I know I have one body.
One body. One planet from which to land and take off.
In the beginning, it feels like we have many bodies.
The infant.
The toddler.
The little kid.
The teenager.
The young woman.
And then somewhere in our thirties, they all begin to merge as one.
One body.
One heart.
One mind.
One garden from which to tend our soul.
Even then, I pushed to do more: motherhood, career, lover, wife, friend.
I want everything.
I want to do all of it with this one body.
I want to feel it all. Yeah.
Except there are limitations.
Iceskating.
There I was with my daughter at the Whole Foods rink in December.
I skated for an hour. I feel confident.  Music is playing.
So I dance. And I fall.
Hard.
People say they heard my head hit the ice. Thud.
Not crack. Thud.
I go to the doctor’s. He looks in my eyes. He tells me what to watch for.
I do not have a concussion.
I do not have a brain bleed.
I am fine.
But I know I will never ice skate again.
I will never risk my one body, my one brain on the ice again.
A few years later. I ask for a jump rope for Christmas.
I take the rope to the Y. I jump. My feet hurt.
No, they ache.
The cartiledge in my feet is gone. I can’t jump rope anymore.
Do I chafe at these limitations?
Not yet and a little.
I notice them. I note the passing of me.
I notice the closing of different parts of my garden.
But I also celebrate the container.
Sometimes that freedom and immortality of all those different bodies was too much.
Now I tend to this one garden
This smaller plot
More tenderly.