The woman who swam with sharks

Contrary to popular belief, swimming with sharks does not require courage, at least in my case. Yes, I had always had a deep seated fear of sharks probably born of Shark Week commercials. But being in a cage surrounded by other people, breathing through snorkel masks, feet firmly planted against the floor and looking out inside the deep sea? That was not the hard part.

The hard part was getting into the two inches of clear water lapping against the shore.

Traumatic experiences in water as a child had led to a life of panic attacks when approaching the water. The fear was indiscriminate. Cloudy water, clear water, lakes, oceans, rivers…all caused an elevated heart rate, and in some cases, full blown panic attacks.

But my desire to snorkel in the warm waters of Maui outweighed my incapacitating fear, and thus began a painfully slow journey towards a different relationship with water. I remember standing in two inches of water, forcing myself to breathe slowly as the clear waters lapped over my toes. When my heart rate would begin to calm, I would take another step and begin the process anew. I had to condition myself to breathe through my fear and eventually learned to replace the lies in my head with calm voices that spoke the truth. The journey literally took years.

And so swimming with sharks was not a “first step.” It was, as we say in education, a culminating exhibition.

I thought of those years of facing my water fears this morning when I left my house for my usual early morning walk to watch the sunrise over the Santa Rita Mountains in the Sonoran Desert. Leaving the portico of the home, I was surprised to see it

seemed nightfall had not lifted- the sky so full of dark clouds, it was difficult to see.

I felt the familiar rise of my heart rate signaling the birth of fear. For the desert is home to night creatures, and, like the sharks, all carried the debris of fictional encounters and warnings from the human inhabitants of the landscape. As I glanced at my surroundings, like the shallows of the sea, every tiny movement became a threat to my existence. But my desire to encounter a rising sun was so powerful, I could not go back into the home.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I stared at the ground in front of my feet on the sidewalk watching for hidden dangers in the half light. Every splotch became a tarantula. Every crack in the street became a rattler. Every bush I walked under had a black witch moth waiting to land.

Breathe. Just breathe.

A bat cut across my field of view and swooped back and forth. I pictured a legion following behind. A rustling in the bushes of a wash I passed must surely be filled with hostile javelina disturbed by my presence. Harbingers of death, it seemed, lurked everywhere.

In the presence of these fears, it would have been would be so easy to go back and hide inside. But this I could not do. Because I knew my fear, as an author once stated, was just this: False Evidence Appearing Real. That lesson had been honed in the waters off the Maui shore, and I needed to sharpen it in this dry desert landscape.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I continued to walk and breathe deeply to keep the fear at bay. The sun finally won its battle against the monsoon clouds. The skies lightened, and the air warmed. Walking back in the growing light, I saw the “tarantula” splotch hadn’t moved; it was simply leaf debris on the sidewalk. The “snake”crack in the road remained in its original place and no rattles were attached to its tail. The rustling leaves of the mesquite contained only awakening birds, and solitary bat, merely hungry and harmless, had flown off to roost for the day.

False Evidence Appearing Real. Nothing was as it had seemed through the lens of my fear. That is a lesson I continue to learn and relearn as life unfolds in this new desert landscape and reveals what this journey holds for my soul.

I have to keep my eyes on the hidden Light on the horizon. I have to trust in the truth of its presence even in the absence of evidence.

And I have to breathe..

Just breathe...

The “great walled” fortress

Looking at home prospects in the desert, it was hard not to be put off by what we came to call, “the great walled fortress” gates. In a development that prizes uniformity, the opening area of this home was not only gated; the bars had spikes at the top.

While viewing the home over several months, I began to wonder about the inhabitants that would have felt a need for this type of security. Perhaps they had been robbed. Perhaps they were victims of random trauma. Perhaps, like so many, they had simply gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and were protecting themselves from “government take over”.

Friends who viewed the house online had similar thoughts, especially if, as one couple did, they drove by the home. No one…not one house, had anything similar. But we loved the inside and felt the gates could be removed after purchase.

Our local cat sitter who came one day to make acquaintance with the cats and our home remarked about it. When I told her that not one home in the development had anything similar, she said, “Honey, not one home in all of Green Valley has anything like that.” She, too, postulated that the owners must have been the victims of property crime to feel such a need for security.

