Today, Monday, the 10th of June, my wife FF sits at her desk wearing nothing but a striped denim tunic and a straight legged splint on her right leg. Her hair is clean, but disheveled from a rough-night's sleep. She is looking slightly weary in the eyes, but her skin is clear and sun-kissed from all the early summer sun Portland has been getting the last few weeks.
FF - Felicity, Oh Felicity, how is your spirit holding up with this whole bang-up knee thing?
FF - It's been wavering. Most of the day I feel relatively normal. I'm not in too much pain and I'm relatively content and interested in doing things like elbow yoga, drinking fermented tea, cat petting, toddler tossing and tree washing. But then there is the other bit of the day, usually in the early evening, when my leg feels like it's filled with sharp stones and I'm sinking under water. I can't focus and I'm exhausted from lack of sleep. It's a dark and dull feeling, like part of my brain was kidnapped.
FF - Well that's understandable. Not only did a surgeon cut open your leg and rearrange your bones, but you're an active person who usually has seventeen plates spinning in the air at all times. The slower paced lifestyle and numbing pain in your knee have got to be challenging.
FF - Challenging yes. But also an invitation for me to experience the slowness more fully. I'm doing my best to stay positive and treat this whole injury as an education. Every step I take with crutches requires a vastly different choreography and mental state than I'm used to. I'm seeing it as a dance. I have to be present in each step, shuffle and roll so I don't bang up my already banged-up body. I'm also becoming more curious about what it means to be slow. And in this slowness, I've been doing more watching. I watch people move at the grocery store and on the street. Most people are in a hurry. Few people make eye contact. Lots of people are on their phones.
FF - Do you feel like you rushed around like that before you broke your knee?
FF - Absolutely. A good portion of the time. And it seems like such an innocent thing, walking around, rushing about, buying groceries, waiting in line for stamps at the post office. Doing this all in fog of iphone screens and absentmindedness. But then you fall down or run into something. And you realize how dangerous all that rushing and zoning out was.