Sunday, October 18, 2009

Unsteady Steadiness of Time

Tick tock, tick tock, it’s the key to Captain Hook and the Tell Tale Heart, the Grandfather Clock in the hall of a grandparent’s home, and time that keeps slipping ahead. Each moment is exactly as long as the one before, 60 moments ticked out on a metronome of seconds, minutes, hours, days, stretching out to centuries.

But, time is anything but a steady tick tock momentary minuet, which is static in its movement. Instead, it fluctuates, skipping and dancing about one moment, the next dragging it’s measured feet in an achingly slow cadence. This past week has gone in bursts of busy, where thirty minutes have seemed like five, an hour seems like ten minutes, and one minute seems like an hour.

In my life, I have also seen the times vary with speed. It’s been six weeks since this ankle was sprained, and the healing seems so slow, as if it were truly following a proverbial feeling of dragging its feet. It was the first week without the boot and probably not a great week for that to happen as it also corresponded to a workshop at work. In other words, that means a lot of walking for me. By Friday, I had smashed down the heel of my shoe and wearing it as a make-shift clog to relieve some of the pressure that I was feeling due to swelling, hoping that the next step wouldn’t feel like a needle in the ankle or fire in my knee. Okay – so we have established that it is uncomfortable, if not down right painful.

Six weeks, a moment in the span of things. I suppose it’s all about perspective. Perspective – my view point of what is going on, of what is happening, and then I process all that and make a choice of how to respond. So, six weeks – physical therapy is getting ready to start and hopefully will make a big and for the better type of change in my leg. In the meantime, I’ll be keeping up my perspective and attitude of being grateful for people around me who surprise me with doing really helpful things, not because they have to – but because they know it hurts and that they can help.

No comments:

Post a Comment