A local iron works company would be coming to give us a quote for removing this “Great Wall,” so we stopped at their shop, as we were getting a new screen door as well. The lady behind the counter encouraged us to take a seat and look through books of previous works from which we might get ideas. About three pages in, I saw it. A picture of our house, complete with the spikes. We were in the business that had turned the previous owner’s vision into reality.

I showed the clerk. “Tomorrow, we are going to have to tell your owner that he now gets to remove those bars,” I joked.

“They are very forbidding,” she answered, and her response made me feel like she understood why we needed to have them removed.

We felt like such an intimidating entry might send the wrong message about our spirits and our hearts and could not wait to “un-identify” with the coldness of those bars.

In the morning hours before the iron works owner was to arrive, I took out some boxes to my car and was greeted by a lovely woman wearing a t-shirt celebrating the virtues of kindness. She asked if we were the new neighbors, and after chatting a few moments, I told her we were taking down the “Great Wall”.

“It’s so unfriendly, it seems. I wonder if the previous owners had been victims of some crime?”.

“Oh, no,” she said in her thick French Polynesian accent, “The wife had Alzheimer’s, and she would try and run away. Her husband petitioned the HOA to get special permission to put them up. He wanted to be with her in their home as long as he could. He took loving care of her for years. The next owners just left them up.”

And there it was…

Those bars were not to keep criminals out; they were to keep love in.

Yesterday, I couldn’t wait to get those bars removed. Yesterday, my perceptions of them were soaked in misassumptions. Yesterday, I misjudged motives and hearts, especially my own.

Now I look out the front window at those bars, and I feel a sense of sadness. Yes, there will be more light in the entry. Yes, future guests will not be greeted by iron spikes and bars. But there was and is a story there that will go untold now…a story of love and loss that is common to us all.

And I almost missed it.

Something for nothing

Some would call it bad luck that I am placed in her line every time I shop in the early morning at the large discount store, but I prefer to call it divine providence because it is always an opportunity to practice the skill of patience.

If she were to have a race with the sloth police clerk in Zootopia, she would lose. Her pace is deliberate and slow, not as a learned skill I believe. I think it is just how she has always done life.

She is plain and unassuming, and her speech cadence is slow and measured. For each item that she scans, her movements mimic that of the sloth, and I notice that every time I’m in her line and someone else comes up, they mostly turn and go to another line probably having experienced her careful deliberate way of checking out groceries before.

But though I feel a modicum of their impatience I deliberately keep myself in her line and engage in conversation, which slows the checkout process even more. Patience is a choice, and being there helps me remember to choose an attitude of abundant time.

There are wonderful things to be learned in the practice of patience and one is that things are not always as they appear. For this gentle,slow soul has a quiet passion for raising money for the Miracle Children’s Network, which is a donation choice when finalizing your grocery purchase.

She shares enthusiastically that when asked by her employer to man a table at the front door to increase donations, she asked, “Would you mind if I dressed up as a clown?” Apparently she has a wealth of clown costumes and proudly declared, “ I even have an Elvis costume. People give more for Elvis.”

The day I worked as a clown I made $100, but the day I dressed up as Elvis, I made $180, and every penny of it went to the Children’s Miracle Network.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by on Saturday,” I said, “and I can see you and your clown costume.”

“Eight a.m.,” she said, “I’ll be there! And it all goes to the Children’s Miracle Network.”

As I drive through the desert on my way home, I think about how often I misjudge the heart of others simply because of some outside appearance or action that doesn’t match my critical expectation.

I believe she does not live in a world of expectations. I think she is just who she is, regardless of circumstance. I think she just loves helping people, especially children, And so there she will be on Saturday, dressed as a clown, passing out free drinks and chips to increase donations, because, as she told me, “ People won’t give you something for nothing.”

But she is wrong.

She gives something for nothing every time I stand in her line. She shows me the insignificance of hurry. She shows me the simple joy of showing up to help others. She lets me soak in her generosity of spirit.

And maybe that’s why it is always worth the long wait in her line.