It’s hard to believe we are creeping up on October, but it’s even harder to face up to the whole passing of a year since my last annual physical. Time is both condensed and stretched in ways that make physics proud, I guess. But here we are.
My physical should be uneventful — I’m six months into post-menopause, eighteen months since my last period, and I’m over all doing fine I think. Yet it’s a time marker I was not expecting so “soon”, in fact I was taken off guard completely when the auto-reminder popped up a couple of days ago.
The nature of time is to be sneaky, changing things when your focus is elsewhere, and that has been especially true during this Pandemic Era. Lake Ella has been scraped clean of homeless people, the university campus is eerily empty at times it used to be packed with people, businesses have been contracting and consolidating.
The morning walkers remain a constant, at least for a few of us. Becky, the Duck Dude, Determined Jogger Girl, and myself keep going in circles every morning before dawn. Gone are Have a Nice Day Guy and the Angry Walker (I suspect she’ll show up again, she’s gone MIA for months at a stretch in the past). The rotating list of joggers who show up for a week or so then disappear is a wheel in motion. I hope the mother/daughter duo show up again.
Keely of course only registers the “now” and what grabs her interest, but she is my constant, even as she is changing too, getting a little slower and grayer…the both of us, to be honest…we are well matched!