Perpetual Motion

I build up speed as my blades dig into the ice. Cold air stings my face the faster I go, but I don’t care. My pre-teen brain disconnects from my body and dreams my big thoughts of having that cute boy in math smile at me, coming up with a snappy comeback to my sixth-grade nemesis, or being a reporter like Woodward and Bernstein. The Dutch Waltz plays over the loudspeaker and while moving forward on my right foot, I lean into a strong inside edge, and position the heel of my left blade near the right, to transfer my weight onto a left back inside edge. The Mohawk. Forward, backward—I am flying, and I can be anything.

*

“Not sure how you missed it,” my eldest son Alex says to me. I hear an accusation, although he is quick to say it’s not. 

“What did I miss?” I know I sound defensive. 

“That I have ADHD.” 

I am glad we are on the phone and Alex can’t see me roll my eyes. Like me, he works from home, albeit in his apartment in Boston. I have a number of competing deadlines, but I push back from my computer to fully listen.

“Why do you think you have ADHD?” 

“C’mon Mom, it’s obvious.”

Feeling uncomfortable, I close my eyes to take a breath. I swallow my initial reaction: Was it the straight As you got in school that made me miss it? I have so many friends and family members who have kids on the spectrum. But in my mind, Alex is not among them. Instead, I ask him to tell me.

And he did. He had a litany of memories that I couldn’t recall—and a running theme of how he never could focus. I tried to argue with him that this is completely normal, when he cut me off. 

“I’m just like you.” 

Completely caught off guard, I blinked. 

For as long as I can remember, I referred to myself as an adrenaline junkie. The perfect temperament for a reporter. Deadlines never bothered me. I relished them. I needed a deadline to get things done, and usually had two to three projects due at exactly the same time. Wasn’t this normal? 

“No Mom, it’s not normal. That’s why you can’t relax. It’s why you always have a million things going on.” 

I had my phone on speaker, so I could peek at my email. Alex hated when I did things like that. I closed the email app abruptly, and turned my attention to the phone. “Well, what are you doing about it,” I asked.

“I’m seeing a doctor and have been on Adderall for the last three months.” 

“How do you feel?” I was skeptical, but curious.

“I feel great Mom. I’m actually sleeping. My mind isn’t racing.” 

I was struggling with a double jump.  I kept falling out of rotation too soon. Your shoulders are under your ears, Mom told me. You have to learn to relax.

*

It’s been a year and I still look for evidence that my son might be right about me. As I walk into the kitchen, the Christmas cards that aren’t yet addressed sit on the counter and packages to be wrapped cover the counter stools. The backlog of unfinished tasks brings me back to my conversation with Alex, and I allow that maybe I do struggle with attention deficit. But I’m north of sixty, is that even possible? 

*

Compulsory figures were the eponymous segment of figure skating when I was growing up. A skater demonstrated prowess by being able to create and trace a figure eight on the ice three times – moving backward, forward, turning, and changing blade edges. Figures were eliminated in 1990—and replaced by “Moves in the Field,” skating skills emphasizing edge control without the figure eights. I turned forty in 2000 and resumed skating. 

*

Turns out it is possible.

Women are diagnosed as adults at a far greater rate than men. Likely because they fell through the cracks as kids, and now recognize themselves in the symptoms of their children who are diagnosed with ADHD. And research shows gender bias is a big part of the reason why women weren’t diagnosed. 

ADHD often presents differently in females than males. Where boys can be disruptive, girls are inattentive. Parents notice symptoms in boys, but not necessarily in their daughters. And if they did, their behaviors—too talkative, disorganized, spacey (twirling their shoes on their toes)—were not necessarily associated with ADHD. Symptoms include forgetfulness, disorganization, and lack of focus.

*

In my second-grade class, I’m practicing cursive. Dressed in my plaid uniform and red tight, I absent-mindedly slip off my right Mary Jane and spin it with my toe.

