a wonderful life

I read to the 3rd/4th graders at Pueblo Gardens El. School yesterday and received a folder full of "get well" cards that I later read to myself at home. All of them were straight from their hearts--all I give to them is some time, occasional treats and support for their future lives as productive person and they give me their smiles, hugs, honesty and affection. One of them had this line: "I hope you have a wonderful life with your leg."

It cracked me up--sort of like the "hopefully sad" comment made by the Starbucks barista on my first outing after the ladder accident. Language mash-ups (a term I learned from watching the t.v. show "Glee": a mash up is putting together two or more songs that don't seemingly work together) seem to be resonating with me during this recovery. I suppose that they are also called oxymorons, but I like the concept of "mash-up"--somehow that term is more active and both phrases I have heard elicited laughter from me.

Well, I am definitely having a different kind of life with my leg/ankle. The luxury of a massage has become a necessity; going to a local park and sitting on the hard concrete bench with my leg up brought some sense of normalcy as I watched dog walkers, grandmas with toddlers, seniors reading books under newly unleafed trees and freshly mowed grass.

I was watching the vintage movie, "Tender Mercies", yesterday and observed that as the script's long pauses between sparse dialogue and movie's cinematography scanned the Texas landscape, my life, like the movie, has become filled with large spaces of time, action, even thought. Within those spaces comes some quiet peace, maybe even a sense of grace, of something being given, offered, if I am attuned to reception.

It's like when I get a massage and a pressure point is touched--there is this release of the muscle and, with it, energy, that comes from within the body. A strange sensation.

So, living a wonderful life with my leg, is a mash-up, but it's one worth doing.