In the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, I reach for my water bottle and realize my entire backpack is missing.
My stomach drops, and my mouth becomes immediately, completely, excrutiatingly dry. My mind races thorough the contents of the bag, all of which are now LOST...
Hello from Mile Marker 14,432...
It's been a while, I know. So how to restart??
One, two, three, GO!
That's how I get out the door these days.
You have to start somewhere. And otherwise, I'll sit there for hours, trying to get my socket "just right."
Lately, there is no "just right." There's only better and worse. (At least prosthetically-speaking...)
Overheard at Mile 14,140...
"Fifteen years, and I still can't get my leg on."
Mark laughs. My brother is standing by his car, parked in the temporary spot outside my building.
It's 8 PM on November 8.
I was joking, but it's true. My prosthesis is not quite on...
A haunted hello from Mile 14,078...
...where a good-leg day meets a pain in the neck!
 |
| (That's a vampire joke!) |
Remember Rainbow?
Well, she's 16 now, and while she's darkened her outerwear, she's still as colorful as ever on the inside.
She's also old enough to do her own "googling," so she's been obsessed with visiting Vampa, the Vampire and Paranormal Museum in Doylestown, PA, about an hour north of Philly.
I'd been dragging my feet -- prosthetic and real -- because of the hassle of getting there...
Hello from --
 |
| -- I'm not sure what mile it is! |
Life has been busy lately -- bursting at its seams. I haven't had time to total my mileage.
But I learned, way back at Mile 30, that when feelings get too big, it's best to think small. (And a little bacon goes a long way, but that's another story!)
Bacon aside, I'm grateful for my morning walk.
If you're new here, a morning walk is nothing heroic...
A rainy wave from Mile Marker 13,898...
I get home from work exhausted, just as the rain begins.
I drop my lunchbag in the kitchen, my backpack on the dining room chair.
I limp into the bedroom. Contemplate lowering the shades. The sky is dark already. Can the neighbors see in? But I'm too tired even to make that decision...
Hello from Mile 13,890 at Jefferson University!
After sharing my story with these wonderful first-year medical students, the unexpected happened.
I almost fell.
Almost -- because a quick-thinking young woman in a brand-new white coat stepped in and caught me...
The desire to capture a moment in time has always been part of my nature...
So began my college essay, typed on a typewriter, back when there was no such thing as a Universal App, only blanks to fill in on dozens of pages, carefully unstapled and imperfectly aligned under the paper bail.
(I looked it up -- that's the name of that silver roller bar!)
My dad photocopied the applications at his office so I could do rough drafts. Because once you started typing, the pressure was on. There was no going back.
Greetings from 1987, where everything was analog...
