I’ve often made mention of the high esteem that I hold my late paternal Grandmother and my Great Aunt in. I have the distinction of them serving as my Guardian Angels and my muses – as they consistently provide me an inexhaustible source of inspiration, guidance and if that wasn’t enough, ensuring that I survived what should have been a tragic car accident, one that I emerged relatively unscathed from.
I often feel their presence and when it happens it is always something that moves me from the spectrum of lowest low to that of the highest high. Recently, I injured my right leg and I went through a period of low, as I was unable to embark on my weekly bike rides through the confines of Baltimore and the surrounding parks.
These bike rides serve a higher purpose than mere exercise – as my mind and creative juices often move faster than the bike as I make my way through traffic and into the uninfected confines of nature. Admittedly, it was a prison of sorts that I struggled to find my place in.
At the time of this writing I’ve been sidelined for about 2 months.
During this time I’ve had to find ways to live with differing levels of discomfort that reduced my leg to an useless appendage of sorts.
Early on in the process I found relief in augmenting my walk to a gait that was eerily similar to Grady from Sanford and Son. I liked Grady but I never endeavored to walk like him, getting accustomed to a steady diet of Advil to deal with the pain was the norm until I made that fateful visit to an orthopedic doctor, where they miraculously figured out what it was that had made me a shell of myself.
I’m at 90% and I intend to resume my diet of bike riding, but the strangest thing happened one day in therapy. I recalled something that my Aunt would say when “we children” would get too rambunctious…
“Sit your rump down somewhere.”
I quickly put 2 and 2 together to ascertain that the Universe was quoting my Auntie and in the process I was compelled me to adhere to something that I would not have done of my own accord…
Her influence, her presence… Game point Auntie!
Lesson learned: I had to lose something to gain a greater appreciation for it and it was nothing short of humbling and now that I am near the end of my therapy tunnel I will savor it more than I did previously.
Shun P. Writes... dot com 