Grace

I am not a particularly graceful person. I often sport bruises attesting to my lack of deftness at things. Every time I get on my mountain bike, now repainted a lovely pearly white (with blue undertones), I see the small splotches of green on the crank and the front tire from where I tried to touch up its previous paint color and failed. I tried to keep my hand and mind steady and clear.

While we were at the beach last week, I got my shoelace caught in a bike chain and down I went. As I was falling, I slowed the bike with the brakes and tried to will myself to put my left foot down first. (I always put my right foot down first in normal cycling contexts). "Left foot!" my conscious mind screamed, but my kinesthetic responses weren't there. I have the scrapes and bruises (on my right knee) to prove it.

I try to be graceful. I try to be coordinated. I can catch a ball in a glove and hit one reasonably well with a bat, but ask me to do any higher order movement and I will fail.

Today, I was presented with a problem. It was more annoying than anything. I learned about the issue at noon. It took four phone calls and some persuading on my part, but I solved the problem by 4pm in such a way that everyone was happy and contented. No cross words were uttered. I was apologized to (by the creator of the problem) twice, thanked five or six times (by all involved) and am feeling satisfied.

Truth be told, it was a graceful.

I was just reading a piece my honey wrote about em dashes. It was a less boob titled version of this post from her blog. The grace with which she wrote this piece (and many other things) was really amazing.

It's nice, I think, to occasionally rediscover small pleasures in life. Grace, it seems to me, comes in a variety of ways. When it comes, I want to spend a little more time appreciating it, if only for a moment.

If only my knees didn't have to suffer my lack of grace otherwise.