About 4 years ago I was running on an early, misty February morning to an island called Newcastle, which is just off of the coast of Portsmouth, where I live.  Earlier that morning I had thought about going to yoga instead of running.  After all, it was February.  It was cold, wet and very dreary even by New Hampshire winter standards.  But a friend wanted to go and really so did I.

New Hampshire winters can last until May.  Yes, I said May.  I have seen early spring snow more times than I’d like to count.  I am by nature a warm weather person who would give anything to sit on a beach 365 days a year and sweat.  These frozen winters can be extremely trying on my soul.  And I tend to want to speed through them and get to the other side, doing what I typically do – running outside – as much as possible. So, on this dreary winter morning, I decided that running was the thing I most needed to stay sane.  At least for that day.

I confirmed with my friend and off we went.  It actually wasn’t all that frigid, not like it could have been in February and we were feeling good about our choice.  The ground was most definitely damp and there was a steady misty rain.  But we had warmed up pretty quickly and were well on our way around the island.

We are usually deep in conversation about the things, both big and small, happening in our lives by the end of the first few miles.  That is where we were when all of a sudden I hit a patch of black ice.  You know.  The kind of ice that comes from warmer temperatures following too quickly on the heels of a more common frigid February day.  The ice is so dark that you think it’s just another puddle.  I took a quick step right on the ice and wham, down I went.  As I fell I heard the unthinkable sound of a bone breaking.  The snap that says “Holy shit, what was that crack?  Thunder?” right before you feel the sharp pain begin to radiate through your skin.  As is typical for me, I tried to jump up and keep going.  No stopping, just plow right through.  

But as soon as I tried to take a step I knew that this was no simple muscle pull but was a fairly serious ankle break.  My first thought after screaming “Nooooooo” was “What an idiot.  I should have gone to yoga”.  But no, that would have been far too slow and peaceful for me.

I have always been a somewhat clumsy person.  The kind of person that trips over her own feet while going upstairs or falls out of a chair while reaching for the clicker.  Unfortunately for my children, they have inherited this gene from me.  While sometimes it is embarrassing when it happens in public, we have learned to laugh at ourselves.  Here’s a fun example.  A few weeks ago my daughter and I were in Ulta buying cosmetics.  I had my typical oversized bag with me.  As I turned around in the middle of the aisle my bag hit a display of hairspray bottled and down they all went, rolling around the aisles.  We looked at each other, as every other customer in the store looked at me, and simply cracked up.  I’m pretty sure those watching us found our clean up of the hairspray – crawling around on our hands and knees to grab as many bottles as we could – just as funny as the initial clumsy move.  I must say that lacking grace is so much a part of our daily lives that my 15-year-old daughter wasn’t even embarrassed.  Score one for klutz moms everywhere.

But, I digress, back to the ankle.  Needless to say,  the bad choice to forego yoga and instead use my consummate klutz gene on the road caused substantial pain.  Both physical and almost more importantly emotional.  I had been running for about 20 years.  It really had become my savior during many a difficult time.  For me, there is nothing like breathing fresh air into my lungs, hearing my footsteps pound the pavement and feeling my heart begin to beat just a bit faster.  It makes me feel alive and clears my head of all the muck we gather every day.  I have worked numerous things out while on a run.  After the ankle break, nothing was clear.  I was exhausted all the time and honestly just plain pissed off.   All the things I had hoped to accomplish that winter stayed right where they were . . . . nowhere.

Then as if this wasn’t painful enough, several acquaintances told me that they thought the break was probably good for me because it forced me to SLOW DOWN for a change and stop trying to do everything.  It did, in fact, make me slow down and let other people step in to help when needed.  So, I guess there’s that.  But the idea of slowing down just didn’t appeal to me.  I didn’t buy it.

Now let’s fast forward to this past Monday.  Although there are many instances of my lack of grace over the years, this particular event stands out like a floodlight during a blackout.  I was helping to set our cycling studio up for the next ride, delivering fresh towels to each bike.  The studio is set up like a stadium, with stadium stairs.  As I came down I was looking at the pile of dirty towels I had yet to clean up rather than where I was going and, yes you guessed it, missed the step and fell to the ground.

And let me say I fell HARD.  In fact, as I watched it happen in the mirrored wall across from me it felt as if it was a slow-motion commercial for how not to come down steps.  I could even see my mouth form the only reasonable response . . . . . “Nooooooo”.   As if that would stop anything.  When I finally looked up I thought “Wow how the hell did I do that?  I’ve done this a million times”.  Then I started to cry, realizing the damage inflicted by this fall and what I’d have to stop doing.  This time I didn’t break anything but I certainly have a nice swollen, black and blue sprained ankle and a fabulous skinned knee as well.  Grace strikes again.

So what is the moral of these stories of my lack of grace?  They both could have been avoided, one by deciding on a peaceful yoga class and the other by actually looking where I was going instead of racing to see how many sweaty towels were in the bin.  Well, I have pondered this to a great degree and I think that the symbolism of these incidents is this . . . .

I realize that I tend to move through life at a quick clip.  It’s not that I necessarily DO a lot of things each and every day or that what I do is done at breakneck speed.  But rather when decisions are made, I often want things to happen quickly and I get impatient and cranky when they don’t.  Perhaps these injuries caused most definitely by my clumsiness, are intended to SLOW ME DOWN.  I obviously have little choice in the matter since getting around with a broken or sprained ankle isn’t a swift endeavor.  I am forced by virtue of my injury to be still.  To wait before moving and when I do move it has to be slow and steady.  Being still naturally breeds more thought about what you are doing.  This is a very good exercise in patience for me and one that I am going to try to embrace – even after I can move around freely and without pain.

So, while my middle name is never going to be Grace (it’s Ann by the way) and frankly I’m pretty sure that I’ll keep right on tripping along, today I am starting to be more mindful of every move I make and step more carefully into the path before me.