Nothing much happened yesterday; and in a way, everything happened.  The day held moments of calm and quiet; moments of joy; and moments when some of my saddest thoughts besieged me.  I spent two hours with my favorite curmudgeon, which made the whole day worthwhile, made every other bad thing bearable.

It’s another day, another chance to follow my grandmother’s advice and put my best foot forward.  I still don’t know which one is my best foot.  I’d ask her and she’d just smile.  And now the metaphor has become hopelessly entwined in a scene from the days after my car accident.

One of my professors asked me if it was my good leg or my bad leg. My mother, sitting beside my hospital bed, laughed.  “I didn’t know she had a good leg,” said my mother.  Indeed.  But that same mother scoffed at the social worker who didn’t want to agree to my discharge to a fourth floor apartment in which I lived alone.

“What if there was a fire,” the worker worried.  “How will she get out, being unable to walk?”  My mother laughed again, the same sound.

“You don’t know my daughter,” she assured the woman.  “She’ll get out.  Believe me, she’ll get out.  She’s got strong survival instincts.”

God, I pray each day, I hope my mother was right.