“Okay, relax,” Zack, my Doctor of Physical Therapy said, as he gently moved my right leg into the start of a passive external rotation.
“Sorry. I wish I weren’t so anxious about this,” I sighed, trying to just let my leg go limp.
On March 8, I had had an arthroscopy on my right hip to repair a badly torn labrum and gluteus minimus tendon that I have no idea how I damaged. Since late March, Zack has been patiently working with me to strengthen my leg.
“At this point, nothing we do here is going to tear it,” Zack reassured me. “You’ll only tear it if you overdo it or if you make a sudden movement. Like if something falls off the counter and you lunge for it. Just let it fall. You’ll have to take it slow.”
It was at that moment I finally accepted something I’ve been quietly fighting against since the day of surgery:
2024 will be The Year of Living Slowly.
When I met my orthopedic surgeon in Pittsburgh in January and he laid out my options, he said it takes six months to a year to fully recover from this surgery. I literally put my hands over my masked face and said, “Oh God. No!”
But there was no living with this pain anymore. I had had to stop walking our dogs and walking for exercise. I had stopped driving because it hurt to push the brake and the gas. I was living at a pace I might expect when I’m 83, not 63.
So I had the three-hour surgery. It went very well. The original pain is completely gone and I have had almost no post-operative pain. But life is very, very different.
The video clip below from our bird feeder camera caught me walking with a cane in late April. I'm not using the cane anymore, but I move about this slowly when I walk.
You see I hate slow. I have always been the person who “gets shit done.” I’ve always had lots of “giddy up” and a barely concealed disdain for people who ponder and ruminate and procrastinate. My tendency to “move toward action” is “very well developed,” as the work-related personality tests always said.
But all that stuff is ancient history. It's of no importance at all now. What’s important is that I stop bucking The Year of Living Slowly and see what I can learn about myself and the world. If I can’t do that, I will be missing one of the best opportunities I’ve ever been handed.
Here’s what I’m discovering:
A richer prayer life. The number one thing this experience has given me is the opportunity to deepen my prayer life. It helped that the surgery took place midway through Lent. Knowing I would have more time available, I set up a prayer routine using the Hallow and Ascension apps and a book my friend Belinda had given me.
I made time to pray throughout the day. I learned a lot and found it very comforting. So much that I’ve continued the routine now that Lent is over. I’m just delving into different prayer content—including another book Belinda gave me.
If it hadn’t been for this surgery, I probably would not have created this much time and space for God in my life.
Reading about stuff I’ll never do. All my life I’ve wanted more time to read. So I’m diving into several months of magazines I have here and reading articles that normally wouldn’t interest me. I’ve read about how to use chickens to do no-till farming. How to grow morel mushrooms. And how the Netherlands is using controlled-environment agriculture and why it’s challenging to establish it in the US. I’m never going to have a big farm or invest in high-tech greenhouses. But that doesn’t matter. I’m enjoying just letting things fascinate me.
Simple gardening. Last year Jimmy and I went all in on growing our own food. We had amazing gardens and spent the summer canning tomatoes, pickles, chutney, jellies and a lot more. While it was wonderful, it also owned me and became exhausting.
Knowing this surgery was needed and coming in the spring, we re-imagined our gardens this year with an emphasis on growing greens and other things that we could direct sow into our raised beds. We focused more on things we can pick and eat rather than pick and preserve.
So we are growing lots of greens we’ve never tried, like tatsoi, mache and Russian red kale.
Instead of 24 tomato plants, we have just a handful.
Simpler. Less demanding. It’s okay for right now.
Doing small things in small bits. I’ve always thrived on having a big project out in front of me. I need to Accomplish (capital A intended). But I can’t do that now. I am learning to feel satisfaction in accomplishing small things. Sometimes only one small thing in a day, depending on how my hip feels. This is new and hard for me. Not gonna lie.
The Roomba works and is worth it. Once vacuuming and sweeping floors became impossible for me, I realized just how much of it I do in a day. So I ordered a middle-of-the-road Roomba, and it’s been well worth it.
I’m learning that as I get older, I need to conserve my energy and physical ability for the things that are important and “delegate” the rest. Delegating to a little round robot vacuum works for me.
I hate clutter, but I can live through it. I organized the house top to bottom before the surgery because clutter makes my flesh crawl. It only took a few days after the operation for stuff to pile up again because that’s how life goes, especially when you can’t do anything you normally do.
Jimmy was taking care of me full-time for the first few weeks and wisely knew what was important. Decluttering the kitchen table was not mission critical.
Not being in full control of the “stuff” is really difficult and uncomfortable for me. It’s teaching me that we need less and less of it. I’m also learning that “stuff” will make you miserable if you can’t put it in its proper perspective.
Things piled up on the kitchen table again this week. Instead of letting it grate my nerves, I picked away at it over the last two days. Slowly. It’s not the way I wanted to do it. It was just another way to do it. And that’s fine.
I know that The Year of Living Slowly will change me. I’m confident that my repaired hip will feel much better but I will have to be mindful of what I do so that I don’t re-injure it. I hope that this experience finally, finally gets me to lighten up and obsess a lot less over things that simply don’t matter in the end. If 2024 ultimately becomes The Year of Learning What’s Important, it will have been a success.
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