Spin Cycle

"It is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I skinned my knee. Wow. I skinned my knee (the very expensive one). I haven't done that since I was 12. I am so stunned by the fact of the fall, I don't even think about it hurting. (Walking and texting. Not a good idea. As friend Charly says, Oprah never warned of the dangers of that.) I congratulate myself on keeping my head about me, and my feet in contact with the ground after I stub my toe, long enough to propel myself to the hood of a parked car where I stick out my arm and slow down the fall to hands and knees. And I didn’t drop my phone, either. Later, sitting on a bench reading a book just acquired at the library, three young mothers parade by pushing babes in strollers. Wow. Been a long time since I did that, too. I could feel old: clumsy and so way-past childbearing years. Oddly, I feel great! Young enough to be transported back to the babies-in-buggies-with-buddies years. Young enough to still skin my knee and get up and walk away from it. (Fortunately no one saw my mishap. That would have been a game-changer.)

Groundhog's Day was, of course, this week. I never paid much attention before--it's not, afterall, a day off work--until a few years ago when dear Dori revealed it as her favorite holiday and the movie her favorite flick. In the movie, Bill Murray--a news reporter covering breaking news in Punxsutawney, PA--wakes up to exactly the same day over and over and over. He cycles through all the emotions: curiosity, frustration, anger. His responding actions follow suit. He cannot make the day change no matter how negative he becomes, and how violently angry he is. Finally he figures it out. To make the day different, he has to change who he is in it--in a positive, life-giving rather than life-diminishing way.

How often I keep waiting for my environment, my circumstances to change; thinking they will all on their own. There is a woman, I will call her Oz, who has been at Cafe Carolina most Sunday mornings for the past year and a half. We have never spoken. I remain hunched over my laptop writing; she over her Kindle reading. Both of us throwing off don't-bother-me vibes. Both of us, it turns out, wanting to speak, but afraid to interrupt the other's sacred time. Last week, after arriving at the same moment at the coffee pot, she makes the break and stops by my table. She opens with a line that makes it clear she read my blog the previous week. Long story short, she got the name of this blog long ago, reading it over my shoulder from the booth behind me, and has been reading it ever since. She is in Raleigh long-term-temporarily and has spoken about me to her partner who lives in one of the northern cold states. Her partner encouraged her to just say hello. And she finally did. Thank you, Oz, for altering our little Groundhog's Day scenario. (We talk this morning for a long time. Delightful. And many discovered connections.)

The point is, we don't have to do much to change who we are in our day. And one little change has a domino effect. Yesterday I go to a Yoga for Women over 50 class at a studio other than the Y. A new class with different people, a new space, a new day for yoga, a change in Saturday routine. (Same wonderful instructor--I have my limits.) That hour changes the whole day. (It also helps that it is gray and raining.) The yoga opens me up and inspires a creative project involving magazines, scissors, and glue that makes me very happy; I bake bread and make soup, loving the mixing and kneading and chopping. And the aroma that permeates the house. The devouring is pretty darn good, too.

This morning I read last year's Groundhog's Day post. There is a photo of the emerging peony. We have all been exclaiming about the early spring this year, but I check this morning--no emerging

peony. But the banana tree has many new tightly-curled leaves this week; having never frozen back to the ground, it didn't have to start over. The tulip magnolia that bloomed too soon in Fletcher Park is gone, but I find another. And the cherry trees in the Park are blooming their outrageous-scented pinkness. A swinger of swings delights in newfound freedom, swinging so much higher than he dared a year ago. My blog of a year ago, also proclaims January warmth. Perhaps the pre-season warmth and bloom is not as unusual as we think it is. Maybe it is the same over and over. Could it be that we are different? I hope so. In spite of ourselves, we continually reinvent some small part of our Selves and then credit it to external events. I wonder if we are so afraid of change, that we deny that we have.

On Thursday afternoon, I can't figure out why my left arm and my expensive right knee are sore. By evening, the pain has spread to my shoulders. Friday morning, my lower back. Oh. Yes. The Fall. Today I am pretty much back to normal. It is a good lesson. Changing direction can be painful; but we survive, and our days look different because we are different in them. This week I am determined to rise 15 minutes earlier and get back to my dawn walk. Missing the sunrise affects me all day. I will miss the 15 minutes of mattress time for only a nano-second.

"Get yourself to your life...Rise above the aches and pains, the nausea, exhaustion, general malaise. The show won't last forever." -Patti Digh