Lucky 2020

Lucky Chairlift 100 Stopped on the Tower

I’ve been wanting to wish you happy new year for quite some time. If I had followed French rules, I could have done so up through the end of January and still would not have sounded odd, at least in France. So Bonne Année and Happy New Year! 

It’s been a long time since I posted a story here. I could say that I’ve been dealing with a whole pile of unfortunate happenings. And I could also say, God, am I happy to be alive and to have lived so many joyful moments these past months. As much as possible, I’m trying to go with the latter. It takes a lot of reprogramming, even for an optimist like myself. 

The year 2020 feels abundant with good luck; it just depends on how you look at it. First of all, 2 is my lucky number. I was born on the 22nd of August and anything with a “2” in it practically makes me feel giddy. Have you enjoyed writing, typing and saying 2020 so far? Don’t you feel that those round numbers are ripe with good fortune?

I started this post last week, when we were still in January. Then I thought I should wait until 02/02/20 to post it–how cool was that date? Especially exciting for someone that considers 2 to be their lucky number. Then I woke up last Sunday on 02/02/20 and felt off. I just didn’t feel very perky. As I write this, it’s 02/04/20, which is also pretty cool for me. I consider 4 to be my lucky number as well because 2 + 2 = 4. This story may or may not post on that date but I’m writing most of it on 02/04/20 and trying to conjure up the most amount of good juju that the universe will provide. So this propitious date counts for me.

I’ve been doing a lot of looking for signs and such lately, tapping into good vibes wherever I can find them. I’ve been hanging on to lots of shiny lucky pennies, counting to 7 (another lucky number for me) on some of my exercise repetitions, and on the mountain I’ve been making laser-sharp wishes every time the chairlift passes the jewelry tree. The brass ring of all good luck opportunities occurs when your chair stops on the tower, an event that might only happen once a season. I took the above picture at Christmastime when I was riding up with two sweet little girls that I had in private lessons for a week. We squealed with glee when we landed at this magical spot (of course I had clued them in on it). Best of all, the chair was stopped there for a good five minutes and it was chair #100, to boot! So I had plenty of time to run through a whole litany of wishes in my head. (Who said you can only have one wish?)

My biggest wish of all was that my brother, David, would be happy and well and win the cancer battle he has been fighting the past two years. My recent Caring Bridge posts, entitled All I Want for Christmas and Would You Rather, recount the latest chapters of that journey. In any event, it’s always a lucky day when you’re skiing or riding in Telluride, Colorado.

Telluride Ski Resort

With regard to David, I could say he has been unlucky. But there’s also a lot that one could consider to be good luck. For starters, thank God he has lived another two years with his Stage IV laryngeal cancer diagnosis. (Stage IV means that the cancer has spread to other organs or parts of the body; in my brother’s case, his thyroid has been effected in addition to his larynx.) Yes, it could have gone otherwise. And this just in:  the cancer has not moved beyond his neck. I knew there was a good reason for holding off on this post because we just this morning received these excellent (lucky!) results from the PET scan that was taken of him yesterday. 

Whether you perceive to have good luck or bad, it really is how you look at it. I could say that I was incredibly unlucky that once I emerged from my hip replacement surgery this summer, one of my cats bunked my hand while I was in a groggy stupor perusing my morning emails. Sadly I was holding a full cup of coffee (with milk and sweetener albeit coconut milk and Stevia) and no matter how hard I tried, I could not dab up half the cup’s contents that had spilled onto my laptop keyboard. At the time it felt like really crappy luck, particularly since I had been having a hard time getting back into my work after my recovery.  After a week of forced drying involving sunny ledges and hot dry dark cupboards, I still could not unstick the keys. (My computer guy suggested the latter yet in retrospect, that does sound like a strange method for handling the situation.) But as I struggled through hours of frustration at the library trying to work on computers not my own, I still thought, Well, it’s not like someone died, it’s not like having cancer. Still though, I did my fair share of suffering until I finally received my laptop back from Apple all shiny and clean and working as though it was brand new. It was good luck that the damage from this CAT-astrophe was reparable and I only had to fork out $500. instead of three times that amount for a new one.

