Life Lately: Summer

We started our summer driving to the Rocky Mountains to be with many of our favorite people. But first, enjoying the drive through Iowa in June with her stunning, lush, green rolling hills. Nebraska hosted the largest, fluffiest, most vibrant white clouds and in them we found the backs of sitting ogres, a boy riding a winged dog, and other spectacular wonders. Lately, we have been cloud watching and looking up more than down. Meeting thirty friends for a hike at Emerald Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park: the friends who visited us in the hospital one day after the birth of our first child and sang in our living room “Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie in a way that still takes my breath away. The much younger friends who were still in college but befriended us early-30-year-olds and our very particular and shy daughter. The friends that became aunties and uncles. The friends who creatively gathered during the pandemic in empty Old Navy parking lots to have dinner together. Friends who brought the silliest, strangest games over to play every Saturday night. (Ahem, I'm looking at you Mysterium as my favorite). So many friends who have been so significant and so many who eventually moved away. It was beautiful to be with all of them again, in one place, cheering on my daughter who hiked in the snow to the top of the Emerald Lake in hot pink Converse. Friends taking the hand of my six-year-old son to cross the icy brook that weaved down the mountain. Lately, I am thankful for all the people who have made life so absolutely stunning and in a way I never could have imagined for myself.

I thought I would spend the summer evenings of 2024 painting and writing. Instead, I took a small detour and started a tiny new job requiring a significant lens shift and learning curve. Lately, I am immersed in podcasts and online continuing education classes studying the neurology of sensory systems, the science of play, and learning about neurodiversity affirming practices in my field from neurodivergent voices. I am trying to carry out what I am learning in a small therapy gym with fantastical play schemes that weave in all the imagination we can muster. I keep thinking back to the fact that play helps release dopamine which is a feel good hormone. When we are engaging in play AND learning new things, we are linking learning with feel good hormones. Why do we ever stop doing this? But then I think of how I am absorbing all this delicious information: over headphones while I am moving through the garden, on long walks in the evenings, during pilates videos in the early morning, on the drive home from a friend’s house, and by creating informational handouts on Canva (and making sure the pictures and font are also “just right”). My learning curve is starting to flatten and with these last few weeks of summer, I hope to find the space for painting and writing. But I can also say I had a lot of fun learning this summer too.

Preferably with Glitter

She greets me with enthusiasm and mispronounces my name every week. She loves to relay all the information she knows about me and repeats any phrases that sound extra melodic to her. The state of her thrilling topknot of curls communicates what kind of morning has had. I’m sure she could acquire the same information from the state of my bangs. She tells me about my daughter and son, adding extra syllables to their names that I secretly adore. She asks questions about my daughter and son before moving on to a new question. Do I like mushrooms? Do I eat them off the ground? I tell her I eat them, preferably grilled, with my pizza or cheeseburgers. I am sure this information will be repeated back to me next week. “Ms. Coke likes grilled mushrooms on her pizza and cheeseburgers. Not mushrooms from the ground.” And like the brilliant lyrical Susan Boynton Belly Button Book book I will echo in my head: No, never mushrooms from the ground.

It is sweet to have someone who holds fragmented details of your life in their thoughts. To have someone interested in the tiniest, mundane details and listens so thoroughly that she can repeat it back to you as though it were a fascinating fact. I hope she knows that I treasure fragmented conversations between us as well. This is what I love about my job- the daily interactions spanning over years with people I otherwise would never have any chance of meeting. I recently listened to an occupational therapy podcast that called for us to really dig into our client/ student/ patient’s dreams and values in a life worth living and work from this perspective. If I love nothing else, I love a good dream. 

I think of the 55+ year-old bachelor spending twenty minutes of our session finding his best angle for a selfie to post on a dating website and using his hemiplegic fingers to take the shot. Or the woman who wanted to pick back up writing her finance blog but first chose the most vibrant of colors to paint the fingernails of her hemiplegic hand. It was she who taught me about the concept of “the party nail”- a fingernail painted a different color than the others. “Preferably, with glitter.” Or the jeweler who was unable to form words but always came with tools and chemicals to clean the wedding rings of his therapy team. Or the woman who called me “Dr Pink-Purple” so affectionately that I still sometimes long to hear those words again. I have a thousand tiny treasured stories from tens of thousands interactions that I am so thankful to have been a part of. Every day I go to work, I get to encounter more. 

