ANOTHER VIEW

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

I’m feeling a kinship with actor Jimmy Stewart’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”. Yesterday, I fell off a ladder and hurt my leg from the ankle to knee. I’m not in a wheelchair as L. B. Jeffries was, but I am sitting life out for a few days with my leg aching enough to make me want to stay off of it as I was instructed. It’s no fun and I’m sick of the view.

I’ve been forced to leave a painting project unfinished, stay off my feet and slow down. I think it’s the slowing down I hate the most.

Why is it as soon as someone says we can’t do something, that’s exactly what we want to do?

When a contest judge told me I couldn’t write, I was determined to prove her wrong. (And I did. I won first place at that particular contest another year.)

When I was told I’d never be able to find time to write or market my work if I became president of a writing group, I worked hard and was published for the first time within six weeks of my inauguration.

I was told to choose between being a writer or instructor because “people never do well in both.” I disagreed then and still do. So far I haven’t decided which one makes me happiest, so I continue to do both whenever I can.

While sitting back watching TV or catching up on my reading is a pretty good gig when you’re laid up with a bad leg, it can get pretty boring, too. Jeffries was at a loss cooped up in his apartment, being unable to perform his job as a photojournalist. A writer can write almost anywhere as long as a scrap of paper and a pen exists. Laptops make it even easier.

My mind wanders. All of the sudden, I want to take walks, check out a new gallery and stroll through antique stores.

I know I can do all that in a few more days, but like a spoiled child, I want it now. I decided I’m being selfish and should be grateful for all I do have. That’s always humbling and I’m just cranky enough to not want to be humbled. But, I am.

I shall be complacent in this moment. Obviously, I needed to slow down. (That one change may have caused me not to fall.) I have time to reflect and to think about how lucky I am not to have broken my . . . that I will soon be able to resume my lifestyle . . . that I can plot a crime just as well propped up in an easy chair as anywhere else.

I’m going to take it easy for a few days. Join me—not with an injury, but as someone who plans to slow down once in a while, not just to smell the flowers, but to actually see them and touch them, too.

I may find the same old view isn’t what I thought I was seeing, but perhaps something I was missing.