My Epiphany about Routine

The Saint Croix Boom Site in Minnesota. (Wikipedia)

This morning, I woke with a smile. In a dream, I was riding a bicycle in Stillwater, Minnesota. I pedaled down the town’s quiet streets, out into the grassy hills of the countryside, over the train tracks, and back home along the road by the St. Croix River.

Waking, I remembered with great delight those days when I was in my late thirties and early forties. I’d get up each morning, dress in jeans and sweatshirt or shorts and T-shirt, wheel my bicycle from the garage, and take off to complete a five-to-ten-mile ride. Once home, I’d eat, shower, dress, and drive to work.

I did that every day for several years until an accident landed me in the hospital for four days with a shoulder broken in three places. Ten weeks of therapy followed.

In the accident, the bike became a twisted tangle. Moreover, a day later, a fellow bicycler, threatened by a dog, fell, banging his head against the curb. He died instantly. The ruined bike plus fear led to my giving up bicycling. For many years afterward, I walked three to five miles a day until the vertigo, dizziness, migraines, and imbalance of Meniere’s entered my life.

Now we come to the nub of this posting: a report on how I’m doing in establishing a routine this year. I posted about that just two weeks ago. Within days I’d mostly lost my devised schedule because of Meniere’s and an Arctic blast that plummeted our temperatures into the minus-zero range. Sleet fell. Then snow covered the ice, so walking became dangerous.

Besides that, Meniere’s brought with it several days of imbalance when I felt off kilter. I walked like a drunken heron, swaying from side to side. The words on the computer screen blurred, tilted, became italic, and then Roman. All in all, an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of experience.

Thus, in the past two weeks, I’ve seldom walked, done no yoga, read only a few blog postings, worked a little on my convent memoir Prayer Wasn’t Enough, and felt somewhat defeated by my inability to “make” my body perform at my command.

Then epiphany: This past Thursday I woke with a light heart. Lying in a window’s width of sunlight, I realized that the day offered me its own possibilities if only I’d embrace them. I accepted the truth that in the past three years of ill-health I’d begun to dwell on what I wasn’t able to do. I’d been grieving for the Dee Ready who rode that bike, walked those miles, was ready for every new adventure.

With clarity last Thursday morning, I realized that even though I wasn’t what I once was, I was someone new. I tell you that today I’m ready to explore who Dee Ready is at 81—82 in April! What can she accomplish? What meaning can she find in her life? What can she do to make life better for others?

I have wanted to write my Morning Pages, take a walk, follow the yoga DVD, complete the first draft of my Bronze-Age-Greece novel, read your blogs. All that gives me satisfaction.

But with resolution I now simply want to “go with the flow” of the day and be grateful for what it offers me—health or weariness, writing or resting, being creative or simply being in the moment. I want to embrace what is and let go of what was.

In the past two weeks, have you suddenly realized something that you now treasure? Something that gives life more savor? If so, I am happy for you, as I am for myself. Peace.