And no self-respecting Georgia Girl could dive into a sky like that without humming “Blue Sky” by The Allman Brothers.  Here’s one of only five recordings of “Blue Sky” from the glory days of the brothers, the band, the Betts.  This version was recorded live in 1971 at SUNY Stonybrook.  It’s long, because it was the 70s.  Worth every single second–breathe your way through it instead of playing Candy Crush or worrying about carbs.

“You’re my blue sky, you’re my sunny day.  Lord y’know it makes me high when you turn your love my way. Turn your love my way…” Click the photo of the band if you’d like to go back to that day:

stonybrook

Letting the Air Out

swimming pool fartsMy late husband, Richard, taught me how to float in the summer of 2002.  Even though I have been able to swim since childhood, I had somehow lost the ability to float.  I couldn’t relax the right way in the water so my long legs sank like marble pillars as soon as I tried to float.  I had lost that limber trust in the water.  I didn’t want to rely on it to hold me up.

One afternoon at his parents’ place, we went down to the pool.  They live in a very nice condominium complex, not exactly a starter home kind of joint, so we were the youngest people at the pool by a good 30 years.  We waded out into the shallow end for my lesson.

“Just relax your body,” he said.  Oh, OK.  Gosh, I didn’t know it was that simple.  I stretched out my legs and stuck out my arms but as soon as I dipped my head back towards the surface of the water, my legs dropped like a lever.

Richard was a born teacher–he taught skiing to tourists, he taught canoeing to campers, he taught finance to business majors.  He tried to break it down into pieces.  I held the side of the pool and let my legs float.  No problem.  Then he held my legs–not in a racy fashion since we were being observed by about 30 Nanas, Bubbies, and Pop Pops.  I tried to tip my head into the water but began to thrash as soon as the water touched my head.

Clearly, my head was the problem (this is where my therapist would probably raise her eyebrow and say, “AS USUAL!”).  So he promised that he wouldn’t let my head sink.  He held me under the shoulders and I stretched out into the cool blue water.

“Now take a breath in.  See how you float up?”  It worked!

“Now let that breath out and feel your body sink.”  I exhaled and felt the water climb higher around me.  I started to wiggle in panic.  Quickly, Richard said, “Breathe in!”

I floated right back up to the top of the water with a triumphant grin.  And a little knot in my neck dissolved.  I had learned that I could loosen up a little and the water would catch me.  “Now let it out…”  He held me while I practiced letting go of my breath and slowly taking it back in.  My head still lay on the valley of his forearms, high and dry.  

“You’re going to have to let the water get in your ears if you want to float.  It will be OK.”  He let his hands drop slowly from beneath my shoulders.  I felt the cold water tingle up the back of my scalp and pour into my ears.  I took a deep breath to bob back to the surface.  It wasn’t so bad.  I let the breath go and just like that…I was floating.  On my own.  

Straight above me stretched the clear blue sky.  To my right, the open stretch of the Potomac River, with a jet following the path of the water on its descent to National.  I floated in a perfectly round and perfectly blue and perfectly cool pool next to a man who loved to show me all I could do.  If I just let my brain get out of the way.  

I stood up to see the world from vertical again.  I gave him a chaste little kiss and said, “Thank you.  I’m proud of myself.”  

He grinned and said, “Next I’ll show you how to do THIS!”  He curled up into a tight ball, squeezing his knees to his chest, and with a long slow exhale of bubbles, he sank to the bottom of the pool.  It was one of his favorite tricks.   

As I stood there waiting for him to bob back up when he got tired of holding his breath, one of the residents joined us in the pool.  Well, she came as far as the third step.  In her black maillot and swim cap, she stood in the water up to her thighs, splashing a little water up onto her arms.  

And she farted.

I don’t mean “toot toot” like you think a Nana might fart.  I mean “BRAAAAAAAAPPPPPHHH!”  Like someone stepped on a duck.  

Since I had been raised right, I pretended not to notice.  We all suffer a little slip now and then and pools can make for confusing acoustics.  Who am I to judge?  

Richard erupted from the water with a splash and a gasp.  “I’m losing my form.  I used to be able to stay down a lot longer.”  

At that very moment, the woman beside us let fly again.  “BUH-WONK!”  Richard’s eyebrows shot up and he–having also been raised right–looked ever so casually around to see who had stepped on a duck.  It was just us and her in the water.  Everyone else chatted on lounge chairs in the shade of the pergola.  He turned back to me and gave the straight face double eyebrow raise.  

We tried to be nonchalant about it, but we started making our way to the deep end as she continued to toot her own horn.  Once we were a safe distance away, I said, “Do you think she thinks she under water and no one can hear?”

Richard said, “No, I think she’s lived long enough that she just doesn’t give a shit.”