Hot Boots And Chance Encounters

It started with an advertisement in my email box.
One innocent click later and I spied them.
There they were in luscious bone colored suede.
The boots of my dreams!
It was love at first click. It was now my life's quest to obtain them. A quest that only a woman could truly understand.
I zoomed over and picked up No Name and we swooped over to the Mall.
We trotted over to the shoe store and YES! There they were, in my size!
I think I might have squealed a high pitch girlie squeal.
I'm pleading the 5th and blaming the noise on rabid Mall squirrels.

Several purchases and multiple stores later, No Name and I wrapped up our shopping spree at the land of book goodness, Barnes & Noble.
Nora Roberts 3rd book of the Circle Trilogy was in and Robert B. Parker's new book was in. Could this day be any better?!

Exhausted, I slumped into an easy chair in a corner while No Name continued his pursuit of a book. I shared my corner with a spry looking white haired lady who was quietly sipping on a Starbucks coffee.

She pointed out to me that I must be a "true" Northwestener as it was pouring rain outside and I was in shorts and a sweatshirt. I laughed and told her I was in shorts because I had a knee doctor's appointment earlier and wore the shorts in a vain attempt to avoid wearing one of those horrid patient paper gowns.

She nodded approvingly at my wisdom. I didn't divulge to her that while my plan was a most excellent one, I ended up having to wear the &$#! paper gown because in my attempt to compromise wearing shorts in the pouring rain with a warm sweatshirt...I forgot about the injury to my arm that I needed the doctor to look at.

To divert my thoughts from the paper gown humiliating memory still too &%#! fresh in my mind, I politely asked her where she was from.

"Southern California." She said with a smile. Then she hunched over her coffee and muttered bitterly, "But I've lived here for the past 41 years and I hate...HATE the rain!"

She chattered on how she had plans to move back to Southern California when she retired but then her son of 41 years decided he wanted a child so his wife got pregnant and now she had a grandson. Her face warmed when she spoke of her grandson.

"I have him most weekends and would take him more if his parents let me. I just love him and could never think of leaving him to move back to California." The glow slipped from her face and she once again hunkered over her coffee sliding a baleful look out the window at the cursed Northwest rain.

"Well, maybe you can move to California when your grandson is grown." I offered in a small attempt to cheer her.

"If I live that long." She said with a sigh. "I'm 71 now."

I spoke to her of my adopted Mom who is now 80 and spry as ever. How she biked and swam every day. How she had raised me to believe that the number game of age is mostly a mental thing.

She brightened a bit at that. Apparently she came from a genetic line of long lifers. But, then her face clouded again as she explained how her husband was currently laid up with a hip injury.

"He had a fall, you see. He was mowing our son's lawn. Something he loves to do. When he slipped and fell 10 feet down a hill and hurt his hip. He used to be so active but now except to attend physical therapy, he just wants to lay in bed."

We sat quietly for a few minutes looking down and avoiding eye contact from the truth that she most likely would never move back to her home town in Southern California.

"He comes from a family that are active until they get hurt, then once they are down, they stay down." She added quietly. "Nothing I say to him will get him up. He cries that he's hurting and refuses to get up and live life again."

I saw the pain flicker across her face as she slid her eyes from mine and looked down into her cup of coffee. It wasn't the rain she was railing at. It was the helplessness of watching the man she had been married to for 50+ years lay down and quit on life.

I thought about it that evening when I lay in bed, staring into the grey of the night while Guido purred softly beside me. I thought about it in the morning while my mind was busy trying to shake the dark shadows of a dream that has been haunting me.

I thought about it yesterday as I walked the trail at the local park in the misting rain. And I thought about it again this morning while once again trying to shrug off another depressing dream.

Then, sitting at work, halfway through my first cup of coffee, it hit me.

When wounded in this life, you can choose to lay down and cease living because to continue to live, hurts.

Or you can work through that hurt and keep moving. Keep living, no matter the pain, because eventually the pain will fade with continual movement. The key to recovery is movement.

You have to keep moving.

I'm trudging on, folks. And I've got a hot pair of boots to do it in.