Baby Steps

     Three posts into my new blogger life and I figured out how to send  an email to my friends with a link so they could read it.  Okay, so I didn't figure it out.  I asked my teenage son to do it, but I did send the email out on my own.  The subject read, "I started a  blog!"!  I sent it to friends and family and eagerly awaited the response.  Apparently my older brother, Dan saw it and without opening it sent an urgent email to my mother warning her not to open it either.  "Diana got hacked!  It is junk." he told her.  That basically sums up how well people know me and my lack of interest in all things technological.  He never even considered that I may have indeed started a blog.  My dear friend, Erica read that I had started my quest to go outside more and told me she needed time to digest the news.  Clearly, saying I was going outside of my comfort zone may have been an understatement.
     Determined to keep up with both the outside exploration and the computer piece of my journey, I needed to make my move.  It was eleven days after surgery and progress had been made!  I hadn't taken pain medicine in five days, the incision had stopped draining and the threat of an emergency second surgery was behind me.  It was time to head outside!  I walked out the front door triumphantly and went straight to our side yard.  We are blessed to live on three and a half acres of fields and woods.  I don't go out there very often, but when I do I can't believe it is all ours.  It is beautiful.  My older kids were terrified to have me venture out but my younger ones were thrilled to see me in their favorite play space.  They greeted me warmly and my seven year old daughter, Ginger took me by the hand.  We started walking towards the path in the woods that my husband had created.  My ten year old son, Oliver joined us then.  My steps were a bit tentative but their excitement was my guiding force.
     We followed the trail lined with trees and flowering plants.  The kids kept shouting, "Look at that!" and pointing at a tiny flower or a chipmunk scurrying by as if I had never been outside before.  Although I had been in our woods a few times, this time felt like a first.  This was a first..  This was the first time I did really look and listen and see what was out there.  Usually if I was in the woods I was giving a new visitor the quick tour.  Oliver found a small, yellow flower and picked it and held it up under my chin..  "Your chin is yellow Mom.  You like butter!".  "No, I don't!", I told him which sent him into a fit of laughter.  Throughout the woods I could see remnants of makeshift clubhouses the kids had constructed and an elaborate pet cemetery commemorating too many of our beloved animals.  The children wanted me to walk off the trail but I thought better of it due to the uneven ground and we headed back.

     The whole experience probably only lasted ten minutes.  By the time I got back to my bed I hurt.  I felt jubilant and discouraged at the same time.  Here's the thing though.  I did it!  I went outside just for fun.  Amazing.