Winter Cold Moon
Katie, my physical therapist, is young, only a year and a half into her career. She’s thin and a somewhat recent transplant from Florida. Colorado and its mountains, its snow, even its trout streams are her playground. She went snowshoeing on Hoosier Pass yesterday, the road from Fairplay goes over Hoosier Pass to Breckenridge. It’s high, you can access altitude above the tree line. She did, being out there “a few hours.” Afterwards, she said, she fished. Fly fishing. Which she took up a year ago with classes and a membership in Trout Unlimited.
She tells me my flexion and extension are remarkable. She says, too, that the stiffness and achiness that I have is typical. “It’s not scar tissue or anything else like that, it’s the body’s reaction to the surgery. It will pass. You’re doing very well.” That was nice to hear.
As the day winds down and night falls, the knee begins to kick out pain again. Feeling better, I’m going up and downstairs more often, walking more, generally putting the knee to work. By day’s end it’s tired of the effort and says, “Slow down. Stop.”
We’re on the sixth night of Hanukkah, many candles have burned to get us here. Lots of wrapping paper and delighted squeals. Opened boxes litter the coffee table and the couch, gift sign. Ruth got skins for her skis today. These get put on skis when you want to go up the mountain, rather than down. Gabe got Pokemon cards and a sketch book.
Hanukkah requires some discipline, apportioning presents so there are some left for the end of the 8 days. Jon enforces a strict two-present openings a night rule for both kids. Kate recites the Hanukkah blessing in Hebrew while Ruth and Gabe try to follow along.
Our three generation household runs pretty smoothly in spite of the usual sibling rivalry.
Christmas. Today. Right now the electricity of children twirling in their beds after a sleepless night, the clatter of little feet racing down stairs, bleary eyed parents waking up, wondering why all of this has to happen so early in the morning cause psychic vibrations to pulse through the country, hitting even the top of Shadow Mountain. If they were lit, they would put the northern lights to shame.
Winter Moon of the Winter Solstice
My mother and my Aunt Virginia helped me. At the family farm in Morristown, Indiana I drug myself along the sofa, my head often collapsed on the floor, getting rug burns as I pulled it along with the rest of my body. They helped, but it was only that young boy who could move his legs, drag his body along. He did it. Since then, I have identified walking upright in the world as a major theme of my life.
So. The old computer, dead to me when I went in for surgery, has shown signs of life. I’m very glad because there are many things on here I want, need to keep. It’s six years old though, past its sell-by date, and I no longer trust it, so I’m going to buy a new one after the holidays. I’m glad to have it available now, however, because it means I can visit the loft again in the early morning, expand my daily circuit, get me out of the house for a while.