Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [44]
Her father ran every Saturday with his buddy from law school, Alex. She declined their offers to run with them. They were in their forties and she couldn’t understand why they wore such tiny running shorts. She was embarrassed for them and embarrassed to be with them. They looked so old and sinewy.
While her father and Alex ran on Saturday mornings, she prepared her lunch. She woke up thinking about food, went to sleep thinking about food and this worried her. Was she losing her grip, her control? She didn’t want to think of food, but since she still did, she planned to whip it into obedience. One rice cake and cucumber for lunch. The cucumber was peeled, then cut in half the long way, then in half the other way, then she held all the long spears together and chopped those into chunks. She filled a cereal bowl with the cucumbers and threw in one-half cup of nonfat yogurt. By 11:30, her father and Alex were generally in the home stretch. By the time he came in the door, she was seated at the table with the bowl in front of her, a rice cake in hand.
“Eating again, honey? I don’t know where you put it.”
Chapter 12
Rocky expected to see improvement; this was the third lesson. She had worked out a deal with Tess to use the old clunker car that Tess kept on the mainland. Often, if people could find a spot in Portland to leave another car they did, rather than paying for the more expensive car ferry. Rocky knew she was ready to move up to a heavier bow and part of her was eager to hear Hill say, “Good pull and release. This is the day to move up to a twenty-five-pound bow.”
She had practiced for two hours each day behind Tess’s house. She stood with her left side facing the target, set the arrow, pulled out and up, right arm pulled back, elbow up, right thumb even with her jaw, sighted the target, took a breath, steadied the body, released the breath, then in the empty space between breaths, released the arrow. When she had first started, the arrows had flown wildly over, under, and to the side of a target, which was the size of a garbage can lid. The first time that the arrow actually hit the target, she was amazed at the thrill she felt.
Tess, who knew nothing about archery but a lot about Qi Gong, said it was the repetition, through repetition comes freedom.
“Repetition gives the body a chance to expand and be creative. Look anywhere in nature, in concentric rings in sunflowers. Look down from an airplane the next time you fly and look at cornfields in the Midwest in all their wonderfully repeated rows. That lets us see the exception in the change. Your body is getting the hang of this Rocky, even if your brain can’t believe it,” said Tess.
She was anxious for Hill to see the improvement. She had eaten breakfast and lunch and the last time she checked, her energy was right where it was supposed to be, dropped down low in her body. She parked Tess’s car on the street in front of his house. She walked to the backyard after not finding him in his shop garage. He was already pulling back on his sixty-five-pound bow as if it were no harder than the rubber band that secured the Sunday paper. Thwack! He hit as close to the center as an arrow could get.
There was no question of startling him, she knew that. He was a hunter and he listened to sounds like any wild animal. Rocky pictured him noting the sound of her car door closing, the knock on the shop door, and the way she had let the gate slap shut when she came into the backyard. For the first time, she noted that Hill moved his body in a way that was graceful. She had always liked that in a man, whether he was a dancer or a roofer; some men moved with grace and Rocky had an appreciative eye. His shoulders swiveled in perfect opposition to his hips. She had forgotten that she appreciated anything.
She greeted him with sudden shyness, and tried to pull back hard into a sisterly approach with him, as if he was Caleb, and she was commenting on one of his sculptures.