+ Her Barefoot Heart
The Engineer: Do you see the Rainbow Trout?
The Artist: Not yet, but would you just look at that heart and
that exclamation point sunning themselves right beside each other!
Then whoosh – in that snap of a moment,
I have my way into the piece I’m writing.
And I have my segue.
I declare: walking is as necessary to writing
as inhaling is to breathing.
we walked today, the engineer and i. walked for the first time since thanksgiving, really. holidays – travel – family – rain – coughing, coughing, and more coughing have put my fitbit on a pretty strict diet. i’ve missed walking. sure i’ve had 2 hours of found time to stitch every day, but walking is kindling. i solve problems when i walk. i get ideas when i walk. i clear cobwebs and make connections when i walk. i think at least 7 impossible thoughts every time i take a walk.
sometimes we walk up the falls and get our shoes muddy.
sometimes we walk in the gym and dodge basketballs.
sometimes we walk 4-8 laps through the grocery store before filling a cart with foodstuffs.
many night we walk laps around the sofa and dining room table and kitchen island.
sometimes – like today – we walk the aisles at lowe’s. the engineer drools his way down every aisle, and he never comes away empty-handed. me? i just wish fabric stores were as big with well-lit and well-defined aisles cause i’d like to walk, drool, and shop, too. i believe i could do it. i believe i’d be good at it.
i did not escape my notice that the snow shovels, sleds, and ice melt were directly across from – no more than 2 feet, i’m telling you – the seed packets and starter sets. doesn’t that just crack you up?
the good news is i’ve got my walking on again – feeding my fitbit regularly – and that’s a good thing. maybe i’ll even add that 15 minutes of yoga first thing every morning i’ve been dreaming about then pop a handful of almonds and enjoy a mid-afternoon (think 3:00) workout with resistance bands. cross your fingers. it’d be nice to do it for real instead of just in my imagination.
and all the while in the background, nancy still draws, and i still stitch.
In Our Own Language 4:34
I said good by to a pair of old friends this week.
They have been my constant companions since August 2013,
logging in 6,638,362 steps
5,629 floors
2,833.82 miles.
We went to all the familiar places
one last time.
There were daffodils
and moss
big rocks, waterfalls
and mud puddles.
all followed by a short visit to the massage chair.
I kept my eye on the treads
when apparently I should’ve been watching the inside.
The treads still look good.
The insides are demolished, though,
all padding and support long gone.
I went shopping when I read that
you need to replace shoes after
300-500 miles of walking.
If you’re a glass-half-empty person,
I guess I waited a little too long.
A glass-half-full person would say
I got my money’s worth.
Starting is, quite often, the hardest part for me, and since beginning my daily walking practice, that’s how I start: I walk. I move my body through space. I see parts of this beautiful rock we call Earth up close and personal. It gives me fresh perspectives and newfound confidence. It opens me up and leaves me eager (or at least ready) to start any creative project of writing or stitching, and today I have much writing to do.
Today we walk this bridge in Daytona Beach, Florida
something I would have found daunting before last year, something I suggest today.
There are birds
and clouds
and even a deliciously ancient tree
right at the end of the bridge . . .
or beginning of the bridge, depending.
They say that if you’re a hammer, everything’s a nail.
Maybe that’s why I see quilted water
and shadows of quilt lines.
There is, as you might expect, a most remarkable view from the top of the bridge.
There are even quilts of tile
portraying the rich variety of animal life around these parts.
Turtles
and bald eagles.
Have you seen this?
My daughter, Alison, turned me onto it.
Caution – it’s addicting.
and my personal favorite: manatees.
I’m going to swim with them this year, you know,
just as soon as I feel comfortable
trotting this swimsuit-clad body out in public.
Manatees are called the gentle giants, and they remind me of Nancy –
slow moving, quiet, gentle, always smiling.
Speaking of Nancy, we’re here to move her this week. Stay tuned.
