Before and After

Yesterday, my dog needed a walk.

I had said the “W” word, which normally sends him into a whining frenzy, pacing the house until someone makes a move for his leash. Today, however, he was jumping off his front paws like a puppy, whining to to point of almost howling, and launching himself on the furniture. I leashed him up. The day was still warm and I didn’t want it to be over without being in it for a little while.

I love the first walk of the season. Everything feels novel despite being mundane. I passed a family playing soccer and calling to each other in Spanish. Boys were swearing and bashing into each other playing street ball on the courts. A distant child attempted to fly a kite. Someone had the audacity to barbeque. We made dog friends to a large, hairy thing that we have seen many times in the distance, but hadn’t actually met. And, I wondered why, on our second to last street home, the city had decided to cut down many of the shade trees in the parkway.

Through these little interludes, I began to loosen up. For weeks now I have complained that I was losing my flexibility. I felt stiff and slow. Walking began to undo the slow coil the winter months had wound. And once that unwinding started, my words started to uncoil as well. These words. And words about my desires for the future. Other words that will resolve decisions that have haunted me. Words that will become conversations. Words about the changes that are almost upon me. Exactly like the physics of kinetic energy, as this spring unloaded, energy released and the words came.

Words are linked to my health in the same way that exercise and good eating maintain my body. When I had the free time to write, write just for myself and the small audience of followers I had on my old blog platform. When I was required to write, write for my job or for my homework papers. When I had the desperate urgency to write, write to prove to myself that I could write and that this urge was real and a gift. When I need to the words came. They always came. I learned to trust that if I just showed up they came. 

Except when they didn’t. There have been times when getting the words out has been a struggle. Not a struggle, a herculean effort that felt a lot like trying to roll the boulder up the mountain. I felt this when I was writing for the wrong reasons. I felt this when a job was winding down and I didn’t realize it. I felt this last week when I was supposed to be writing a paper and kept pushing at the boulder in front of me to find that it didn’t move it at all, I just pushed myself deeper into the earth.

And so, when I began my walk and did the work of unwinding the coils, I found that my life had simplified myself. My words began to move and gain their life back, and so I also began to get my life back. When the words come and my muscles loosen, I am healthy again. So maybe the dog didn’t need a walk, I did.