THANKFUL FRIDAY

I fell flat on my butt this week. That’s not a metaphor. In an attempt to lighten my heart towards the falling snow, I stepped outside to take some pictures. I knelt down to take a picture of an ice covered tulip and when I stood up, I completely lost my balance. I stumbled back and then fell over, my left buttcheek hitting hard against the cold wet pavement of the circle drive. I fully embraced this fall and let myself roll all the way back so that I was lying flat on my back on the cold, wet drive. I laid there for a breath or two before thinking “I should get up before someone runs over me with their car.” and I peeled my body off the ground. I stood and assessed the damage. A rough spot on my left palm and a bruised left buttcheek. A wet coat. All in all, it was a pretty minimal list of damages.

I heard on the radio that Riders In The Sky will be playing at a local venue here sometime next month and I was instantly taken to that year I took Dad to see them in concert. Every detail of that evening swam around in my head. Dad had arrived at my house dressed in his best western wear. He had on his nicest bolo tie and his dress cowboy boots. Of course he had his white cowboy hat. I took him to Cattlemen’s Steak House, THE cowboy place to eat in Oklahoma. I bought him a steak and we split a dessert before heading over to The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for the concert. Dad was so happy that he cried. Later on, I posted Happy Birthday wishes to a friend from high school that included wishes for cookies. She responded with how she would much rather have my Dad’s roasted peanuts. She had been in the habit of driving over to my parents’ home weekly for bags of roasted peanuts particularly during baseball season when she would be rooting for one of her children in a game. Her comment made me chuckle. After all this time, people still miss those peanuts and their visits with the Peanut Man.

This was the week for nudges from Dad. While I was driving home, the radio host mentioned his gratitude to all who had reached out to him during last week when his father had passed. He said that week was the hardest week he’d ever had. I felt myself falling backwards with his words and I embraced the fall. When I assessed the damages this time, I was surprised to find minimal damage. Dad’s passing wasn’t the worst week I had ever experienced. I had been prepared for it and had accepted it without any shock or disbelief. My memories of time spent with Dad do not fill me with bittersweetness the way other memories do.

My balance has been wonky, leftovers from my vaccination. I have been working in my daily yoga practice not just on balancing on one foot for an extended period of time, but on slow transitions between standing poses. Moving one foot back at sloth speed to come into warrior I. Taking my sweet time lifting up and transitioning into warrior II. That place in between, when you are moving from one thing to the next, that is where you build strength. The moments in between are where we find our balance. This is where we learn to embrace the fall as it happens and to assess the damages later. I have found that after committing to the fall and moving slowly into that fall that I find there is less damage.

For this week at least, I am left whole and filled with some good memories.