THE MAGICAL JOYS OF SUMMER

THE MAGICAL JOYS OF SUMMER 

BY HEIDI JOHNSON-WRIGHT

The summer just before I turned eight years old was magical. Many mornings I awoke to the shimmery song of cicadas, the background music of Cleveland summers. Our house was on a street that had been developed for years, but just a block away was several miles of woods. Within a year or two it would sprout tract houses like mushrooms. Until then, it was my private nature preserve.

I spent many days divining careful paths among the trees, stepping over fallen branches, enchanted by the oblique angle of sunbeams through the canopy. My dad had taught me basics about botany and bugs, showed me where to look for little treasures. Green May apples grew under bowed leaves near the forest floor. Spider webs glistened with dew.  An overturned log would reveal a world of grubs, worms and scurrying wood lice. I would find sassafras trees, crush a few of their hand-shaped leaves between my fingers and drink in the earthy smell of tea.

In June, I went with my dad to city hall to buy a pool pass. A functionary upsold us on a season pass for the whole family for $40. My dad went for it, and a few minutes later, I was holding a warm laminated piece of pink cardboard. It was my ticket to unlimited admissions to the public pool at the end of our street. Although my sister and brother went just a few times, and my parents never went, my dad more than got his money’s worth from me alone.

I often went to the pool three times a day. After my morning swim class, I came home for lunch and returned in time for the 1pm opening bell. With pool pass pinned to my towel, I’d park my bike in the rack in the parking lot, and sprint into the girls’ bathroom (labeled “Gulls”; the boys’ was labeled “Buoys”) where I’d pretend to take the required pre-swim shower.

Next order of business to was to stake out a claim with my towel. Cement or grass was the choice; I almost always chose cement. Although I disliked having to exit the pool during the obligatory 20-minute adult swim each hour, I cherished stretching out on my belly on the hot pavement. The heat would immediately vaporize the droplets off my skin, filling my body with a warm, relaxing buzz like the feeling I would later get from a shot of whiskey.

My friends and I made up crazy underwater games, such as charades, seeing who could scream the loudest, and striking fashion poses. We always opened our eyes underwater and never wore goggles, nose plugs or earplugs. Such things were for sissies and losers and thus out of the question. Our hard line on this issue meant we’d return home from the pool with blood-red eyes stinging from chlorine and droplets of water temporarily obstructing our hearing.

Evenings at the pool were my favorite time. Fewer people meant shorter lines at the slide and boards, and more room to myself. As twilight began tingeing the sky with pastel pink and periwinkle, the underwater lights came on. This was the time for floating languorously on my back, gazing skyward. What would it feel like, I wondered, to ascend like the Apollo astronauts to the moon? I had savored the chewy, chocolate space sticks they ate aboard Skylab and drunk many glasses of Tang. I’d assembled a tiny toy moon rover, powered by twisting a rubber band, from a box of Cheerios. But what would it feel like if the sky was literally no longer the limit? 

When the final bell signaled closing time, my exhausted legs could barely lift me up the ladder. I felt like I’d landed on Jupiter and weighed 1,000 pounds. My three-minute bike ride home seemed infinitely long, the whole world cast in languid slow motion.  

http://earthboundtomboy.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-magical-joys-of-summer.html

FROM WHEELCHAIR TO WATER OLYMPICS

Heidi Johnnson Wright goes for a theraputic swim in Southern Spain

WATER OLYMPIAN

By Heidi Johnson-Wright

For one hour each week, I’m an Olympic swimmer.

If you saw me on the street – tooling around in my wheelchair, or struggling to get in a building not equipped with automatic door openers – you’d never know about my life as an “Olympian.”

More than three decades with severe rheumatoid arthritis has seen to that. Years of chronic pain, inflammation and resulting joint damage have made me the proud owner of two total shoulder, a pair of total hip and matching total knee replacements. I’ve had other major orthopedic surgeries as well, procedures done to relieve the agonizing pain and to keep me mobile.

But medical science can only do so much in the wake of a powerfully destructive, still-incurable disease. I walk only short distances unassisted and use a power wheelchair much of the time. I need help with the daily rituals of dressing, bathing and grooming.

I still have faint memories, faded flickering images of my life up to age 8, before arthritis became my everyday reality, before words like “inflammation” and “autoimmune” entered my precocious childhood lexicon. Through those foggy windows to my past, I see myself riding my yellow Schwinn five speed, climbing trees, executing perfect handstands.

Though I know I did these things with the gusto and insouciance of a grade schooler, I retain no body memories of them. I cannot recall the feeling of my tennis-shoed feet on bike pedals nor the struggle to pull myself up to an overhead branch nor being upside-down with my arms supporting my weight. These sensations are lost to me forever.

Still, I hunger for physical sensations. I want more than a daily existence in the world of the mind. I crave physical movements: rigorous liquid motions of arms, legs and torso that go beyond mere sitting or taking a few steps.

I yearn for motion. I want to feel the exertion and exhilaration of an Olympic athlete.

Each week I go directly to the University of Miami Wellness Center's indoor pool and take advantage of its hydraulic lift to get into the warm waters.

The Olympics are about to begin.

To the untrained eye, I am no more than a woman with arthritis in a swimming pool engaging in gentle range of motion and strengthening exercises. But from my vantage point, I am entering a new realm.

I walk back and forth across the pool. But walking is the slow, cumbersome movement I struggle with on land.

In the water’s silken buoyancy, I propel myself effortlessly, smoothly. For a few moments, I am not in a swimming pool in Coral Gables but at an Olympic natatorium gliding down the lane wearing the stars and stripes.

I move to the pool’s edge and begin the leg exercises. I stand with one side to the wall and lift my leg out to the side. For minutes at a time, I balance on one leg while I gracefully lift the other, something I can barely do for a second or two otherwise.

Throughout the exercise, I focus on the water’s empowering qualities. I become the movement itself, pushing all else from my mind. I feel strong and confident.

I work on my upper body, lifting my arms on either side, palms up. With the elegance of a ballerina, I rotate my forearms palms down then lower my arms back to my sides.

I am preparing for the swim meet of a lifetime. I imagine powerful moves in which I propel myself through the water like a kestrel on an updraft. I stun the crowd and my fellow competitors, winning my heat several seconds ahead of the competition.

Each week, I bend, lift and stretch my body -- a body that is to the outside world, ravaged. To me, it is a marvelous machine remade by the power of the water.

I am liberated, emboldened, transformed.

For an hour.


Johnson-Wright is a non-practicing attorney living in Miami. She also writes freelance articles about music, literature and travel for a variety of newspapers and magazines around the world.