Walking in Someone Else's Shoes

This week I have had the fine pleasure of walking in someone else's shoes...or should I say feet? I now know what it feels like to have one leg a full inch shorter than the other. The results are most interesting. Your back kills. Your shorter leg begins to hurt in the hip and knee. Sitting is extremely painful on the longer leg. I will never think that someone who has one leg shorter than the other has it easy or that it's no big deal.

Today I took the day off, but even so, I spent 8 hours finishing going over the schedule for the conference today. I finished just in time to make it to the Podiatrist to have my foot examined. No infection, but blood had pooled under the skin on the bottom of my foot, causing some intense pain since the wrapping held it there. Two more weeks before I can run, but I got rid of the boot and had my stitches removed.

I hurried home and threw all of the bedding in the wash, duvet cover and all. I have been sleeping with that stupid boot on and wanted a clean bed tonight. Out of the enormous list of catching up I had planned for today, that was the only thing I got done. I then rushed off to an AMAZING party with my family.

Last night, after a fifteen hour day, I cuddled up to C to hear his heart beating peacefully, and I was transported back to a time when I was a dreamer. I remember walking out onto one of the acres that made up the last remaining fragments of the ancestral homestead, and fell onto my back into the soft pale green grasses. They were heavenly. I watched their heads sway in the gentle breeze and looked out across the field through spruce bough fences strung with sagging rusted barbed wire. I slipped the grasses out of their sheaths with a squeak and nibbled on the sweet tender ends. I would hear the occasional buzz of a plane flying somewhere beyond my sight.

I stretched out on the ground without a single care about bugs or my long blond locks resting in the dirt. I didn't have anywhere to be or anything to do. I just dreamed up wonderful things. I had a brilliant imagination, but even early on I never crossed over into such fantasies as imaginary friends, and thought that anyone who had an imaginary friend must obviously be lacking a clear sense of reality. Even so, I would close my eyes and dream up the most magnificent stories. Life was so simple, so sweet.

And then there I was again, resting in a darkened room, enclosed again within walls, listening to the heartbeat of my most beloved.