The foot is getting better. I thought for awhile we had reached a kind of stasis, a kind of achy stasis, but I think we are still seeing improvements. Slow but sure.
I’ve taken a few walks. Quite a few in fact, but nothing like the four and half miles that I was accustomed to taking four times a week. I’ve done some swimming, too, and wished I were a stronger swimmer, because I think there is nothing like swimming to get your heart really pumping. I’ve done a little running (just a little, like to the end of the street, or the next mailbox, or the car) thinking all the while, Look! I’m running! And now I’ve returned to my tae-bo workout for the third time.
In the past, I’ve been given to doing this workout in the wee hours of the morning, while the rest of the house is fast asleep. But I’ve been tired lately, still recovering, no doubt, from all our travels. So yesterday and today I put the video on when the household was Wide Awake, in the Full-Blown Waking Hours of the day.
A daring move.
The children might have been playing happily. They might have been building a fort in Emma Grace’s room, or handcuffing her Very Large Dolly to the pantry doors (Emma Grace is complicit in this), or building with Legos. But they hear the television, even a television with the volume Off. Yes, they hear it: that electric crackle, that static buzz that says “Leave Off What You Are Doing and Come Stare At Me With Vacant Stupidity.”
If you turn it on, they will watch it.
And so there I am, new cross-trainers on my feet, tall glass of cold water within convenient reach, doing everything that Billy Blanks tells me to do, and I am Working Hard. My children, on the other hand, are not working hard. Not At All. No. They are watching Billy Blanks and me from the comfort of the sofa in the playroom, observing Everything.
“Mom, is that hard?”
I’m panting. “No.” Meaning, the move itself isn’t hard. Do I have breath enough to elaborate? “No, but doing it this fast over and over again is hard.”
Silent appreciation, perhaps, for their mother’s skill, or Billy’s muscles.
“Hey, look at that lady. Mom, is she good at this? She’s not very good at this, is she Mom?” And I want to teach my children to have a charitable attitude, so I say, when I can breathe, “Well, maybe she’s just learning. Not everyone” (pause for this kick, and then another kick) “on the video has been doing this for a long time.”
“Mom, that lady is really strong.”
“Yep.”
“Why don’t you just do that faster, Mom?”
I don’t answer. I can’t. And I can’t do that faster, either.
“Mom, when you do that, your hands look like this.” This demonstration is being performed behind me. “Mom, look.”
I can hardly see, let alone breathe. And the demonstration is Behind Me.
“Can’t see, son.”
“Look! Look!”
The sweat is pouring into my eyes, my chest is heaving for air, I have that weak feeling in my legs that makes me wonder if any blood is left there at all. The children are maddening, the workout is exhausting, and Billy Blanks is telling me that we’ll just go ahead and do this sequence one more time. I want to say one more thing, but I can’t force it aloud, so I say it over and over again in my head: Praise! Praise! that my broken foot still works.
