“Rockport Respite”

Morning clouds

            The end of September, my sister called with an unexpected treat—a few days with her and her husband at her  favorite place, Rockport, Texas. Everyone I know spends time in this small beach town. For my sister, it represents rest and relaxation coupled with finding unique items at one of the many shops in town. Rockport is her place to annually indulge in sleeping late and eating out. Sometimes she fishes with her husband, but often she devours a stack of books that they always bring along.

            I’d never been to Rockport. Every year, various friends post pictures from their weekend adventures. Some rent places for the entire summer. A few have purchased their second homes in the small beach town. I couldn’t wait to experience the place so many people love wholeheartedly.

  

          As the rental house faced east, I bounced out of bed each morning in anticipation of catching the perfect sunrise. Cloud cover and rain lent interest to the first day. Each  day,   I walked along the road that hugged the beach, taking pictures of piers and rocks. A marshy area of shallow water mirrored the grasses and sky. A pelican pair swam nearby while seagulls ripped across the sky.

            Upon leaving this port of rest, I promised myself to make at least a day trip there soon.

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman  

              

             

“Beautiful Red Oak”

 

Red Oak in 2010

            When we purchased our home almost forty years ago, the front yard had several trees. A Chinaberry tree stood next to the driveway with a young Mimosa a few feet away. Although many people don’t like Chinaberries because of their messy berries and invasive nature, we knew nothing about the tree. Within a few years, its roots sought out and destroyed our sewer line. We had to remove it, along with the Mimosa, when the plumbers trenched our front yard.

            Replacing the trees took us several years because we simply didn’t know what we wanted. Our back yard’s wooded area included a young Live Oak, two Arizona Ashes, two Swamp Maples, and another Mimosa. I knew more about the ashes as every builder in San Antonio planted these fast growing trees into new bulldozed neighborhoods. The fast growing Swamp Maples shaded our yard, but we saw evidence of rot in both of them within a year or two. We’d almost decided to put in a Live Oak out front when two of our neighbors planted Red Oaks.

            These lovely trees, although young, changed leave colors from their first year of planting. Turning the corner onto our street, their four trees offered shade in the summers and splendid reds each fall. Once we decided to continue the Red Oak’s trail down our street,  we found a small tree at a local nursery.

 

Every year, I eagerly await the turning of the leaves.

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 

  

“One Step Forward. Two . . .”

 

            Many months have passed since my last musings. I often think, “I need to write about this” or “Maybe I should record THAT”. Yet nothing propels me to my keyboard. The more time passes, the more often I self-censor ideas. “This really isn’t my story” pushes me into stepping away from the commentary swirling around in my brain.

            Before Christmas, we traveled to my sister’s home for an extremely small family gift exchange. My husband and I joined my sister, brother-in-law, and brother for one brief afternoon. As all of us felt well, no one did any COVID-19 testing. Within the first hour of our visit, my brother asked if there were any allergens in the air. His eyes started burning, and he asked for a hot cub of tea to ease his throat that suddenly had a tickle. His symptoms, absent when he joined our gathering, manifested quickly but looked like his typical allergy reaction to something in the air. We spent less than five hours together, with an open window close by, but that’s all it took for me to pick up the virus and eventually pass it on to my own small household. Fortunately, all of us are vaccinated and boosted. After a few days of misery, we all recovered well enough to return to our usual daily routines.

            For me, that meant increasing my walking goals. In June of 2020, I slipped while mopping the floor and slightly twisted my left knee. I gave it little thought as I continued with my daily walks through our neighborhood, until one morning when I took one step too many, heard a pop, and stepped into excruciating pain. RICE for seventy-two hours, plus another seventy-two using heat saved my knee. When my doctor’s PA examined it around day ten, she pronounced it on the road to recovery and gave me exercises to utilize to regain strength and motion. She said my knee definitely had arthritis in it, told me to “be careful” in my rehab and remember that it could happen again.

            Recovery crawled at a slow and steady pace. At first, I couldn’t even walk my entire back yard to water it without giving my knee a break. By the fall, I could walk to the corner of our street and back. I changed doctors and the goal of walking thirty minutes a day became my new focus. January of 2022 found my pace so slow that I’d drive to our park, hit the smooth sidewalks there for an entire hour. By June, I could walk to the park from our house. My pace picked up, too. I began walking different areas of our neighborhood. The hardest route, walking up “Suicide Hill” became my choice for once a week. My knee handled these challenges without a complaint!

            Moving into this January, I fixated on the idea of going up that steep incline for an entire week without shifting to a different direction. On day seven, I felt triumphant! Up the hill in record time, around the block to hit the hill by the elementary school, and then pushing the final stretch to home all in my half-hour goal. Approaching our home, I noticed our neighbor had removed all of the leaves from the front of his house. I dashed inside, grabbed a broom, and cleared the leaves from our front, too, forgetting that the motion that first injured my left knee was the side-to-side sweep of a mop.

            By the afternoon, my entire right leg muscles screamed for a hot soak in the tub followed by a slathering of Bengay Maximum. The next morning my leg didn’t scream, but I decided to spend my thirty minutes spinning on the recumbent bike we purchased just before Christmas. No problems. On Friday morning, with temperatures dipping pretty cold, I decided another round on the bike would keep me at my exercise goal. No problem with my right leg muscles at all.

            We decided to eat lunch out, walk over to the gym to cancel our membership, and run more errands. Heading toward Target, I felt my pace slow down as we entered the store. No pain or discomfort anywhere. I simply couldn’t keep up with my husband and son. Swinging to Hobby Lobby to spend a gift card, my steps slowed even more. Still, nothing hurt. I just shifted into a lower gear as we walked.

            Once home, I headed to our bedroom to put some mail into the drawer and took ONE STEP TOO MANY.

            This time, my right knee popped loudly with pain firing fiercely! Our bed, a couple of steps behind me became unreachable without help. I called out for aid. My husband and son guided me into bed, removed my shoes, and propped up pillows. We began RICE immediately. This time, our quick action means my right knee’s recovering at a faster pace. I’m not going to be heading up “Suicide Hill” anytime soon, but I’m able to move around the house pain free today!  

Shoes waiting for my next walk!

 

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman