A meandering path:
I unearthed the leaf blower from the bowels of the basement last week. Then I proceeded to blow all the leaves onto the flower beds, thinking the added organic matter and acidity would be useful in the newly added heavy alkaline clay soil. Shortly after I did that, a landscape crew came in and started to blow all the leaves off the beds and up to the street.
Enter screaming banshee white woman yelling “No! No! Stop! Put them back!” Yes that was me. I understand, intellectually anyway. I had been a previous client. Why not try to help and assume the client will be happy to return to the fold? Ahh. No. Protect me from people trying to help. Nothing is wrong with help. But it needs to start from the same frame of reference.
The rest of the week may be a slow week. I pulled my back doing something minor, and foolish, a lift and twist move — the kind of thing we all do without thinking but which we really aren’t supposed to do at all. I am having a bit of trouble moving around. Or I move well, once I get started... until I don’t. Short walks are called for, many short walks, which will hopefully lengthen over the next few days. I don’t know if I can afford the slowness and yet at the same time I cannot afford to not take the time.
And so it seems my walkway is not the only thing that meanders. Life meanders as well, sometimes in convoluted twisty ways that we never anticipate. But so many of the our goals and deadlines, the things we twist ourselves up over, aren’t really what we are supposed to be working toward at all. The goal of life isn’t the next party, the promotion, the next job. Sometimes we forget that we are really just trying to cross the street.
