I cleaned my rain gutters this past weekend. I spaced what I used to consider a small task over two days. It used to take me about a half hour to dig the leaves and pinecones out of the eavestrough. This round, I paced myself to satisfy the naysayers. The job is done, and I felt a bit smug. Okay, I felt a lot smug as I hung up my ladder. The ladder felt a lot heavier than it used to. Perhaps someone switched it out, a rogue neighbour who needed my feather-weight aluminum ladder and left this solid, though safe, imposter in its place. Or maybe not.
I have a security camera in my doorbell. I like to think it is part of my secret agent equipment. Mostly, it captures the black cat who likes to sit on the hood of my car, but it also relays footage of me as I wander in my driveway, moving my recyclables out to the bin I built that is doing its impression of Fort Knox. Why are our reference points so often borrowed from the US? Do we have a Fort Knox equivalent in Canada? I digress. Suffice to say, the lid on my garbage/recycling storage bin would deter grizzlies, Dwayne Johnson, and seniors, of which I am one. I am not a grizzly nor has anyone called me Dwayne in recent memory. I refer to the lifting of the garbage bin as my “morning workout”. They tell us how important weight training is in our advanced years; just saying. I’m still trying to justify the excess of my building strategy.
Back to the camera in my doorbell. I was clearing the video off my phone’s memory and the most recent capture of my driveway stroll began to play. I used some expletives after I realized the video was me, the external version of me and one I struggle to recognize on a daily basis. I prefer the make and model that exists in my brain. My brain’s version has a bounce to her step, as though she is prepared to do a cartwheel at a moment’s notice, and she certainly doesn’t limp and shuffle, and her posture is upright with shoulders back. Or is it? I’ve written about this before, but I’m still confounded by the difference in how I feel inside as compared to what I see in the mirror or reflected in glass doors or is captured on my doorbell camera to torment me.
This concept I am struggling with is a bit like judging a book by its cover and I’m the one doing the judging. A certain grace is required as we handle with the care the one vessel that has helped us learn to walk, has held together while we learned to ride a bike and drive, has helped push a baby that felt like the size of a refrigerator from our body while being ready to be up and running within the hour to escape the lions, figuratively speaking for most of us. My bent fingers used to gently smooth the hair off my daughters’ faces, erasing nighttime fears and daytime disappointments, and those now gnarled digits can still hold a pen. My hearing once was keen enough to detect newborn whimpers and little fingers moving against the crib sheet, capturing an almost undetectable sound to wake me from a deep sleep to hurry and scoop my baby up in my arms. My current spine once stood rod straight when someone threatened the safety of my child. This body has served me well, as it tumbled from horses and catapulted into hay mows, landed on its head while learning to do a back handspring. I like the view in my head so I will hold firm to that version, cheering as she slides into second base, scuffing her knees but brushing herself off before heading to third. wendistewart@live.ca
