More Than A Mood

Dearest Rachel –

There were days, back when you were still here, when we would exert ourselves to the point of overdoing it, and you in particular would pay for it later on. Raking leaves comes to mind in particular, even at this opposite point on the calendar, in part because the front lawn has a few small piles that our service didn’t get a chance to clear away before we got hit with the first snow of the season and they closed up operations for the winter.

But back when we did our own raking, we would all be either gathering the leaves or shutting everything into the approved bags – you know, the usual stuff. And, come the next morning – or even that evening after doing the work – you would come to me, asking me to knead your shoulders, or other muscles elsewhere. For the most part, I was happy to do so, especially since you could be so… expressive… when I would hit that spot juuuust right. And depending on the time of day, such efforts would be rewarded handsomely thereafter; I don’t think I need to elaborate on that any further. And while I could get cramps in the muscles between my thumb and forefinger after a sufficiently extended session of working our your kinks, your appreciation of those efforts made it well worthwhile, and I miss being able to do that for you.

But something always puzzled me about the situation that brought it on in the first place. You were this slight little thing, half my weight – and then some, as you started to get nervous late in like as you slowly drifted over a hundred and ten pounds. Meanwhile, I was happy to get under that weight in kilograms; although these days, the striving is more for an even hundred, and to stay there. For all the differences between the male and female physique, anyone who was asked which of the two of us was in the better shape would instinctively pick you.

So with that being said, why were you the one who would constantly find herself with aching muscles after performing one exertion or another? It could have been a simple matter of physics and weight ratios; it would take you more effort to move the same pile of leaves, which would tax you that much more shortly thereafter. Alternatively, you would engage in certain energetic activities more often that I would in any event; it was part of the childlikeness that you tried to cultivate within yourself (although I wouldn’t say that required much effort on your part; acting like a kid was just you acting like yourself), complete with the juvenile lack of thought regarding future consequences, until they caught up with you.

At the same time, it seemed like no matter what we might have done together on a given day, I never seemed to wake up with any such aches and pains I could attribute to those activities. Oh, I may have gotten footsore from trekking about a city on a given day, for instance, but that was usually gone by the next morning. And I might wake up with a still back from sleeping wrong, but that was sort of the point – it wasn’t from overexertion, but posture. That, by the way, has since been mostly corrected with an angular setup in bed (I’ll never understand your ability to sleep flat, complete with a pillow that was barely a quarter the volume of a conventional one), and what few aches and pains I might get can be worked out with a hot shower upon rising – although these days, I prefer to get in a workout beforehand, in order to sort of ‘earn’ that shower, if you will.

But this morning, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to hop on the treadmill and work up that bit of sweat to make the shower worthwhile. And while you’ve heard me talk about the difficulty of getting motivated to get up and work out, things felt different today; it was more than a mood, more than a matter of motivation. Both of my legs felt just that little bit too sore to put them through the paces of another five miles before getting on with the day. It may have been from walking those eight miles in the woods with Lars wearing those hiking boots that I’ve never quite gotten used to, but why should it hurt this morning in particular?

It bothers me more than it would on most random days because of my upcoming plans; I may be trying to be blasé about it, but these sorts of things hit differently when this is a last chance to get in some proper exercise before taking off. It’s now or never when it comes to working out, and my aching body has made it clear that it’s going to be ‘never’ this time around. It’s even getting me worried as to how it’s going to adapt to all the hiking about the urban landscape of Tokyo, when we get there, although as of my sitting down and wrapping up this letter to you, I’ve gotten washed up and dressed, and the pain itself is beginning to subside, so maybe things aren’t as bad as all that. At the same time, tomorrow starts that much earlier; I can’t afford to be dealing with this then, either, even if I know I’m not going to be hitting the treadmill then.

Now, someone could say that this is just me finally feeling my age, and I suppose it had to catch up with me at some point in time. After all, you’d had to deal with this for years – decades, even – and you never got to the age I am. I should be expecting this at some point; that it’s striking me now, just as I’m about to leave, is just a case of bad luck, or maybe it’s just me paying more attention than I otherwise would. I don’t know. All I can say is that it seems rather sudden, for one who never seemed to deal with it much (or was that good at ignoring it) until now.

Either way, though, honey, I’ll ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.