Monday, September 20, 2010

knee deep appreciation

It's been almost a week since I fell off my bike. To be more accurate I suppose I could say since I flew over my handles bars and skidded across cobblestones and concrete on the bike path along the west side highway, screeching to a halt on my knees and palms, my face an inch from the pavement. It's been 6 days of massive bruises ranging from a vibrant purple bordering on black to a yellow tinged with what almost looks magenta at times. Hematomas and contusions. Swelling that moves day to day, almost hour to hour. A knee and wrist that wouldn't bend. Pain shooting down my leg and up my arm when I brushed past something or tried to move in way my body wasn't ready for. I've iced like mad, lived on advil, and actually even took it easy at times, which is something I rarely do.

And through all that, I'm grateful. Grateful in a way that's hard to explain. Grateful that it wasn't worse. And grateful for my body. For healing. For the miracle that I could be banged up like this and 6 days later I'm contemplating going back to yoga. Stupidly. I'm not ready yet. But, I will be soon. My body, at 46, is handling this. I will walk up stairs and hoist bags of laundry over my sore shoulder and twist my body into ridiculous positions. Soon.

I will get back on my bike and fly down the west side again.

And I will appreciate it all the more knowing how easily I could have lost that ability.

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