When I left my last job at the hospital, a colleague casually said to me “Now I’m going to be the one with the loudest laugh.” At first, I was taken aback and a little embarrassed. But as I thought about it, most of the time outpatient occupational therapists are one of the last stops in a medical journey. I have learned this journey can be incredibly dehumanizing- not because of the lack of an amazing medical staff but because it is such a system. A colleague used to joke about the Labor and Delivery unit always winning the “most satisfied customer” award every year. “Of course, they win- people get to come home with a baby and happy hormones. What do rehab patients get? A quad cane and a grab bar in their shower. At best.” So when my patients visited me and were open to dreaming, joking, and laughing, I loved meeting them right there. When they wanted a tiny party between functional hand exercises and practicing visual scanning strategies, I filled the Dixie cups with water and we drank to possibilities. And I guess we laughed pretty loud sometimes too. 

"There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned 
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned 
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why 
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die" 

- Mountain Bed, Jeff Tweedy/ Billy Bragg 

Radiation Bliss

He has been my champion of the occupational therapy profession since I met him many years ago. “I love OT!” he used to shout every time I entered his classroom. It didn’t matter how many times I had already been there that day or if I was walking in on a quiet lesson being taught. The enthusiastic greeting was consistent and welcoming. His classmate would follow by broadcasting something like “The Obstacle Course is here” in a more monotone cadence. And that became my name- Obstacle Course- with their teacher finding the most joy in this career rebrand. I loved this class. I loved this group of six and seven year olds. I loved this teacher. I still love being called “obstacle course” every once in a while because we continue to find it amusing.

Years later I am standing in a kitchenette and my now-grown-friend is practicing microwaving pancakes for a small group of friends. He is careful and thoughtful, slowly lowering the plate into the microwave and punching in the numbers to heat them for a minute. As soon as the microwave begins to glow he starts to jump, occasionally twirling, and bombards me with anticipatory questions.


“Are they gonna love it?”

“Is this so nice that we are making them pancakes?”

“Is this the best party we've ever had?”

“Are you going to eat pancakes too?”


The microwave beeps and his jumping instantly halts. He slowly reaches into the microwave, adjusting the stack of pancakes and monitoring the temperature while being cautious not to burn himself. We decide to add 15 more seconds. The jumping and twirls begin again as the microwave lights up and hums.


“Do you think they will love the pancakes?”

“Isn’t this so nice of us?”

“I love my friends so much. Do you think they will love this?”


I ask my friend if he feels happy. Excited. He is losing his mind in these fifteen seconds and after this, I never use the microwave without recalling this all-consuming delight. Radiation bliss. We serve plates of steaming pancakes to his friends minutes later and they, being wonderful humans sticky with syrup lips and fingers, tell him how much they indeed love these pancakes. He is so full of joy he almost forgets to leave a few pancakes on the plate for himself. "These are the best pancakes I've ever had," he finally says between bites. I respond that they absolutely are. 

Where my feet are

I left my dream job seven years ago. It still sits on my heart like a former love that I have shelved for another season. Last spring, I took a continuing education course and found myself in a room with several occupational therapists that had been colleagues and mentors from seventeen years ago when I was a new graduate practicing at the now Shirley Ryan Rehabilitation facility. Many of these women were still practicing adult neuro rehabilitation, creating businesses and podcasts of their own. Listening to their professional paths made my heart sing a little. The class itself also showcased many videos from stroke and brain injury rehabilitation. I found my own brain firing hundreds of circuit connections built on the eleven years I was fortunate enough to spend practicing in that field. There it was: all that knowledge and passion had not entirely left my body when I transitioned to a job that provided an amazing life-work balance benefiting our family needs.

