Yesterday, the echoes of Easter still in my soul, I spent most of the day engaged in strenuous physical activity. It began with a brisk three and a half mile walk, as I dropped off our old minivan to get a failed repair redone. "Do you need a ride home," asked the apologetic manager. "Nah," I said. "It's a nice day, and the walk'll be good for me."
The morning was cool and pleasant, the clouds high and solid, and the crispness of the air felt good against my bare arms for the hour I spent putting one foot in front of the other.
For much of the rest of the morning, I was moving mattresses and disassembling beds, as every single bedroom in our house got a new bed. Well, not "new," not technically. But newer, as the mattresses that used to grace two rooms in the house of my son and daughter in law found their way to us.
The wife has been agitating for a larger bed in our room for some time, as the joys of perimenopause and the general creakiness of our mutual aging have made sleep an occasionally uncertain thing. Particularly if you've got a husband who twitches and snorts and fidgets in his sleep.
So a queen replaced our full, which was moved to our upstairs guest room, along with a beautiful but hefty handcrafted hardwood bedframe. The downstairs guest room got another queen. It was a day long bedding do-si-do.
And then the van was ready, and...as Rache was busy in meetings all day...I walked the three and a half miles back to pick it up. That walk was more leisurely, as I was feeling a little spent. As I have observed many times in such jaunts, so few other human beings are actually out on foot in the 'burbs. The flow of our machines is endless, as we rush from place to place, and our bodies sit idle, their energies fermenting into agitation and anxiety.
I can feel yesterday in my flesh today. Again, it's a good feeling, a feeling I appreciate. I know, being the throes of middle age, that this sort of day will not always be possible. That systems will fail. Knees will go. Hips will go. Stamina will fade.
So even as I walked that return trip, feeling the warmth of the late spring sun on my back, I was grateful for it. Grateful for each step. Grateful for another season when my body is able.
And Lord, did I sleep well.
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