The battle between lizards and words

Some learn from the external, others look inside.

Cheeto and Petri each live in their own terrariums. Cheeto, a crested gecko, takes up residence outside my office. Petri, leopard gecko, gets lonely on the third floor in his stead, located next to the doctor-husband’s rarely used desk. When home though, my husband’s hobbies, his learning takes place amongst things of the world, lizards, fountains, and sometimes bottles of bourbon. Perhaps after so many years of practicing in the science of the body, he is a student of what is exterior to him.

His hobbies have come close to driving me insane. One year, he bought crickets from an internet site and started a cricket farm in the basement—without my knowledge. They were purchased for the purpose of feeding the geckos. A lone cricket escaped from his plastic crating in the cellar, flitted through the wood boards and beams, and wound up in the flooring beneath my second story office. Throughout an entire night of drafting my work, the cricket bleeped beneath my feet. I slapped at the grounding, clapped my hands, but nothing chased him away, except time.

That night, Mark’s hobby had impacted my learning, which often takes place internal to me. Don’t get me wrong. I can add researcher often to my bio given the work I write about dementia and aging, Italian everything, and my novel. But I consider the work I do on the inside, much of which shows up on this blog, inside work.

Lately, that form of inside work has involved my body movements, impacted by an incident several years ago. Closing my eyes, I imagine a linear shape to my spine, wondering why I have been slouching. Have I not been taking up the full space allotted to me by fate and time? The answer was no.

But it’s not the alignment of just the spine, the nerves, the ligaments I envision cramped for so long a period of time. They were impacted not by the car that hit me, nor physical therapy and HIIT classes my body took on afterward. But by my emotions.

Thanks to a friend of mine who commented on a previous blog, I’ve been reading Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal. His term, and the medical field’s term, for this internal examination is psychoneuroimmunology – the impact the mind has on our nervous systems and diseases. It’s turns out plenty.

The premise of the book is how we all experience trauma. If the event or injury is what happened to us, trauma is what happens inside. Physicians, as well meaning as they are, often forget to ask about our little traumas. Though that process is improving, slightly, as we push the envelope. I think about my mother in her dementia, my father in his Parkinson’s. Did any of their doctors ask, what is the trauma happening right now in your life? What did you experience when you were young? There was lots to unpack, yet they didn’t have the knowledge, language or even permission to do so.

No one teaches you how to enter the fortress that trauma has built. We must break down the walls with our questioning, our curiosity.

These are the things I am learning through an external source about the internal me. Brene Brown in Atlas of the Heart talks about the difference between awe and wonder. Awe is external. Our neighbor’s kids are awed by the geckos. During Halloween, they were more interested in the lizards and the fish in the aquarium than in the candy bowl. Finally, after traipsing up and down through the house to visit the various reptiles, the little boy asked, “Do lizards eat ice cream?” That, my readers, is wonder. He broke through the externalities of the situation to enter into a deep relationship with himself and the gecko.

When we entertain guests, most are fascinated by Mark’s hobbies—the reptile zoo that multiplies faster than rabbits on Noah’s Ark. No one asks, “Can I see your writing?” But they always want to feed the fish. There’s even a terrarium party store right around the corner from our house, and if you haven’t had a chance to host a party there, check it out. There is no party place to see what goes on inside of me. You see the physical representation of sometimes what I want you to see.

However, through the looking glass bowl outside my door filled with agates from my travels, I too have found interest in Cheeto, how his lithe body moves with stealth without me noticing, suddenly he just appears. How his orangeness, his glow, is like the bat signal during dark mornings when I drag myself to my office. How he’s not afraid to cling to the windows of his world. I too can learn from this.

Occasionally, I’ll be sitting at a friend’s house with one of their grandchildren who confesses to “like writing.” Someone will point out, “Annette’s a writer.” Sheepishly, but not unapologetically, the young one tells me what they want to write. Or they will sit not so quietly and interrupt a game of euchre (thankfully) to plot out a story on the iPad, and insist the story be sent to their teacher, right away.

A budding writer who cares not whether there is a market—or a party store—for their words. They only care that someone else likes to write. That makes it okay for them to create a lifeline to keep their bodies swimming freely away from the imprisonment caused by the malfunctioning from trauma.

If not, there’s always cricket farming.

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January is the season of resolutions and sobriety. As a January girl, I welcome the shift to cold weather, the seclusion inside our homes forces our gaze inward, offering us lessons from this teacher we call life. May you be visited by this same power.

Time and friendship has also gifted me a few budding writing relationships I am anxious to explore. Here are some chances for you to do the same.

• Rewrite, Revise, Repeat - a three-part workshop to get that writing in shape. In partnership with Women Writing for (a ) Change and Roebling Books Newport. First session - January 28. Learn more or register here.

• Pauletta Hansel and I are again offering FREE, virtual caregiver writing experiences through Giving Voice Foundation. First up, February 16th from 1-3 p.m. Learn more or register here.

• In conjunction with the Contemporary Arts Center, I’ll be leading a writing workshop as part of their Creative Writing Project and their upcoming exhibit - Ecologies of Elsewhere. Details forthcoming on social media, this blog or or visit comtemporaryartscenter.org to learn more.

• Together with Promedica Senior Care, I’ll be returning to the Land, otherwise known as Cleveland for a series of presentations. Stay tuned for details. I’d love to speak to your group or see you there. Look for details on a possible writing workshop there too.