Losing bounce.

In high school I played volleyball. Our team was good, though I wasn’t any good at setting or spiking. (I spiked us out of bounds to end our BC Provincial Championship run during the semi-finals.)

Since Grade 6, OTOH, I'd been great at the Bump (my coach called it the "McGovern Flick"; a carefully controlled reception of the ball coming from any direction, sent to our setter for someone else to spike).

And I was particularly good at serving. Those tennis lessons in short white skirts and frilly white underwear had paid off in my overhead volleyball serve which almost always glanced over the net before curving unexpectedly, leaving the other team's defense scrambling, usually unsuccessfully, to return the ball. Games could march on, one trickster serve after another, until I hit the net.

After 10 or so years without, I took up playing "recreational" volleyball with some friends. They hadn't been volleyball players but were super competitive sports people (even at croquet!) so expectations were high. But I'd lost my serve. No matter how hard I tried: to concentrate, to not think, to rediscover the zone; I never did.

At the time, losing my volleyball serve seemed like such a big deal.

Saint Louis du Senegal is a small city but with a rich cultural heritage. Nov. 29th to Dec. 1st was no exception with the Festival Métissons - a hybridization of French and African, white and black, music. 

The opening night concert was by far the closest one gets to diversity in this society:

- a dapper older white man in burnt sienna linen jacket and avocado pants, photographing the scene while remaining a part of it;

- intervals of older Senegalese men owning the dance floor;

- loads of local Boytown hipsters (check-down pants off their butts) and even some girls (besides the usual white-man hunting lycra-dressed young ladies);

- three white girls with their hair in prim buns: American visiting University students, straight from the Bible Belt chattering in American with Peace Corp volunteers (with their enviable fluency in local languages);

- a clique of resident parents with their stunning mixed race kids;

- dreads and traditional tresses checkered on black and white heads;

- a couple of French Cougars, each with her mari d'hiver

- a middle aged Senegalese woman in traditional "wax" print cotton boubou smoking a cigarette (a true indicator of an exceptionally liberal vibe);

- a Belgian girl who seems gloriously happy every time I see her at a concert;

- a class of restless Choir boys on stage; Koranic school talibés at the curb, waiting...

The following night, the Senegalese group Takeifa (rising stars of African music scene, with their family harmonies, swingable, jumpable beats, and intelligent lyrics in Wolof, French and English) took the stage.

For the first time in 8 years here I can say that the sound system was not loud enough and had too much bass. Like Senegalese TV watching, people talked over the music. The place to be present was the dance floor.

It is well known that dance is central in African cultures: social, symbolic, ceremonial, mystic, healing, joyful. I'd always loved to dance. Years of ballet and contemporary dance lesson paid off, with or without the pink toutous.

In my Montreal party days I could dance for hours, euphoric; my own little planet in a constellation of beautiful, sexy energy. Our orbits were led by DJs like Andy Williams (not the old guy of my parents' days) 'til dawn.

That night only my imaginary dancer moved. It was all I could do to lift my wine glass without splashing. The joy of blending myself to kindred spirits lost.

And I'd thought losing volleyball was hard...

There are times when I am brave and make the best of much altered circumstances. But it is not easy and doesn't always work. Little by little this disease removes bits and pieces of my identity: some big, some small, some to be replaced by other, new pieces, others lost forever and ever.

As visions of volleyball and dance tumbled (nearly on tempo) around in my head, my husband turned to me and said: "For once you're not complaining". In his defence he was tired, not his usual supportive self, exaggerating with his "for once".

And we used to be able to read each other’s minds...

***

Then the last night, we went to 2 fantastic festival concerts (with Metzo Djatah and Wato). Neither was really dance music so at moments, without the nostalgic expectation to dance, I was able to release my grip, allowing my tremor to oscillate with the beat.

It wasn't so hard after all.

Adaptive Accessories, Coping Part II, The Jelly Bum.

I never did have great circulation; always the Princess feeling the Pea. With Parkinson’s it is worse. The chairs that don’t cut off blood to my left leg and foot make for a very short list. To compensate, I have The Jelly Bum: an orthopaedic gel seat.

I’m sitting on it now!

I use it at my Vancouver desk

 and at my desk in Saint Louis.

It goes everywhere with me thanks to a jazzy African print carry bag we had made for it in Saint Louis.

Abdoukhadre gets to make it work with his wardrobe if we’re together…

I take it on the bus in Vancouver

 Handling it on a crowded bus requires a technical routine of hold/movement patterns – like a baton twirler – never varying the holding position (tucked under my left arm so I can use my right for bus-entering business) nor the standard swing into place movement (so that it lands predictably right side up in the right direction in the right place for me to sit on it before the bus lurches forward).

and in the taxi in Saint Louis du Sénégal.

I take it to my doctors’ offices

(where if my hand is shaking too much, the doctor takes the photo…)

and to the chiro’s.

I take it on holiday: to Whistler

in the lobby of Nita Lake Lodge

and on the Whistler Gondola

where there’s nothing but a narrow ledge for sitting during the 25 minute ride so I brought my own chair too.

