Yesterday morning I picked my way over the dark patch of ice at the bottom of my back stairs that has been growing by the day as the dryer vent in our alley melts the gathered snow there and sends it trickling towards the back door, where it promptly freezes in just the right spot for a rushing person to slide and fall. But I didn't! Then I avoided stepping in the forlorn little lumps of frozen dog poop in the backyard snow, made it to my parked car, drove the distance I really should be walking downtown, found a great parking spot, and made it to 8:30 am cardio barre class on time. Another triumph! (I am chronically three minutes late to everything.)
And then two minutes into our warm up, feeling the pleasant effects of heat growing in my winter body to the encouraging sounds of Beyonce, my lower back totally freaked out. Pain happened. It was sudden and intense and I felt disoriented - what? huh? - and slowed my pace. It was a quintessential middle aged moment. So much was going right. I was feeling good and anticipating coming home after class, showering, packing Frances' things into the car and driving her to Princeton, where we'd go out to lunch and have a last gasp of carefree time together before her semester started.
And then my body contemplated all this, looked around, noticed the accumulated stress of an intense week at work including many more seated therapy sessions than she is used to, noted the way I was throwing up my knees with Saturday morning abandon, and yelled: I object!
And I was all like: well, that's fine for you lady, but I want to finish this class and have my day and you can't stop me.
Yeah. Well, she wasn't into that. By the time I got back to my car an hour later to drive home, I could barely lower myself into the driver's seat. I gasped with pain. I hobbled into the house, where Frances had already lugged the big suitcase down to the back door and was getting ready to leave. The mere sight of her heavy object made my back throb more insistently.
I told her about my back as I reached for the Advil. She treated my body with a lot more kindness than I had. She was patient, compassionate, and offered to drive. She loaded all her things into the car while I carried my coffee. On the ride, every time I shifted position in the seat, I made little ouchy noises, and she made little mothery noises back: oh, oh Mama, be careful, are you okay?
And we did all the things - slowly. We talked about everything in the car, as we do. We stopped at a madhouse of a Trader Joe's and got lots of snacks and loved it. We had enormous burritos for lunch, bulging packages of comfort resting on little aluminum trays lined with brown paper. We delivered one load of things to her dorm room, where she greeted her chipper roommate who was puzzling over her course schedule and whether she could possibly squeeze into a class with 15 people on the waitlist ahead of her. We walked back to the car to get the rest of it, which turned out to be a mere yoga mat and the bag of groceries. As I opened the car door to get them, my back yelped extra hard.
I think I should probably say goodbye to you here, I told her. I need to get home to a heating pad.
Oh, she said.
But I didn't want her to go. I didn't want our day to end. So we sat in the car together and held hands and talked some more. I told her it had been such a good break. I so enjoyed having her in home mode, slipped back into family routines and conversations, rested and restored, and even though it was good and right to do it, a part of me really hated to see her slide back into school mode. I would miss her.
I felt so close to my eldest daughter. And it was time to say goodbye.
I was a lackluster hugger, what with my weirdo back, but she didn't complain. Then we kept on goodbye-ing as I stood empty-handed next to the car, and she walked away from me holding her heavy sack of yogurts and kombucha and dry shampoo, wearing her elegant camel-colored long wool coat and her beautiful dark hair in braids and looking very much the Princeton student. She smiled and said something about how I probably won't hear from her much because she'll be so busy this week. Her face was so open and beautiful. So her. I saw a flash of her bright curious two year old self, and a surge of uncomplicated and enormous love moved through my 47 year old body.
We are getting older. And sometimes, like in the Wawa parking lot adjacent to campus yesterday, time folds in and back, circling, and every moment is this moment.
* * * * *
I made it home, where Gabriel and Beatrice were also kind and patient with me. Gabriel had friends over to play a game, and Beatrice and I set up pillows and a heating pad and a laptop in my big bed and watched A Real Pain and ate ice cream together. Now I want to go on a Holocaust tour to the places in Europe where my family comes from with an unhinged depressed charming cousin too.
When I woke this morning, the sun was shining, my heart was full, and my back felt much, much better.