*

Books, computer games, and videos mesmerized Alex when he was a toddler. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to focus. In kindergarten, he spent hours on Zoo Tycoon—carefully building habitats, buying animals, and hiring grounds people—and watching the crowds and revenues soar. While he was at school, his tow-headed younger brother James confessed to me that “by accident, I put the baby gazelle in with the lion.” The lion, of course, ate the gazelle, which scared the crowds away, and destroyed Alex’s profits. While on a conference call, I frantically rebuilt the zoo before Alex returned to avoid a different kind of roaring lion from breaking out. 

As an adolescent and teen, Alex definitely daydreamed and would get lost in thoughts. Time was an endless river for him. Often, we sat in a car waiting for him to emerge. It never dawned on me his behavior was anything more than annoying. Apparently it frustrated him, and at age twenty-five, he did something about it.

I’m glad he feels better now. 

And what about myself? I concede that I might be forgetful, disorganized, and lack focus. I remember my office when I was editor-in-chief of a woman’s business magazine—the mountain range of books, letters, PR folders that covered every inch of my desk and couch. Ingrid, my managing editor, used to perch herself atop a pile, fold her arms, and smirk at me. She called it my vertical filing system. That was 1991. Has the advent of the PC masked my disorganization? Instead of my physical office being a hellscape, my digital desktop looks like one, as I only periodically use folders. When Microsoft threatens to stop filling my inbox because I have twenty-two thousand messages, I begin to cull and create rules. I am thrilled when my mail is reduced to a respectful eighteen thousand—with five new folders that emails flow into.

I mention to a close friend that Alex thinks I have ADHD. “Of course, you do,” she states matter-of-factly. “It’s the first thing I noticed about you—your mind is everywhere.” I am more incredulous than defensive. “Really?”

Another symptom of ADHD is forgetfulness. But I knew all the kids’ practice times and locations, the night of the teachers’ conferences, my flights to and from cities, and that I needed to pick up Worcester sauce while at the grocery store. Yet, when I sit down to write an article, I have to look up the same quote six times because I don’t have the recall.

No. I can’t have it. I built two companies from scratch. I’ve held executive roles in global corporations. I grasp difficult concepts quickly and distill them into clear prose for others to understand. My responsibilities require precision, discipline, and attention.

But then I remembered the years when Alex was a toddler and James a baby. Tim’s job put him on the road five days a week. And my temperament grew brittle. When a fax came into the office saying our phone system was down (again), I went on a profane tear. I had a panic attack while driving in a rainstorm at night on Route 81 in Pennsylvania. I snapped at Tim. I got laid off from a job, found another, but it was forty-five minutes from home. The sitter didn’t drive, so if my kids got sick at school it meant I muttered excuses to leave work early to retrieve him. 

Anger consumed me. Skating saved me.

But my comeback story was interrupted.

In 2002, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When removing lymph nodes, they nicked the ulna and radial nerves leaving my right arm useless for almost two years. I hung up my skates and gave myself permission to go on Zoloft which happens to be a medication to counter anxiety, and is given to some people with ADHD.

We left New Jersey for Buffalo, and I started an online media site focused on contemporary furniture design, which allowed me to work from home. This is 2004, mind you. Without two hours of commuting, I could do a million things. I got the kids off to school, threw in laundry, and sat to write for a couple hours. Whenever I hit the end of a paragraph I could move the clothes from washer to dryer, let the dog out, and chop vegetables to go into the crockpot. The panic attacks disappeared. Nighttime became peaceful. My irritability ebbed. There was so much change in such a short period of time: new house, new town, new career, I don’t know if I could or should attribute my mood change to Zoloft. Maybe I was more mature. Or in perpetual motion.

