{"id":962,"date":"2015-06-12T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T13:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=962"},"modified":"2015-06-11T21:13:40","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T04:13:40","slug":"the-journey-of-a-thousand-miles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2015\/06\/12\/the-journey-of-a-thousand-miles\/","title":{"rendered":"The Journey of a Thousand Miles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote the blog yesterday. \u00a0It was a cranky blog\u2014a growly bear kind of blog. \u00a0And then, at Bill\u2019s suggestion, I thought about it over night before sending it to be posted. \u00a0Guess what happened? \u00a0This morning I took a page out of Thumper\u2019s father\u2019s book: \u00a0If you can\u2019t say somethin’ nice, don\u2019t say nothin\u2019 at all. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At which point, I deleted that blog. \u00a0After all, who wants to read a rant over their morning coffee?<\/span><\/p>\n

So yes, let\u2019s go back to the issue of 10,000 steps. \u00a0Someone sent me an article this week, explaining that there\u2019s really no magic to the 10,000 steps routine. The idea of 10,000 steps being good for you emerged from Japan in the 1960s, and whoever came up with the idea settled on 10,000 because that\u2019s an extremely favorable number in Japan. \u00a0The point is, if you\u2019re only moving 900 steps a day, bumping that up to a couple of thousand\u2014as many as you can physically manage\u2014is a big improvement over doing nothing. \u00a0And although the idea of all those steps may have come from the other side of the planet, on this side, it\u2019s making a big difference in the size of my hips. \u00a0For the better.<\/span><\/p>\n

Right now, I can physically manage 10,000 steps. \u00a0That\u2019s my base. \u00a0I try to lay that down in the morning. \u00a0After that, however many steps I do in my regular and more than somewhat sedentary life, are gravy. \u00a0Which is why my monthly average right now is 12,289. \u00a0But make no mistake. \u00a0Walking 10,000 steps\u20145 miles, give or take\u2014takes time when you 70 plus years-old. \u00a0Two and a half hours right now. \u00a0Longer if it gets too hot. \u00a0When the fish start poking their little orange heads out from under the rocks in the pond, I know it\u2019s time for me to be off my walking path. \u00a0If their water is that warm, that means the air too warm for me to be marching around the yard.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this adds up to, however, is that I\u2019ve spent far more time outdoors this spring than I have since I was a little kid clamoring barefoot over the rocky formations in the desert pasture land that was \u201cup across the road\u201d from our house on the edge of Bisbee. \u00a0And it\u2019s been an interesting experience. \u00a0Starting out early, I watch the shadows from the tall trees next door gradually retreat across the lawn. \u00a0I enjoy the changing shades of green in the various plants and changing colors of the blooming flowers as the sun shows up. I watch the fish venture out from their hidey holes. \u00a0And over the past month or so, I\u2019ve kept an eye on an industrious mama bird who built a nest under the white coral bells in the one of the pots on the front porch the moment the planters were filled. \u00a0We watched her build the nest, lay three eggs, and look after them. \u00a0We watched the eggs hatch and now, just this morning, we saw the mother bird herd her fluttery little chicks across the driveway and into the relative safety of the row of arbor vitae that line the drive. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But what really caught my eye this morning was the rose tree. \u00a0It was here long before we were, planted on the north side of the pool house in a spot where it never got any sun. \u00a0It grew straight up as one long, ugly trunk in a desperate attempt to reach sunlight. \u00a0Only when it topped the edge of the pool house roof and emerged from perpetual shade did it finally spout any branches. \u00a0Most of the time, the leaves on the scrawny lower trunk were covered with ugly black spots of blight. Actual roses never appeared before the last of the summer\u2014in late August or even September. \u00a0We could see that the roses were bright pink, but because they were beyond the roof line, we couldn\u2019t really appreciate them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last fall we asked the gardener to transplant the tree to the other side of the garage\u2014to the south side, the sunny side\u2014and it\u2019s one of the plants I\u2019ve been watching change colors in the dappled sunlight of my walking mornings. \u00a0It\u2019s no longer a single stick of a plant. \u00a0It has branches\u2014healthy green branches with lush green leaves and with one long stem blossom waiting to bloom. \u00a0All that poor rose tree needed was to be transplanted to the right spot. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that made me think of someone else who was once in dire need of transplanting\u2014me. \u00a0If you\u2019ve read my book of poetry, After the Fire, or heard me speak, you already know that the last few years I spent working in Phoenix were tough ones. \u00a0I was in the life insurance business back then and struggling with whether or not I should divorce my husband. \u00a0If I was on my own, what would our lives be like? \u00a0Would I be able to support my children? \u00a0And once I got the divorce, I couldn\u2019t stand to stay around Phoenix and watch someone I still loved destroy himself. \u00a0The only course of action left to me was to get out of Dodge.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was the first step\u2014making the decision to move and then carrying it out. \u00a0It was a hot June day in Phoenix as I loaded the last of the boxes into the U-Haul trailer. \u00a0The very last box happened to be one full of bedding. \u00a0Once it was inside, the door wouldn\u2019t close, so I hammered away at the contours of the box with my hip until the door finally DID close. \u00a0And then we drove out of town. \u00a0On that day I was petrified. \u00a0I had never driven a car pulling a trailer and didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d be able to manage it. \u00a0I didn\u2019t know what lay ahead in life for any of us, and it certainly never occurred to me that, after making that scary move to Seattle, I would soon embark on my lifelong dream of becoming a writer. \u00a0And it never occurred to me, either, that four Junes later I would meet Bill or that we would fall in love, marry, and have thirty years together (so far) with kids and grandkids and a wonderful home and garden and life.<\/span><\/p>\n

