The mind and body are amazing things, really. I complained yesterday, a day when I felt as bad as have since, I dunno, let’s call it the end of August. There have been a few other unfortunate days as I recovered from the crash and the helmet and the medication and the surgery and more medication. Yesterday was high up on the list of lowlights. My mood was off; I hurt. It was generally lousy.
I woke up today a new guy, which is to say, like myself again.
This is important because it remins me how I should feel. For the first time since July I felt like myself again. There I was tapping out miles in Orange Beach and now here I am, finally, me again. In between I’ve just been a fraction of myself, perhaps.
The amazing thing, the mind-and-body-are-amazing-things part, is that it took feeling so much more like myself today to realize how far off I’ve been since July. You have an accident and get acclimated to your new condition so quickly, subtly, that you just accept that this is how you are and forget how you are supposed to, in fact, actually feel.
I still hurt some, mind you. That’s improving on its own slow schedule. I finally learned how to not overdo it. I still have painkillers, but they stay in the medicine cabinet and I don’t have that foggy miserable feeling that I’ve come to associate with modern chemistry.
All of this sounds pitiful, but I mean it to say I feel like me again. And while I can’t move furniture or anything just yet — maybe next year — my discomfort doesn’t dictate every thing I do now. Just some of the things. Most important, I feel like myself again.
Samford is getting ready for the Hanging of the Green and the Lighting of the Way. This marks the beginning of the Christmas season here. The tree in Reid Chapel will be decorated. Garlands will be displayed. There will be hymns and prayers and carols. It is beautiful, really.
And then everyone will go out into the crisp night air for a message from the university’s president, more carols, a concert, Silent Night and then then, in the dark, the Christmas lights will come alive, the Lighting of the Way.
Prior to that, just lots of luminaries:
When you go into Reid Chapel there are just the little white bags. During the Hanging of the Green every one of these on the long quad will be lit. Whoever does that knows how to hustle. There are hundreds of them:
And then everyone goes back to studying, or home, or into Harry’s for hot chocolate. Finals are coming up fast.