The housing market collapsed in 2008, and I had to shut down the site. No one buys high-end furniture when one no longer has a home. Fortunately, a high-tech company hired me and it meant flying to the New York City office a couple days during the week. Depending on my boys’ sports schedules, I headed out on Monday or Tuesday morning, and came back Wednesday or Thursday. I had this terrific, Italian made, red roller bag that had been given to the press who attended the Milan International Furniture tradeshow a couple years earlier. It was perfect for a couple days’ clothes, and easily fit in the JetBlue overhead. I flew into Kennedy and speed-walked to grab the Long Island Railroad into Penn Station. The commuters pushed to the door waiting for it to open and rush up the three flights of stairs. I felt a bit of proud of being north of 50, and keeping up with the flow of traffic as I shlepped my roller bag, laptop bag, and pocket book up those stairs (sometimes even in heels!). The office was in the adjacent building. My commute from Buffalo to Manhattan was about the same length of time it would have taken me to get from my old home in New Jersey.

Then one day my job was gone and we moved to New Jersey. Then my kids were gone. There was no reason to chop as many vegetables. My anxiety returned.

Days were long and tremendously lonely. 

It’s a Sunday and the 9:30 a.m. Pilates class is filled with leotard-clad women and their yoga mats. Danielle, a former national gymnast, is the owner. She is a staid, no-nonsense instructor, in her forties, friendly but not warm, and speaks in hushed tones. New-agey music plays as she moves from mat to mat adjusting us into the proper positions. At 10:25 a.m., with our bodies in child pose, she exits the room. We are free to exhale and leave. As I clean my mat with a Clorox wipe, a petite, yet muscular woman with long black hair, black leggings, gold sports bra, and gold high top sneakers leads an entourage of similarly dressed women into the room. She catches my eye and asks if I want to join them. Curious, I nod. “Great!” she says, and grabs my hand and pulls me into the front. With a toss of her hair, it is time to move.

In contrast to the flute and bird sounds in the earlier class, a mix of Meghan Trainor, JLo, The Jonas Brothers, Nicki Minaj, and Post Malone plays. I didn’t recognize more than a handful of the sixteen songs, each one with its own choreography. Her entourage is a shadow to the instructor’s charisma. But unlike me, they all know the steps. There is no pause, each song blurs into the next. As the last chord sounds, she bows, bounces to the steam-covered mirror and writes her initials and a heart. Everyone claps.

Dripping with sweat, I am energized.

Ignorance of the dance moves intimidated me from doing more than the Sunday class. An online video demonstrated the difference between a cha cha (two slow and three quick steps) and a salsa (quick, quick, slow, pause, quick, quick, slow, pause). Muscle memory from figure skating and college dance classes helped with chaînés and chassés. Not yet confident, but less self-conscious, I ventured into weekday classes. Each was slightly different, a fusion of dance styles: Hip-hop, Latin, Ballet, Jive, Contemporary, Lyrical. Determined to learn, I danced daily. And my sixty-something muscles were sore. I employed a battery of foam rollers, CBD oils, Eucalyptus bath salts, and TENs units to recover. When I wasn’t dancing, I was recuperating. Or working.

Then Covid interrupted everything. My younger son James came home for his senior year of college, and we chopped vegetables and made dinners again. The dance instructors scrambled to create virtual classes. For months, my daily dance was relegated to Zooms in the kitchen. With no Yankee game on TV, Tim and James drank their beer while watching dance on the big screen and in the kitchen. And with no other distractions, my husband Tim and I rediscovered our friendship.

I’m in the studio, hands on hips, dipping into lunges to warm up my legs. The class is being recorded, which makes me both self-conscious and curious. The feedback on video is instructive. Will I still have an unwanted bend in my arm.? Are my knees flexed enough? Did I finally learn to relax my shoulders?

When the music starts, I deepen my knee bend and let energy flow to my fingertips. I am grounded in my body. The volume is loud but dance quiets my mind and I muse about endings to my story.

-Diane Burley

Diane Burley is a former journalist and high tech storyteller, who, after 40 years of writing corporate speak, is reinventing herself as an author. She enjoys braiding current events, distant memories, and personal observations. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and dog.