I have worked in the public school system for the past seven years. I am thankful for a district that took a chance on me- willing to see how much and how fast I could learn as it was quite a career change. The change happened swiftly. Ben and I had already planned a trip to Maine before I actually interviewed and took the job so I had this little life intermission to mentally transition. I spent much of those eight days in Maine grieving what I was leaving behind and preparing for the steepest learning curve I could climb. That autumn my then three-year-old daughter would fall asleep to the glow of child development blogs I studied each night.

While I sincerely miss the cognitive, motor, and visual rehabilitation I got to do in the hospitals, I do adore my current job working with 3-13-year-old humans. Much of my current job entails harnessing 5-6-7-8-9-year-old boy energy into something fun, productive, and creative while also practicing fine motor and executive function skills. This is why my most used therapeutic tools these days are bean bags that look like weird vegetables, skeleton arm tongs, and spontaneous movement breaks that mimic potatoes, mashed potatoes, and angry cats. 

On this particular day, I am assessing how to get the most handwriting and executive functioning practice out of my two sweet, energetic boys when I decide to recreate the environment. We typically sit at a table that is actually two rhomboid tables pushed together to make a large hexagon. After a brief moment of thought, I pull apart the two tables so I can sit directly across from both boys and within arm’s length. One of the boys bounds into the room but stops cold just before reaching me. He runs back into the hall and I hear him shout to his classmates: “You guys! YOU GUYS!! Ms C just SPLIT the big table and it is now TWO tables! You have to come see this!” I wonder if this is at all on par with the genuine awe and excitement Moses encountered after parting the Red Sea because I don’t think another level of excitement can be found in a human being than what I witnessed there. 

I am thankful that one of my favorite teachers, Ms. D, is able to enjoy this moment with me (it is her classroom, after all). I am also grateful that I get to spend the next five minutes building trunk strength by striking our own silly, made up poses of different vegetables. “Be where your feet are” is a little mantra I’ve started implementing since listening to a podcast called “Barb Knows Best”. If you know me, my thoughts are rarely in the present but way back in time or thinking about the future. I have big dreams and desires for future years. I have big regrets and desires to change the past. But my feet are presently between two bouncy boys begging to strike the “strawberry pose”. Boys who think I split a large wooden table in half with my bare hands. I will absolutely join them here in this moment.

----------

* Picture: One of my favorite parts of my job is creating unique art using fine motor and visual motor skills. This particular student is always abundant with his crafts and the outcome is always striking.

** Fun resource: My Fine Motor Crafts Pinterest Board

Life is an 86 Year Old Cabaret

She demanded that we assemble in the waiting room at 3 o'clock so she could perform a song as a way to thank us for our services over the last three months. Tiny, Jewish, and eighty-six-year-old Sally* couldn't wait for her moment to shine. Boisterous and lovely, she loved to tell us the story of a date she once had with a rabbi. "The date happened just before I met my husband (sixty-some years ago). This rabbi had the hots for me and he asked me out. I was a looker. We went to dinner and guess what I ordered? I ordered ribs!" she said, emphasizing her rebellious choice of pork with large eyes, raised eyebrows and voice, and a jab with her elbow to my side. We assembled in the waiting room like she had requested. She sat in a chair next to her devoted ninety-two-year-old husband who was her full-time oxygen tank holder. "Is everyone here?" she asked before literally leaping to her feet to perform. Ninety-five pounds of our dear Sally* began her song: a full Liza Minella rendition of "Life is a Cabaret". She danced into the audience, she twirled therapists and our MD, she growled like Liza, and she wouldn't stop singing even after we had applauded twice. Meanwhile, her husband chased her around with the oxygen tank so she wouldn't unplug the oxygen tube that was nestled in her nose.

After the performance and a Friday rush to finish up documentation, our doctor came into the office. "Doesn't that make it worth it?" she asked us, leaning her own tiny frame against the door in her miniskirt and heels. This doctor didn't dress down even though her job required inspecting feet for gout often. We had to agree: our job was worth it.


* Name and some details changed
** Photo: Chicago Botanic Garden September 2023
** Fun Resource: The Man Who Mist His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks ... A perfect illustration of how wondrous the brain can be. I had the pleasure of working as a neurological focused occupational therapist for 12 years and it remains my favorite.