I Shall Remake My Body

Edmund Morris wrote a book called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which if you haven’t checked out, I highly recommend. It makes for a great audio book too. Anyway, expounding on Teddy’s early life, the book reveals that Teddy was a sickly child who battled debilitating asthma, and his family feared for his life. But rather than coddle him, his father challenged him to tackle his health issues head on, and use his mind to overcome the shortcomings of his body. In response, Teddy gritted his teeth and promptly said “I’ll make my body.”

“I’ll make my body.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Hearing that Teddy faced and overcame childhood asthma made me feel like I found someone to model myself after, because I had done the same thing. Asthma was a grueling experience that gave me plenty of long nights as a kid – I had forgotten how hard that was. Reading Teddy’s words rekindled the flame, urging me to get back into the fight against my current health predicament. I played back that section of the book again, and immediately adopted the mantra: “I shall remake my body.”

At the time. I was in pretty rough shape. On the outside I was looking like a shell of my former self: gaunt, hollowed out, and feeble. But on the inside, I knew the same guy was still kicking around in there somewhere. He had just been thrown down a deep, dark cave, and was having trouble finding his way out. In that cave, Teddy’s words found me and gave me a little spark.

It’s been six months since I adopted my new mantra, replacing my old one of “I am a river, and a river is me.” The old one reflected the need to quiet my mind and calm myself, so the pain didn’t wreak havoc on my emotions. It captured my desire to have the waves of pain pass through me without leaving permanent damage, and helped me crawl back up to a point where I could start fighting with more gusto. Adept as ever at knowing when to effect the most influence, Theodore Roosevelt entered my life at just the right time.

Now, the fight is on. Going into attack mode against the damaged nerves in my spine has brought on all sorts of wonderful new pains that I wasn’t experiencing before. None of the stretches or little exercises I’m doing actually feel good, but I’m getting better at discerning what is helping and what’s not. My family, lucky them, gets to hear all about the good pains versus the bad pains, but they just think I’m crazy because all of it makes me look like I’m getting stabbed in the back.

Lately, as I’m literally regrowing from the inside out, I have these moments where it looks like I’m Bruce Banner and the Hulk is about to come ripping through my back. I let out a yelp as I stretch my arms wide and the muscles in my back make me grimace. Sometimes the kids look up and sometimes they don’t. When they do look, they seem to be contemplating when the men in white coats are coming to get me, because I’ve clearly lost my mind.

As such, I think my long run as “poor Dad” is over and my new status as “weird Dad” has begun. But that’s ok. If I beat this thing, I’m going to feel like a whole new man, and when that happens, who knows what I’m going to do? What do you think will happen when a guy who has been locked in a physical prison for so long, finally gets set loose on the world? It could get pretty, pretty, weird.