Calloused
By Melanie Dale
@melanierdale
When it storms in Georgia, it's biblical. The gaping storm drain on the culdesac in front of our house eats up the water, tornado sirens wail, and our phones explode with warnings to take cover. I expect Noah and his ark to come sailing by.
We huddle in the basement in the wee hours as the lights flicker, waiting, for something to happen or not happen. I refresh the weather app, watching the storm move over our blue dot on the screen. The wind whips through the woods behind our house. Woods, wetlands, swamp, Shrek-approved vacation spot. I’m not sure what to call the area behind our house. Trees spring out of the water and the flood rises, rises, up the trunks, saturating the roots, soaking the foundations of the massive pines and hardwoods.
Then we hear it: KABOOM! The trees go down hard, shaking the house as they hit the ground behind our house. We worry and wonder and hold our breath, hoping the next one doesn't fall on us. We pray for strong roots to hold up against the gale.
This time our house made it through the storm unscathed. But some trees hit our next door neighbor’s house. Several neighbors have hired a tree service. Every Saturday this last month we've awakened early to the sound of chainsaws chopping down trees and the woodchipper turning them into mulch.
Recently, we've seen so many trees go down that I expect the Lorax to spring out and chastise our neighborhood. I wonder if we should rip down some trees proactively, take them out before they take us out, but knowing our luck, the tree people would accidently drop the tree on our house, saying, “Oh wow, this has never happened before.”
Even now, sitting in my office, I can see the water glimmering around the trees in the afternoon sun. The rain keeps coming and the trees keep soaking it up. I worry about the roots.
When it comes to trees, and humans, it’s all about the roots.
In yoga we say “root to rise,” this idea of rooting into our mats, into the earth, and drawing strength and stability to rise up. We press through the four corners of our feet, then lift our kneecaps, our pelvic floors, our spines, our chests rising, rising up, growing tall, growing strong.
It starts with our roots.
When I was a little girl, our neighbor called me sturdy. That’s what every little girl wants to be called, right? It became a family joke. I laughed as I stopped eating and counted calories and dwindled away. I laughed as my ribs ground together. Sturdy was big and big was bad, so I made myself smaller.
In a yoga class at the beginning of the year, my teacher and friend, Kelly, cued us to grow sturdy and I flinched at the word. Anything but sturdy, this word that’s harangued me since I was little, but never little enough.
But in that class, as I rooted to rise and gazed at the trees through the studio window, “sturdy” sank into my soul and grew new shoots and tendrils. I would redeem this word. I would make this word my entire personality. I would become sturdy.
I used to shy away from strength training for fear I'd gain muscle and get bigger, but after the greater fear of osteoporosis became reality, I got to work, squatting and lunging and lifting, gaining muscle and strength. Growing sturdy.
All of nature, world leaders, and family and friends surge as a tempest over my blue dot on the radar of my life. The news shakes the foundations. Like the trees in my backyard, I need strong roots, a sturdy base, to survive the storms around me. I will stand strong. I will root to rise.
Sitting in bada konasana, bound angle pose, I press the soles of my feet together, knees wide, and stare down at my feet. Yellowed callouses stare back at me and I fight the urge to slide my socks back on. I wonder if everyone in the room is staring at my gross feet. My roots are gnarly.
My callouses are from walking miles and miles and yoga and all the things I do to my feet. My right foot is half a size bigger than my left so I have callouses on my left where my too-big shoes rub and callouses on my right where my toe is pinched, depending on which size I get. My callouses protect me from pain. I've earned them through hard work and blisters. They are ugly but serve a purpose.
After a traumatic experience with one of my kids, I booked myself a pedicure. I can count on one hand the number of pedicures I've had in my lifetime. I'm not a nail girl. But I'd survived an ordeal that required a lot from my feet, so I climbed into a pedicure chair and enjoyed the feel of my feet soaking in the fancy tub.
Good job, feet. You carried me through a hard parenting situation and deserve some love. Everyone is safe and healthy and soon you will be, too, dearest feet of mine.
Just as I started to relax, the nail person pulled out some kind of file that looked like it would help break me out of prison, maybe? Was it for my toenails? I didn’t really have much in the way of toenails and that thing looked like it might file off an entire toe.
This is fine. I am relaxed. Hey, feet, you will love this pampering ritual observed by thousands of people without complaint. I’ve heard good things.
She gently lifted one of my feet out of the little bubbly tub and started sawing off my callouses. I panicked and blurted, “Don't take those. I need them!”
My feet are flesh and blood and nerve endings and softness with arteries and blood flowing. They are alive and sturdy. They support me and walk to show up for others and take me out into the world. The callouses on the outside don't change what’s inside, they just protect me along the journey.
I need my callouses, the ones on my feet and the ones in my heart. My heart is calloused from the world's hurts. As I near half a century of life, I'm grateful for the callouses that I've rubbed around my heart, protecting me from the pain of living in this world. My callouses protect me from people letting me down and the disappointment of broken dreams. Without my callouses, I'd never quit crying. I can't live in this world as an open wound, raw flesh letting in the bacteria and the sting of sweat.
I'm preparing to walk the Camino de Santiago next year, and I'll need my callouses more than ever. My feet, my roots, will grow thicker skin. But my hope for my heart is to find softness, to find love and life. Root to rise. Strong roots, as I rise into a new chapter in life.
A lizard darts across the log pile outside the window of my office and I follow it to the trees behind. The water line is receding, revealing pinecones, leaves, and broken branches. I watch the trees sway in the breeze and murmur a prayer for strength, for the trees, for myself.
Melanie Dale is the author of four books, Women Are Scary, It’s Not Fair, Infreakinfertility, and Calm the H*ck Down. She’s a writer for the TV series Creepshow, a monthly contributor for Coffee + Crumbs, and her essays are published in The Magic of Motherhood. She has appeared on Good Morning America and has been featured in articles in Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, The Bump, Working Mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Los Angeles Times. To get out of the office, she spent the last few years shambling about as various zombies on The Walking Dead. She and her husband live in the Atlanta area with three kids from three different continents and an anxious Maltipoo named Khaleesi.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.