“You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.”

 

 

 

 

“Yes,” she’d said to Kevin, “you’re good to travel…the break in your ankle should heal quickly. You might not even need your crutches by the time you leave.”

Kevin told me this after his appointment, and then he added that the doctor had listened patiently while he explained how much walking we usually do on our trips. When he’d finished his description of how we loved to tromp around cities and villages all day, she’d smiled and said, “You’ll just have to go slower and maybe sit a little more.”

We share the same doctor, so when I came in the next day to have my stitches removed (good news – biopsy normal) the doctor said, “I told Kevin that you definitely have to cancel your 100-km hike on Greece, but, as for the rest of your travels, you’ll just have to shift to a different type of traveling than you’re used to.”

In other words we’d have to adapt.

Well…now.

I recently had someone ask me if I had a new routine now that we lived in this little mountain town. I’d been mulling over that question, and so, after the doctor’s comments about adapting, I decided to take a look back on this past year…

It was around this time last year that my sister Rhonda phoned. We’d just come back from Mexico. She told me she had terminal cancer. I couldn’t decide if she was lying. Turned out she wasn’t making it up. By April 10th, she was dead.

Shortly after that, we drove up to Kimberley to look for a rental house. We thought we’d live here for a year so we could get the lay of the land before committing to buying a house.

A few days later we were the new owners of a log home.

 

 

On June 1st we moved in. Those first few months I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I’d sometimes wake up with a gasp. I told myself it was the move, and maybe that was part of it. We all know that even changes we willingly make tend to create a certain amount of stress.

But I knew it was grief. To say my relationship with Rhonda was complicated is a ridiculous understatement, but there it is. I think sadness simply twisted its fingers around my throat, choking me until I paid attention. I practised deeper breaths, slower and longer, until one day I realized I felt slightly better. Not really okay. How can it ever be okay? But still…I was better.

In August our neighbourhood was put on evacuation alert as fire season engulfed our province. The RCMP came by to notify us to have a bag ready, just as I left on my 30th annual bike trip.

Our house was still standing when I returned.

We went to France for the month of September.

 

 

In October I was offered a part-time job at the local kitchen store. I certainly wasn’t looking for a job, but I heard myself say yes.

I joined the choir. Kevin signed up for hockey and curling.

In November Kevin broke his ribs playing hockey.

Somehow, winter, the season that everyone warned me would feel endless to a former rainforest dweller such as myself, went by at warp speed.

Maybe it was because, between the day we moved in, and the end of last month, we hosted 39 guests for 75 nights. There were 12 other guests that stayed in local accommodations but came for sledding and dinners.

 

 

Which brings us to last week when Kevin broke his ankle while snowboarding.

And now, he’s hobbling around on crutches and we’re getting ourselves organized for our April 8th departure to Ottawa where we will watch Hanna’s final recital. There will be some ‘Smart Ladies’ moments at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier, because…well, because…her mother, my lovely friend would have liked that.

From Ottawa we’ll fly to London, where, apparently, we won’t do our usual pillar-to-post walkabout. Instead, we will slow down and take it easy. After a few days in London, we’ll fly to Greece and do more of the same, or I guess, a better way to put that is we will do less of the same.

We’ll spend the last ten days driving around Albania. We’ll return home by the beginning of May and then, by June 1st, we’ll have completed our one year of living here.

Now that I’ve dug through our calendar and figured all this out, I guess what I should have told our good doctor was that it’s okay if this trip is a ‘little different’ because it seems that adapting to the unexpected is truly what life is all about.

I have often aspired to a routine of sorts, and although I try to get some key things done each day, like exercise, meditation, writing, reading…mostly, what I know for sure, is that life refuses to be contained by anything as silly as my plans.

I can try to hammer down my calendar, but death/address changes/visitors/accidents & events have a funny way of upending any arrangements.

Life is a force.

I figure the very best I can do is be as flexible as possible.

Besides – you only have to look at a tree to know the truth..

 

“The wind does not break the tree that bends.”

~ Tanzanian proverb