The Jelly Bum is essential to every phase of our trip Vancouver – Dakar: in the airports; on the wheel chairs; and in the bucket seats of Air France Premium Voyageur Class. To avoid the appearance of yet another carry-on bag, the jazzy African print carry bag is replaced with a simple, white, fitted shopping bag that leaves no doubt as to the orthopedic purpose of the object in question.

(Aéroport Paris CDG: our encampment between flights)

I take it out for dinner - to Baan Wasana Thai Restaurant in Vancouver

 and for drinks at the Harmattan Bar in Saint Louis.

I took it to see the demolition of our family’s home of 50+ years

and to our construction site in Saint Louis.

 It too was a victim of our Burglar who stripped the Jelly Bum down to reach into its fleshy innards looking for cash…

The Jelly Bum is so essential, so precious, so unavailable in Sénégal, that I sent a backup one with our furniture arriving by container ship any day now….

Fright: Fight, Flight or Freeze. (The Burglar Night)

Before.

I never thought I'd scream. Too West (WASP) Side Vancouver; family drives and Sunday dinners. I'd been taught which fork to use and when.

But then the first time I was really threatened (a would-be rapist at midnight in the Youth Hostel bathroom in Vézelay France) I did. Although I knew that in Europe the lights are often on timers, when that light went out, I was quite sure that bathroom lights were not. Trouble, I recognized. Only way to know what kind was to leave the stall and face it. My flaccid assailant grabbed me and shoved me up against the wall.

I screamed and screamed.

No one came. People thought it was just another kid yelling; one of a rambunctious group who wouldn't settle for the night.

He OTOH understood my screaming and rushed off unfulfilled.

Just months before Vézelay I’d cycled alone from Vancouver to Terrace in northern BC, camping my way up the Sunshine Coast, then Vancouver Island before taking the boat up the Inside Passage. Completely alone one night in a very isolated camp site my imagination ran wild. Each leaf falling was magnified into the footfalls of a homicidal maniac. Although I fled the next empty stretch by bus (there was nothing on that road but a logging camp, with loggers, male loggers…) I learned an important lesson in reigning in my imagination: best to approach fear with a clear rational head and to stop making up stories when it was nothing but a falling leaf.

When I was young I always wanted an opportunity to prove how brave I was. On BC Ferries sailings to Vancouver Island I imagined some little kid falling overboard and me jumping to the rescue before anyone else. For the record, it was at least 50 feet down to the water and it never happened.

During that horrible first year in Senegal we (my evil ex and I) had an even more evil landlord (he'd lost his whole family in a plane crash and had never been right in the head since). One month our rent was a week late. Late rent here is more the norm than an exception.

Heading out one 7am, the landlord blocked me at the front door and he began screaming at me. He screamed and screamed, getting closer to me as I got closer to the wall. Inches apart, I froze, my eyes downcast,


“After having survived threat by appearing as if dead in a frozen state, wild animals are documented as subsequently trembling, which even may extend to grand mal seizures. This trembling or shaking seems to accomplish the unfulfilled intention of fleeing, thus re-establishing the animal’s balance of functions.” -  The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease by Robert C Scaer, MD:

Prey before my aggressor, I did not scream or run or fight.

Eventually a neighbour distracted him. Then I ran up to our apartment. A few days later (rent still late) I came home to find our sparsely furnished apartment filled completely up with random furniture belonging to our landlord. I moved out.

Some years later, in a decidedly better Senegalese life situation, a friend and I were drinking wine in Abdoukhadre's and my apartment when out in the hallway in front of our door a commotion arose. Our neighbour, a fit 30-something carpenter was standing over his 10 year old niece, his hand and leather belt, brass buckle, raised over her prone body. I stepped between them, in his face, my feet intertwined with hers. He lunged at me. Eyes in eyes, I stared him down. I brought Sali into our apartment until her uncle settled down. There was nothing else to do. No one to denounce him to. Fighting rage lingered within me.

Three days ago in Saint-Louis, Senegal, shortly after Abdoukhadre left for Dakar, I was asleep. And then, half awake, I perceived an unusual play of lights, but slept. Then I woke up completely to see a silhouetted man, flash light in hand, at our bedroom door.

I didn't scream: Voleur! Thief! - which is the most effective way to rustle up community support. (Theft is taken most seriously. An accused thief in a market can be mob-beaten, police standing by to prevent murder). I stated simply, unnecessarily,: Est-ce qu'il y a quelqu'un là? Obviously someone was there; I could see him. While I slept, he'd been in the apartment for minutes; panning through our belongings, looking, unsuccessfully, for money.

Panning not packing

Standing shaking wrapped in a towel and phoning Abdoukhadre's brother for help, I was very lucky; the burglar had walked out barefoot, taking only minimal loot, our front door open wide.

Before PD I thrived on challenge (to face it, to be brave); even conflict (I fought with certain teachers, seeking to outwit them, or to be the settler of conflict, the diplomat between adversaries). The adrenaline made me high. I felt strong and wise.

Now with PD, the fear from the Burglar night and all its physical manifestations still reverberates painfully throughout my left, symptomatic half.

Like a small furry wild animal, I'm still shaking it off.