Firing Up My Computer

Tazzy, the Computer Culprit, Considering Sitting on My Warm Laptop this Time Around

All fall, in fact, I had a series of gremlins in my little house. Shortly after the computer incident, my kitchen sink clogged so badly that not only could I not use my sink but it also adversely effected my dishwasher and washing machine. Dang! Then as if to irk me a bit more, one of those random-sized appliance lights went out over my stove. Replacing it and getting it to stay in its place has turned out to be a real bugaboo. I thought about burning sage that had been picked during a short, summer walkabout through the grasslands surrounding Blue Mesa Reservoir. But I burned my heady Nag Champa incense and did yoga instead. (Usually in times of stress, I take comfort in familiar rituals.) During these decompressing moments I try to focus on the fact that I was damned lucky to have these problems and not be bent down by a river washing my clothes with a rock. It’s all relative.

Dave and Clara Comforting Each Other in November

I went back east in November to spend the month with my mother and deal with a variety of challenging family matters. I brought my sweet little eighteen-year-old cat, Clara, with me, since she needed to be by my side for extra care. She passed away halfway through my stay with mom. As much as it was sad, it was good luck that she left me so sweetly in a place she loved. She had been sick with kidney failure for almost two and a half years and the thought of leaving her alone so much at home in Colorado during ski season had already seemed unthinkable to me. 

My mom has talked about giving me her car. She’s 86 and drives very little now. I declined at this juncture, since I didn’t feel quite up to driving it cross country–more than two thousand miles–from New York to Colorado on my own just after Thanksgiving with snowstorms looming. As luck would have it, shortly after I arrived in the mountains, I took Misty (the name of my old Subaru that has almost 270,000 miles on her) to do some errands about an hour and a half-drive away and she arrived practically in flames. Well, that might be an exaggeration but black smoke was billowing out of the engine and it appeared that she had finally died. The Subaru dealership said she was beyond repair, so Misty and I ended up going back home on a big ‘ole pickup truck–she on the flatbed and me in the cab–for the almost ninety-mile ride back home. I was lucky to have AAA Premier, and a tow that would have normally cost about $600. (over a high mountain pass) didn’t cost me a dime. 

Misty’s Spectacular Almost Ending

Fast forward a few weeks later into the new year and all of a sudden my washing machine is no longer working again. But I have managed to get Misty back on the road for not-so-adventuresome drives as long as I keep the oil and coolant topped off. I’m determined to eek out another winter for her. I’m now hyper vigilant about letting any type of food or drink come near my computer. I’ve, in fact, changed my ways completely and caution you to do the same in case you never had such a mishap. Live and learn.

More Mileage to Go for Misty

On Duty as a Telluride Ski Instructor

My new hip is skiing great, however, I’ve developed a foot problem, which was perhaps brought on by having had my alignment corrected (during the operation). That might have put more pressure than before on my feet (is that possible?) or maybe it’s all due to having had to wait outside in the freezing cold for clients for an hour and a half one day during the holiday rush. Despite boot warmers, standing around in ski boots is always a killer. Then again, it could always have been worse. I could have crashed on the slopes and really hurt myself and been knocked out entirely. That’s what happened to a friend of mine. Now, I just have to fiddle around with a lot of boot work, make sure I stretch out my calves in order to better relax my metatarsals and hope that the nerve damage I have been feeling will work itself out.

Good luck or bad luck; the glass half full or half empty–it’s all how you look at it. But heck, go ahead and find a talisman, lucky charm and/or totem at every turn. Own it, visualize it and create your own destiny. Infuse it with love and grace and either way, it will work out all right. Plus, it’s 2020, which to me means double the luck, double the fun.

Wishing you the best of luck!