I approach vacation time like a Norwegian – well, specifically a Viking (as in we who discovered America, folks, not the other unfortunate sporting reference). I see a week off as time to attack: my life, my house, my closet, my basement – even the garage since it’s warm out there. Show no mercy to those messy files! Sack the junk in those cupboards! Toss the trash out of the trunk of the car! Hunt and pillage at those mall sales, showing no clemency to those who can’t keep up!
I suppose it’s a weird conception of leisure.
I do other things, of course, but not with the passion that I bring to my voyages of raiding and trading.
Invariably, something throws the well-mapped plan off course.
Too often it is someone’s pain that provides the wake-up call to slow down and reconnect with gratitude for the moment – why is this? Again and again I have been called out of my seemingly-secure little world by another’s accident or heartbreak. I feel badly for them, of course, but mainly I am distraught to be reminded how vulnerable we all are at any given moment.
I had just nailed up (yes nailed – I have never mastered the screwdriver) my new, very large, round mirror over the dressing table, thinking what a find it was and how ‘20’s it looked, and was blissfully arranging the smashing yellow silk forsythia in a crystal vase on the dresser so that one stem of the blossoms gracefully drooped towards the mirror, having myself a fine time, when I saw red lights flashing in the mirror.
I went out to investigate and saw an ambulance in the alley and a patient trolley in my neighbor’s backyard. Sandyis an older woman who lives alone, and this felt ominous. Saying, “Hello?” I poked my head in the door and saw her on the floor in tremendous pain. The paramedics said she had dislocated her hip and they’d have to take her to the hospital. She barely managed to tell me where to find the key so I could lock up the house after they’d all left.
I was ushered out of the door of the small house so as not to be in the way, and waited in the darkening backyard – at least twenty minutes – for them to bringSandyout. Even though I hardly knew my soft-spoken neighbor and had never been in her house before, I was taken aback at the sight of her in such excruciating pain. After hours, it seemed, they got her to the ambulance and sped off to the hospital
As I walked throughSandy’s little house to lock the front door, everything looked so normal: dishes on the counter, lights on in the living room, papers on the dining room table. Yet in an instant, a fall, and Normalcy becomes Crisis.
I came home subdued, walking more slowly than before. Finishing my projects seemed less urgent than calling my brother, emailing my daughter, surrendering to the overwhelming gratitude forNormal.
One of my favorite writers, Jungian James Hollis, says that what stops us in our tracks is often considered “an external violation of the soul, an intrusion into a smoothly flowing life, whether from the acts of others, from the fates, or by our own choices. Yet just as often, it is the soul itself that has brought us to that difficult place in order to enlarge us, to ask more of us than we planned on giving.”
My soul asked more of me today than I had planned on giving. Sandylosing her balance forced me to regain mine. That is grossly unfair but the least I can do is pay attention, slow the heck down and be very, very grateful.
Barbara
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