New norm

I just read that today is Emily Dickenson's birthday. I have already lived 6 years longer than she did but none of my poems can match hers. I wonder what was lost because her letters were burned (per her wishes) by her sister? I have three boxes of journals, including one of my mom's, and I wonder if anyone will read them? I read a few pages of mom's soon after she died and it was good to hear her voice from the pages. What will be saved from emails, Facebook, blogs? It's an era of "delete" rather than "save."

Well, yesterday was a good day: I again went to Y pool and did a bit more "swimming" (4 jr. lengths by side stroke, a few more feet of the crawl) and several lengths of water walking, with some weight on the ankle. Susan, who was my chauffeur, and I went to Baggins for lunch and a very nice man opened the door for me and another moved to give me his table and chairs. I will frequent those places with kindness vibes and avoid the others.

One of the family adaptations that has evolved is, since I can't drive, Aron is picking up the SUV to do errands, get to work and back. He brings back the car in the morning so Mark can take Lia for her desert walks. It has been years since I have seen Aron in the mornings and longer still since, when he was "up", he was actually pleasant to be around. And although it's only for a few minutes before he leaves, it does brighten and lighten my day. I consider this God's Grace working in our lives, molding us into shapes we would not (willingly) do for ourselves.

Today I will reclaim another one of my normal rituals and with it, slowly feel as if I am returning to my old Self--but with a difference, I hope, or more than one. I am beginning to shift inside (not only my ankle bones have been reset, but something deeper, unnameable as yet) and consider new possibilities to living the slow life. I am not sure what shape that will take yet--a different kind of community work, perhaps, unpaid, probably but also open to new opportunities where consulting is involved. Yet keeping a third eye open on toxic barriers that don't contribute to my growth.

I am sensitive, each day, to the level of swelling that goes down on my ankle, how the bones are beginning (under the red-blue skin) to reemerge and with the bones some not-too-distant hope for stability. Of course, stability is an illusion (ask the survivors of Haiti and the Phillipines and see the smoke above the volcano in Iceland, the oil swirls in the Gulf), but some sense of terra firma is necessary in order to take one step each day. That is what I will accept as the new norm of my slow life.