Excuse me, you want me to do what?

Leave the house? Converse with humans whose flesh I can reach out and touch? You want me to discard the protection of my computer screen, replace my pajama bottoms with jeans that no longer stretch around my waist, risk dirtying my slippers in the elements, or worse, don socks and soled shoes?

Well, it just isn’t that easy because I no longer want to, and more importantly, I’ve forgotten how. On Saturday, I teetered into a baby shower, in heeled boots I haven’t worn in two years, with enough make-up to pass for a circus clown.

I arrived thirty minutes late wearing white Capri jeans, a black tank underneath a pink sweater, and grey nylon socks. Had I added a headband, I could have passed for a Madonna-crazed eighth-grade girl, circa 1983. I resent any material not made of jersey, fleece, or stretchy cotton, and it takes a crane to lift me out of my office chair, bed, or bike path, let alone my comfort zone.

Honestly, I’d love to see you in person, but I can’t communicate without my keyboard, and I certainly don’t know when to mute.Tonight is in-person meditation night, but I’m going to stay home and eat the girl scout cookies that had the decency to deliver themselves right to my door. I’ll read my book and plan out my day tomorrow, which I hope looks exactly like today.

Such is the plight of habits: doing something over and over, enough times that your body takes over your thinking brain. It's the death of creation, the enemy of change, the villain, snuffing out empowerment.

My son banged his foot, the one with the three-inch screw in it. He crumpled to the floor in pain and vied to get out of the rest of the day’s activities, which included horseback riding, his favorite. He’s missed twenty days of school this year due to pain.

But nine months post-surgery, we now know his body is in fight or flight, and it’s generating real pain in the absence of a good reason.

So I had him breathe in and out of his heart to an elevated emotion, and lo and behold, he taught his body that it was safe, he convinced it that it’s not really in pain, he took his will and his life back. 

And if he can do that, it looks as if imma going to have to put down these girl scout cookies.