None of that seemed remotely possible as I drove west on I-10 toward California on that hot day in 1981. \u00a0None of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, gradually, my dreams started coming true. \u00a0I wrote and published my first book. \u00a0I met Bill. \u00a0In 1986, six months after we married, we went to Arizona to celebrate my parents\u2019 50th wedding anniversary. \u00a0While there, I took Bill to the insurance office where I had worked for more than five years in the late seventies and early eighties. \u00a0We went there because I wanted to introduce him to the people I had worked with during those very challenging years, but do you know what happened? \u00a0None of the people in the office recognized me. \u00a0In the five years we had worked together, they had never seen me smile, and they had never heard me laugh.<\/span><\/p>\n

People who hear me speak now know that my laughter is back. \u00a0And so is my smile. \u00a0Just like that rose tree by the pool house, I had to be transplanted to the right place\u2014in this case, rainy Seattle\u2014for the black blight to go away.<\/span><\/p>\n

That first tentative step taken so fearfully in 1981 was the one that now makes it possible for me to be out there taking those \u201cfavorable\u201d 10,000 steps each day, walking in a yard full of wonder and beauty, of blossoming flowers and rushing water.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m extremely grateful, for all of this, and it seems to me that reading about the importance of being transplanted might be a good thing for my readers to encounter over their Friday morning coffee. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also possible that out there among my blog readers are people who are stuck in troubled relationships who are asking themselves the same kinds of tough questions I asked myself over and over back in Phoenix: \u00a0What will happen if I leave? \u00a0Will I be able to survive? \u00a0Will anything good ever happen to me again?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure being dug up out of the ground was a shock for the rose tree last winter. \u00a0And leaving Phoenix and everything familiar was certainly a shock to me, but if being transplanted could work for me, it can also work for you, and I\u2019m also sure you know who YOU are.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trick is taking the first step. \u00a0That\u2019s the hard one. \u00a0It gets easier after that, not all at once, but it happens over time.<\/span><\/p>\n

One step.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just one.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote the blog yesterday. \u00a0It was a cranky blog\u2014a growly bear kind of blog. \u00a0And then, at Bill\u2019s suggestion, I thought about it over night before sending it to be posted. \u00a0Guess what happened? \u00a0This morning I took a page out of Thumper\u2019s father\u2019s book: \u00a0If you can\u2019t say somethin’ nice, don\u2019t say nothin\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-fw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}