Moving Parts

Move your right shoulder as you wiggle your toes on your left foot. Now turn your head all the way to the left, Linda Blair style, while thinking about your favorite song. Try to remember a time from before you could walk. Wish yourself a happy birthday today. Picture your own face. See it looking back at you. Are you smiling? Are you sympathetic, angry, amused? Sit high on your sitz bones, lift out of your spine, let breath touch as many parts of your body as possible. Relax into rise.

Lay your head down. Literally, take your hands and let them cradle your head and gently place it on a pillow. Treat your head like something valuable, something precious, not taken for granted. Then unfold your body, release the muscles. Thank this body that works so hard to move you through the world, walking, rolling, leaning, however it goes. Thank the parts that hurt, the parts that have been damaged, broken, or bruised. Even the invaders that have taken up residence. And the doctors, healers, and other carers.

Some of us can no longer live comfortably in the body. And some of us find the mind wandering beyond our reach; we can no longer call it back. For some of us, it is impossible to imagine that we will ever experience such changes – over time, with age, or all of a sudden, the last thing we ever expected. And for others, it’s hard to remember anything different.

I am writing this as several close ones face the unexpected. Intense confrontations with reality. The rug pulled out, a deer in the headlights, a shock to the system. We watch it happen to others all the time without realizing we’re in the same fucking line!

I am sitting in the sun, listening to the dogs call to each other in the neighborhood. I cannot identify the bird songs. Last night, I witnessed your determination to keep moving. I witnessed the growing insularity of your challenge. Like an inside joke. I could hear you, but not really get the punch line. It was private. I know that those walls will go up around me, too, probably already are. Looking out as your circle stares blankly, offers you some water and a hand because you are unsteady. You want neither, of course. Nor will I. Want eventually falls prey to need. A difficult shift in the equation.

For now, just this moment, these fingers press down, and letters appear. Letters become words, become sentences, and paragraphs, and more. Maybe someone reads. Maybe they glean meaning. Perhaps the meaning is greater in their hands. I turn to look at the green upon green of the trees, my foot is tapping as my fingers move, and I notice that a song is playing in my head:

If not for you
Winter would have no spring
Couldn’t hear the robin sing
I just wouldn’t have a clue
Anyway it wouldn’t ring true
If not for you