finding my stride

This week I met a milestone with returning to walk the Rillito path for a mile in 20 minutes. I really enjoyed the cooler temperature and the sights (an eagle on a low mesquite branch, toddlers carrying stuffed animals and joggers with dogs in tow) and smells (fresh horse manure and heavily perfumed matrons in glittering t-shirts and sweat pants). I had my stride assessed this week and am trying to focus on posture and keeping my right foot pointing forward and not slightly to the left. This seems to be helping my calf muscles but something in my stride is tweaking my back because it's aching in mid back and pelvic area, both on the right side. I am probably still compensating for some muscle weakness in my legs and asking the back muscles to carry more of the load, so I will need to have Kevin look at me this week and suggest what I need to alter.

Another challenge is weaving my way through Imagine Greater Tucson work tasks, domestic chores, familial obligations and physical therapy appointments (still twice a week). What is getting pushed aside is my regular workouts with swimming, bicycling and weights at the Y and my creative writing. I also feel that I am shortchanging myself on time with my women friends--squeezing in a quick cafe chat and chatch-up before the end of the day or on the weekend. On the plus side, my metabolism changes seem to have stablized and sleep patterns are more back to normal.

Holidays are coming. I pulled out our plastic pumpkin for the front step and switched my fake spring flower assortments for the autumnal cattails, wheat and sunflowers. We bought a butternut squash to cook tomorrow and I enjoy the taste of that vegetable, dotted with brown sugar and butter. Thanksgiving will be at my father-in-law's because Mark's sister and family are coming in from Philly. Aron will be working on TDay and we might do our usual post-TDay home turkey for him and friends. I hope we can take a trip to California over the holidays because Mark has vacation time to use or lose and we didn't see my 97 year old Aunt on her birthday this year. I have a friend in Monterey that, with a car and the time, I would also like to visit, but the January Bat Mitsvah trip for Sasha is costing a small fortune so we'll just see how the dollars stretch. I would rather travel and see family and friends than buy anything although I told Mark today that when I get paid for my IGT work I might want to bring in a housecleaning team to do the nitty-gritty work that I have totally no interest or energy in doing right now.

We have a very sick eucalyptus tree out back that we have to have cut and hauled away and maybe need to transplant some new euclayptus bushes growing on the north side of the house to the back/East to continue to protect us from summer sun and townhouse neighbors. For the most part in the past ten years, our neighbors have been quiet and good cooks because I smell some mighty tasty scents from time to time in the early mornings. Once we had a neighbor who must have been a concert pianist or serious student of the instrument because s/he would play sonatas in the evening and, for a few moments, I felt Parisienne, recalling the 2002 trip I took with Patsy. Our hotel opened onto a courtyard, and, across it, I could see into the apartments at night. One apartment opened up to a large window with a baby grand piano at the edge of a room and, in the evenings, a resident would play Chopin. Such are the stuff of memories.

My physical therapist says that one of the tricks to recovery is "muscle memory", i.e. retraining the muscles to move in a way they have forgotten during the healing process. I think that works for the heart, also, because I am trying to retrain my heart to accept some familial relationships I would prefer not to be as they are.

My friend, Susan and I saw a strange and powerful movie yesterday: Never Let me Go. It's a film about life and death, illness and the costs, in human terms, of health. I have been thinking about it throughout the day. What will be my completion--a term that the movie uses instead of the word "death." Autumn is the time to contemplate things that pass away. I don't find it a morbid musing but rather, like the season, a musing with shadows and light. Shadows soften the angles and can offer a new way of seeing that sometimes bright light blinds the eye to capture. I think, as I continue to find my stride in the weeks ahead, I will appreciate the shadows and ponder "completion" as a signifier for living.