— Marilyn Myerson
I stand in absolute amazement by the pit of smoldering embers. I am Marilyn, the proud firewalker! My bare feet had danced and skipped over the glowing hot coals! Far away galaxies have sent their light to shine on the scarlet and plum-colored bougainvillea. Wafts of wood smoke and magnolia blossom scent the Florida night air. I feel elated, powerful and humbled.
Earlier that evening my hand had slipped through a ¾ inch solid wood board. I sliced the board in half with calm and utter ease, like a knife gliding effortlessly though butter. I attended this somewhat unusual event in 1994 as a treat to celebrate my upcoming 50th birthday. The workshop guides had started the night’s adventures talking about the power of visualization and of mind over matter. “If you can walk on fire,” they stated confidently and a tad smugly, “you can do anything.”
The power of mind over matter –can I wrap my mind around this?
I reflected on my early years when I was Marilyn, the precociously brainy kid in a suspiciously fragile body. I recalled my parents’ repeated handwringing: “O my god, she fell off the crib railing (or ran into a tree, or tripped on the sidewalk).” So much for my experiments with balancing on the edge of my crib, and when I was older, going sledding, or practicing roller skating. These mishaps led to unavoidable anxiety-filled trips to the ER. Many hours and X-rays later, the docs would inevitably declare, “Mr. and Mrs. Myerson, your daughter’s head is not fractured, she is okay.”
Nonetheless, my parents repeatedly imprinted the script: “Physical activity is dangerous to your health.” This was a difficult message for me as a child learning to explore the world. Even so, I internalized it well.
If Central Casting were searching for an inept kid in gym class, I would have been hired on the spot! In my starched white blouse, appallingly ugly navy blue bloomers – the gym outfit from hell – I beseeched the heavens, “Please, please, open up and swallow me.” But, alas, the gym gods did not grant my wish. I could feel the class’s unremitting and pitying gaze on me as I froze halfway up the monkey bars, or fell over attempting a basic somersault. And, predictably, Marilyn the wallflower, the lonely unpicked shriveled fruit on the vine, was the last kid chosen for any sports team.
My sense of my body changed drastically in college when I discovered sex and its pleasures of jazzy boogie-woogie, slow waltz, naughty tango. Wow, was this my body affording me such profound delight? What other magic might it perform? A few years later, I thrilled to the rhythms of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.
In my mid-30’s my marriage fell apart. Joe and I had met in grad school, in Buffalo, New York, the armpit of the East, in Sept. 1966. None other than Bob Dylan himself, our mutual god, had served as our matchmaker. Joe and I met on the first day of class, when everything was frighteningly new and untested. With shy smiles, we gravitated to each other. I was the exotic outsider, a Canadian Jewess, with bobbed hair and flower-printed jeans. Joe, from New Jersey, was clean-shaven with a silky black ponytail. Tight Levis, a scuffed leather jacket and motorcycle boots completed the outfit. I was a goner!
Dylan quickly found his righteous place in our opening conversational gambit. We discovered our affinities over hand-rolled cigarettes and the local Utica Club ale. Our partnership was sealed! We danced our pas de deux for thirteen years, moving from the crazy cold of Buffalo to the horrific heat of Florida. We supported each other through our daughter’s squalling infancy and adorable toddlerhood, through completion of our doctoral degrees, family of origin crises, and budgetary shortfalls. When “Save the Last Dance for Me” was no longer our theme song, we sought divorce. I took up jogging to get me though the frustration and hassle. This physical exertion served me well. With each stomp of my feet, I ground out the pain and came through on the other side, sweaty and proud.
The older I get, and I am edging expectantly up to 70, the more I understand and appreciate my body. I love my tattoos, freely chosen bodily designs, and I cherish my scars, graphic symbols of injuries healed. My left knee is the bearer of my most potent wound. In a 2009 fall on a rain-slicked floor, I did break a bone, my left kneecap – a horrible, spectacular break. Three years, two surgeries, and thousands of PT exercises ago.
“I would have preferred to avoid this experience,” I declare with customary Canadian courtesy. It was gruesome and horrific. Yet I also chose to embrace the benefits. My daughter, friends, colleagues and neighbours brought food, did errands and chores, kept me company, and surrounded me with love. Occasionally the healing faltered on two left feet. I remember the drunken colleague who splattered cooking oil all over the kitchen floor, the friend who burned a plastic plate on top of the hot toaster oven. These were just small missteps in the overall rhythm, and will be hilarious scenes in my soon-to-be-written comedy series, “My Dance Card is Full.”
Yes, I chose to embrace this experience. My parents had platzed* if I would as much as skin my knee. When it shattered, lo and behold, the sky didn’t fall, the catastrophic predictions from my childhood did not manifest. I survived and even thrived, a major victory. I have hard-won pride in myself. The firewalking credo: “You can do anything,” wafts through my mind.
A long-ago ancestor walked on water, but I walked on fire! Now I walk on earth with tremendous gratitude, breathe the air, dance and skip with joy.
(*platzed = Yiddish for “freaked out”)
This memoir was written in the mid-2010s, referencing Marilyn’s earlier recovery journey after knee surgery — Editor.
Marilyn Myerson, Ph. D, Philosophy, has learned to take nothing for granted and to embrace the power of whimsy. Marilyn was the first outside hire in what is now the USF Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, starting in 1973, when it was just one year old. She was an administrator at various departmental and deans’ levels before her retirement as Emeritus faculty in 2010. She shepherded the Human Sexual Behavior class through its many incarnations, developed the original women’s health classes, and taught feminist research methods. She is happily involved with OLLI-USF, having taken painting and writing courses. She created and frequently teaches Imaginative Writing classes and facilitates the Imaginative Crew and several other writing groups.
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