It’s 10:45 at night, and I’ve spent most the day in bed, either icing my knee, reading a book, or taking a nap. My body seems to want a lot of rest. I can’t imagine why. When I haven’t been in bed, I’ve been on the floor, doing rehab exercises for my left knee, which was operated on twelve days ago. And whereas for over a week there’s been a point at which my knee’s said, “That’s it, I’m not going any farther,” today something gave, and it went past that point. That is to say, now I can bend my knee more than ninety degrees. Let’s hear it for progress. Just in time for my checkup with my surgeon tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll get a gold star.

What’s fabulous about this progress is that a lot of pain wasn’t involved in getting there. In other words, I didn’t have to grunt and groan and force myself to bend my knee more. Rather, while doing a particular exercise, it was like I was no longer driving with the brakes on. Something simply let go, and I had more range of motion. Of course, it may be that certain muscles have become stronger and are able to pull more than before. I don’t know all the mechanics involved in moving one’s leg, but I have noticed that my left quad is starting to flex more, so that could be it. Regardless of the inner workings of my knee, I’m thrilled that my bending is trending.

Putting on pants will be much easier now.

Inspired by my friend Sweetie Berry, this afternoon I performed what she calls A Fifteen-Minute Miracle, which is a quick, simple act to organize your life, get yourself together, or move forward on a creative project. In my case, I cleaned up a piece of furniture in my room on which I’ve been stashing “everything” since before my surgery. And whereas it wasn’t a huge mess, things had piled up, since walking has been hard and it’s been easy to toss stuff there. Anyway, it took a couple miracle sessions to get everything thrown away, put up, or rearranged, but it really was easiest thing.

Here’s before.

Here’s after.

One of the things I had to decide while cleaning up was what birthday, thanksgiving, and Christmas cards I was going to keep. Typically I hold on to cards for a month or two then toss them. This is the minimalist in me; things don’t pile up that way. But today I decided to hang on to a few “special” cards and take a picture of a few others that touched my heart or made me smile. Anyway, I don’t think it’s a big deal to hang on to cards, and I also use throwing them away as a reminder to be as present as possible. What I mean is, whenever I throw a card away, I think, The past is over. This is my life now.

This is a mantra I’ve used a lot lately. The past is over. This is my life now. Earlier I watched an eight-year-old video of me teaching a dance class. God, how so much has changed–my haircut, my weight, all my clothes, and definitely my left knee. I kept looking at my legs move across the floor thinking, I wish I could do that. But this is a recipe for misery, comparing the now-you to the old-you. Recently I watched a video of Byron Katie walking in a cast. She says, “Am I slow or am I fast? If you don’t compare–don’t know, don’t know.” In other words, if we’re not measuring ourselves against our former selves or anyone else, we’re simply left with this moment, right here, right now.

Life’s funny. One day you can bend your knee, the next day you can’t, and then you can again. Your room’s a mess for a while, and then it’s not. Is one thing really better than another? No. More pleasant, maybe, but everything has its time. And whereas I often try to hurry things along and push-push-push my life and health in the direction I want them to go, the truth is that everything not only has its time, but everything takes its time. Which is hard, the fact that changes often happen so slowly. Granted, it’s good for growing character and patience, but not much else. (Oh wait, character and patience are kind of everything.) And so I come back to this moment, in which I’m learning to bend more than I thought I could.