Today is the first since breaking my ankle that I took time to stop distracting myself for a time. My husband went off to a seminar for most of the day, after making breakfast at 10 a.m. and the house was suddenly just mine. Well, me and the dog.
I turned off the T.V., which has been blaring in the background for a week and half. I finished a book, Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, a quick read, the first novel by a young man who has created a rather engaging story of the supernatural, time travel and misfit children, using found Victorian-era photos that supplement the strange, quirky characters. It's really a Young Adult book, but charming in its way, and clever. I've not focused on my reading much in the recent past.
I open the window next to me, the breeze, cool and fresh wafts in, tangles of light between the wispy wisteria outside filter through the floral curtains. I hear my self-employed neighbor come and go, the sound of tires as they park. I know who is coming and going by the sounds of the wheels and the doors shutting. As the day gets later, more people come home.
I listen to the sounds of the neighborhood. The Amtrak train which through years of repetition has become a sound I am mostly immune to. My grandson always hears it; "choo-choo, Nana, choo-choo!" he says several times a day when he visits. The trains come more frequently than I remember it, but it's been time since attention was paid. The resident crows, there are two permanent ones, caw off and on, moving from tree to tree. There are lots of birds in the trees outside and my cockatiel periodically chirps an answer to any that appeal to her.
The traffic comes bumping by, some cars too fast over the speed bumps make a resounding crack. Most just crunch over the loose gravel of our unkempt street. It needs to be repaved, but the nice thing is that I can hear everything that passes by be it car, bicycle or jogger. Random pedestrians come through, chatting amiably as their easy gaits, their two working legs, move them up the street and beyond my hearing.
Our mailman is afraid to push the mail through the slot. Yaya sits there for a few minutes in anticipation of his arrival. She is silent. Just waiting. As the mail comes through, there emerges a throaty, angry growl and she savagely grabs it, yanking it through. The mailman is understandably perturbed, so I tell him that if the window is open, he can just hand me the mail. He says that "Yaya is a bad dog!" He is good-natured about it, but if I were him, I'd probably stop delivering through the mail slot. He goes off to harangue the next door neighbor as he has done for years "HEY JOE! When you gonna grow some hair?"
My husband finally comes home, after calling to tell me he is worried because I've not answered my cell phone. I didn't realize I had it turned down, and apologize. He says he is very hungry, so I figured he'd come home in a mood, but on the way he stopped for something and he still comes in edgy. Sensitive, I wish he'd brought me something to eat, or had asked if I wanted something. I don't want to ask him now because I feel like a burden. He wants to know what I want for dinner; I don't know what I want. So I just say that. I say the 1/2 a chocolate bar I had is okay for right now. It's true. He hands me the ice tea from his late lunch. That's okay too.
I'm at his mercy at the moment, and I can't go away and do something else. I feel kind of broken and alone.
My broken ankle doesn't really hurt today. All it is, at the moment, is a useless appendage. It cannot propel me anywhere. It cannot take me away. It is dead weight. A dead healing weight that will, with careful diligence, take me outside again and move me where I need to go.
An airplane flies overhead, I imagine where it might be going. It flies and doesn't need legs. As the crow flies, it is 2,443 miles to Kauai. 2,543 miles to Nicaragua. 5,133 miles to Tokyo. 5,558 miles to Paris. 10,535 miles to Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment