Melody Platz

Finding My Wings

          I always wanted to travel.  Watching beautiful landscapes on TV as a kid, I nearly couldn’t breath.  I had to get to those places.  But how?

             I was a girl growing up in a trailer park in Girard, PA.  It was a big deal when my family once spent a few days in Cleveland.  Telling my family about how I was going to travel the world one day, they would smile and say, “Sure you will.”  No one, including me, could see how this dream could possibly come true.  I didn’t just want to go to Cleveland, I wanted to go everywhere.  And everywhere is expensive.

            My first real opportunity to travel came when I was in college.  I was a junior and the summer trip to Scotland caught my eye.  It was a lot of money, but the two-week adventure could count as credit towards my degree.  I was in a sort of an ecstatic agony.  Every blood cell in my body ached to go, but I couldn’t completely justify it.  I would be broke for a year if I went.

            I almost didn’t pick up an application for the trip.  I was still a girl who had to pay my tuition in small installments.  Even buying shampoo posed a hardship when I only had ten dollars a week to call my own.  Scotland seemed wildly impulsive and maybe a bit crazy.

            I found out about a small scholarship and hesitated.  Could I possibly win it? I scribbled out a messy essay on the travel department’s application and shoved it into the campus mail.  I was totally afraid, but, by taking the plunge, I became unreasonably happy.

            I can still feel the leap of adrenaline I had when I opened my acceptance letter.  I remember crying and laughing and being in awe.  I WOULD go to Scotland.  I would be broke.  I would celebrate and buy a kilt and order a passport and fly on a plane for the first time in my life.

            The trip was all I expected: weird and exhausting and new and pretty.  But, most of all, the trip was a symbol.  I could make my dreams come true.   Since that time, I have been to London, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, Austin, Texas and Arizona.  I may not have gone everywhere yet, but I’m working on it.

Sharing the Questions

I’ve been reading Michael J. Fox’s new autobiography, “Always Looking Up.”  He talks, quite conversationally, about what it means to keep living a full life and seeing your situation as a gift, even with something as debilitating as Parkinson’s in your life.

It’s the right book for me now.  However happy I may seem, I struggle with late night questions like “what happens next” and “why do things have to be hard”.

I imagined everyone has some question that keeps them up at night.  How is my father feeling?  How much time should I really spend at work?  Was I rude to that guy on the elevator today?

I’ve heard people say they wish they had an off switch for their brain.  A long time ago, I found something of an off switch by putting my experiences in context with other people.  I’m not looking for people who have worse troubles.  Instead, I search for people who have meaningful things to say about what they’ve discovered and what pulled them through.  Then in the middle of the night when I’m so worried that my eyes won’t stay shut, I can think, “Well, Michael J. Fox thought like me once and this is what he said helped him.”

Reading Fox’s book is a rich experience, but one point hit me right away: The only thing he cannot choose is NOT to have Parkinson’s.  That’s similar to my own struggles.  How do I deal, in a healthy way, with realities I cannot change?

I’ve always been a big advocate of choosing your own attitude (preferably a positive one) but Fox is an especially powerful model for me.  He’s still funny.  He’s fighting for his cause when he could be in his pajamas.  His body may never feel “good” again, but he looks at his wife and children and thinks of himself as a lucky man.

Reading his book reminds me that I know I’m lucky too.  I’m grateful for the people in my life, this moment, and these words I get to share with you.

And of course, by writing this, I complete the circle.  Someone helped me, and maybe my words will aid somebody else.  Isn’t it a comfort how, by sharing our experiences, we can make those late night questions a little easier to put up with?