Relative Something

I’ve had a good, long span of time since one of my degenerating discs unleashed its contents to press against a nerve. I have not taken that for granted. Yesterday, pain made itself familiar to me once again. Today, my movements are reduced to wincing hesitations.

One thing after another seemed to fail for us yesterday, deflating our high hopes and dragging them in directions we didn’t intend. The universe laughs at our feeble plans. The truck failed to start again, despite the new battery and other work that Cyndie paid a local repair shop to do. She postponed her plan to drive into town and buy feed for the horses.

On our walk down to check on the truck, we were startled to find such a large amount of metal shrapnel left in the snow on the driveway from the recent gutter work. In their rushed attempt to complete this job by the end of their day on Friday (which they didn’t actually achieve, since there are still some finishing details that will require a return visit sometime in the future), I think they neglected to give a thorough enough effort toward cleaning the ground beneath where they worked.

It became my job to clear our walkway and upper driveway of dropped screws mixed with slivers and shards of cut metal. I had been hoping to have a warm day when I could use the new ice breaking tool I recently bought to scrape the compacted snow off the asphalt of the driveway by the house. Not only was yesterday lacking in warmth and sunshine, we were getting a gentle sprinkle of snowflakes that were just enough to camouflage the debris on the surface, such that my best option appeared to be scraping everything down to the pavement, regardless the conditions.

I think one thing that causes our efforts to bring pain to our bodies is when we are not happy to be doing the work. I was off to a bad start.

Cyndie walked past on her redirected plan to now clean some manure from the area beneath the overhang of the barn, checking on my progress. I reported my arms were complaining about the effort. In a short time, she returned from her project, pain evident in her whole body, angry over her inability to navigate the snow between the paddock and our manure pile.

I realized that I had neglected to clear that route adequately after the last big snowfall. I went from the unhappy struggle to scrape the driveway, to the necessary task of clearing snow for a path to the manure pile, now feeling some guilt over my negligence. Cyndie was not going to let me suffer alone, having readjusted her attitude, and showed up to work on it, too. She is better at “getting back to grazing,” a reference to how horses process things without dwelling on issues. Unfortunately, it was too much for our ailing bodies to shovel, so I needed to get our ATV, “Griz.”

I swiftly got it stuck. In frustration, I made sure to get it really stuck, forcing it forward and back until I was good and mad and the snow beneath it was packed tight. Then I went to get the shovel so I could angrily fight against the snow I had packed, working in contorted positions that eventually gave me the secondary result that I seemed to be after: back pain.

Regardless the physical discomfort we are both dealing with today, yesterday turned out to be a successful day. One major victory for us was that we avoided totally feeding off of each other’s angst. We eventually made good progress in teaming up to clean the area near the barn more thoroughly than it has been for a couple of months. Afterward, we settled in by the fire to enjoy a pleasant evening, eating a fun pizza dinner, with Cyndie’s fresh-baked ginger cookies to sweeten the deal.

We both recognize there were lessons for us in the difficulties we experienced yesterday.

Now, to figure out how to let my degenerating disc know that I recognize and understand my lesson, and it doesn’t need to continue hurting. I’m inviting it to go back to grazing.

It works for us.

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