It’s just barely starting to get light outside. I’m getting ready for another day of work. It’s hard to gauge my time because daylight savings time started a week ago, so where it had been light when I got up before, it is now dark all over again. There is a distinct feeling of confusion and regression.

On top of this, the rat race has full hold over my schedule. There is literally always something demanding my attention – work, home, caretaking, dogs. I push as hard as I can all week and sometimes by the weekend naps force their way into the schedule and insist I be rather than do.

On the morning of March 17th, I was going down the stairs to our basement while I was thinking through the things I needed to do before walking the dog and leaving for work. Go left to fill the dog food containers. Go right to grab my green fleece out of the closet for St Patty’s day.

But then BOOM the Universe screamed STOP. My body had tried to start implementing both tasks at once. Next thing I knew the dog food containers went flying, the world was at an angle, I yelped and then all was still. I didn’t feel pain, but instinct told me this was bad and I was inclined to not move.

Winks and Willow, who both do stairs, came to lick my face and reassure me. When I eventually willed myself to get up and assess the damage, I hobbled gingerly and crawled back upstairs. In her bed doing her IVs, my wife had not heard anything.

As I told her what had happened, the initial shock wore off quickly and I conceded I needed to be seen. I called in to work, arranged a ride and spent the next eight hours in the ER being diagnosed with a undisplaced avicular fracture of the left calcaneous at the insertion of the extensor digitorum brevis. All that is a fancy way of saying that the muscle that extends my four smaller toes on my left foot got yanked enough in the fall that it broke off a chunk of bone at the insertion site. The good news is that the chunk is close enough to where it is supposed to be that it should heal on its own without surgery.

Prescription: SLOW DOWN

Bring Nature Inside

With being a couch blob while I rest, elevate and ice my foot, I have been happy to have nature inside, including orchids, tulips and daffodils. Their bright colors cheer me up. I have spent hours closely observing them as the blossoms SLOWLY open and bend toward the light – details I would otherwise miss during my doing, doing, doing mode.

Sit Outside

For a change of scenery, I rocked on the glider bench on our deck. I was able to observe the first shoots of tulips, daffodils and day lilies emerging, promising that spring really will come. I contemplated branch patterns in the trees above. Like everyone else, I am eager for color to return to the landscape. But I will miss the branch patterns being visible once the trees leaf out.

And of course I was present with the birds. I listened to the spring symphony as they repeated their territory calls over and over – chickadees, cardinals, tufted titmice, woodpeckers, goldfinches, house finches, even sandhill cranes. Red-winged black birds displayed their red wing patches. A squirrel meowed its warning call and a minute later a red-tailed hawk flew low over the yard. A pair of Sandhill cranes flew low and majestic following each other down the rail road corridor behind our house.

Slow Drawing

An artist friend of mine on Instagram, Amy Miracle, has developed a whole series of nature-inspired patterns that she promotes experimenting with as a meditative practice. She holds weekly live online sessions exploring a new pattern each week, referring to the activity as a slow drawing session. If you are the kind of person that prefers books, she has also published a collection of these patterns and a description of using them as a way to slow down as a book.

I have been exploring some of these patterns in my sketchbook as a way to stay slow and mindful and connected to nature while trapped on my sofa convalescing.

Tomorrow I go back to work. My challenge is to stay slow and carry these practices and memories with me through my busier working schedule.