In The Back Of My Mind

I did a little bit of Christmas work last night. This may sound a little crazy, but we keep an enormous amount of Christmas stuff in the attic. How much, you wonder? We have eighty plastic storage boxes that are a little bigger than cardboard office file storage boxes, two trees, a bunch of different wreaths and floor decorations, a train with roughly thirty feet of track, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t describe accurately because I’m not really certain as to what it is. Yeah, my wife really loves the whole Christmas thing. Me, I doubt that I would even put up a tree if it were my call.

My wife and my daughter worked the garage floor while I worked the attic. It takes about an hour to get it all down, and I will be doing very little from this point forward. My wife pretty much takes over from here, and I just handle the heavier and more cumbersome things.

While up in the attic, I was positioned to think of something that I don’t often consider. Here’s the thing…I sometimes feel that I am just one step away from having my leg collapse at the knee. There are times (um, like when I’m maneuvering awkwardly through a cramped attic space and walking on rafters) when my knee feels as though it’s going to snap and leave me hobbled. It happens occasionally, like last night in the attic, but it sometimes involves something as simple as taking a turn at the couch to walk into another room. My leg, on occasion, feels as though it’s going to come apart at the knee. I know that the weakness and fragility are always there, but certain things don’t manifest themselves all of the time. Living on the edge, right? It’s a little unsettling to live with the feeling that something awful could happen at any time, but I know that it’s a part of the process. I get a little tired of having to deal with some of the things that this motorcycle accident has done to my body, but hey, Christmas is coming. Maybe someone will get me a knee brace with a Red Sox emblem on the side. Dare to dream.