things I lost in the fall

Warning: This is not going to be a touchy-feely sugary tear in your eye post. If you're here to read words about how wonderful the world is, how blessed I feel, how grateful I am for roses and sunsets and mint chocolate cookie crumbs- you're going to leave disappointed. So you may as well leave now. See that back button glistening in the upper corner of your screen? Click it and go back to where you came from.

I'm not interested in making you feel good. I'm not here to be your cheerleader, your guru, your cross dressing knight in shining armor. I do enough upbeat enthusiasm on my recipe blog, and (most of the time), I mean it. I believe in good food. Good tastes. Good recipes to share. I do.

But it's not the whole picture.

It's not the only truth of who I am or what I do or what I feel or what I think or what I believe. The whole truth, you see, is messy. It's complicated. And it doesn't neatly dovetail into a post about rhubarb or biscuit dough. It isn't shiny and pastel sprinkled or predigested for your consumption. What I'm feeling is raw and no doubt undercooked and I'm not even sure I understand it. So, what is it?

Things I lost in the fall.

Besides the ability to straddle, to run up the patio steps, to dance to the Talking Heads while stirring onions, heft groceries from the back seat, push heavy Mexican chairs over into the sun, to reach the top edge of a five-foot canvas and lay down a swath of color, walk back, step forward, add more paint, back up, mix color (do this for hours). Or even just sit on the floor. Cross my legs. Curl up in a chair with a book.

To stand for more than ten minutes without assistance (read: cane).

But it's more than these things, even. More than the physical struggle back to a modified semblance of wholeness. It's the acidic sensation of sliding backwards in time, losing ground you worked so hard to get to, to claim as your own. The foothold that didn't come easy to a questioning hyper-vigilant child. That cultivated center of pure confidence. The belief in I am here. Entitlement.

The right to take up floorspace and wall space, to carve out time, spend money on materials. Make mistakes, explore, discover. Play. To start over somewhere new and unfamiliar. The right to disappoint someone else. To confuse them. To place someone else's needs next to your own- instead of in front of your own.

More was broken than a hip.

And six months later, I am still mending. Not just knitting marrow and stretching fifty-year old muscles that knot and resist. There are invisibles I have lost.

And I am no longer bold enough, or naive enough, to assume I'll get them back.