[ ::: ]
Jeanne Hewell-Chambers walked 95,453 steps last week (which translates into 43.21 miles). It would’ve been more, but last week the mountain was covered with snow and ice, and her boots were apparently made for walking only in shopping malls, so she slid more than she stepped. She bought herself a new pair of shoes yesterday, though: waterproof hiking shoes. So there.
Every morning we walk up the falls together, and when we come to the fork in the road, he goes left to walk down to the lake, and I go to the right right to walk up the Way Big Hill. This morning he invited me to join him, and I did – reluctantly. While The Engineer likes walking downhill first (says it warms and loosens him up), I prefer to get the hard stuff out of the way first, then go downhill all the way home. He starts hard and finishes easy. I prefer starting hard and finishing easy.
He listens to music while he walks, I enjoy the sounds of my own thoughts, and the music of the falls. This morning I had three impossibly good ideas (or just impossible, depending on who you ask).
He carries a weight in each hand, and for the life of me I don’t know why, but I always like to have my hands free and uncommitted. Ready.
Then there’s this: I like to stop and take photos. Enough said.
I recognize all too well that post-rape/abuse/bullying response, the acceptance of what the “Well, what were you wearing at the time?” or “Well, you’re just so pretty, what did you expect?” responses because you desperately need to make sense of the whole thing, to understand why this happened, and they always ask those questions with such authority. It takes a long time – and I mean a l-o-n-g time – to figure out that without a doubt, you were not to blame, so now, decades later, I begin to appreciate and applaud and adorn this body that for far too long I’ve treated as a head rack.
But no more. My clock is ticking, you see, and each tick can put me closer to death OR each tick can put me closer to living the life I want to live. I get to choose, and I choose what’s behind door #2.
My son gave me a fitbit last Christmas, and last week I finally started feeding the thing (and feeding it well), walking 74,636 steps (which translates into 32.11 miles) and climbed 40 flights of stairs – all in these cute shoes that my friend Jeanie introduced me to. One day I walked 23,299 steps, and though I slept real good that night, nothing ached – not my feet, not my ankles, not my legs – not once. These shoes are much more incredible than they look.
I’ve set a goal of 10k steps a day, and (so far) I get my steps in come hell or high water. I’m staying with my daughter this week, and I get the last 3-4k steps in every night by walking up and down the driveway while tucking my husband in. Last Friday night I went to the grocery store at 11 p.m. and walked the aisles till I met my quota mites before turing into a pumpkin. I walk ruts in the floor at my son’s house last week and at my daughter’s house this week, going up and down and down and up the halls.
I’m feeling better, eating less, and looking forward to going shopping for new clothes without hearing other shoppers whisper things like “Who do you think you are looking at that color or that youthful cut?” or my personal favorite “Do you really think that will fit you? Bahahahahahahaha” . . . and so on. They don’t say these things out loud, of course, but I have special hearing, you see, so I know what they’re saying and thinking.
Yes, all this walking to nowhere takes time out of my already full-to-the-busting-point life, but the funny thing is, when I make the effort to live a balanced life that includes things like walking and writing and stitching, time bends to make room for all the parts to fit in the space of a day. Magic. My friend Angela has a treadmill desk, and I see one in my future, too. Thanks to my special hearing, I hear them say “Obsessed. You’re downright obsessed.” But me? I say Nah, I’m dedicated and committed, and there’s a difference.
Delights from today’s 10,000 steps include . . .
blooms:
and blooms-on-the-way:
a rusty thing that’s going home with me:
and a pink caddy wall shelf (that’s also going home with me because it begged and I was weak):]
a leisure suit with a ruffled, big-collared shirt (that are NOT going home with me because I was stronger by then):
and this peaceful eye full that I’ll just have to lust after because orange just isn’t my color:
sometimes i imagine
that if i could just find me a hole to tuck myself away in, like here:
or here:
or maybe even here:
with an adorable (if overweight) herding dog
to lead me (sometimes called “creative herding”)
off the road and to Just The Right Spot
perhaps beside a quiet creek
that leads to who knows (or cares, for that matter) where
i might just commit a fall bloom.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
© 2024 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
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