It takes a challenge to make a hero.

Peggy and Walt are skiing, and I am trying to decide whether I want to be on my feet long enough to shop. If, like most of the world’s people, I lacked the leisure for proper healing, this recuperative period would be a trial indeed. I am taking two half hour bike rides a day, and the pain of the first thirty or so pedal revolutions is like uncoiling a frozen garden hose. At 5:00, I do my prescribed exercises. Otherwise, I spend much of the day with my knee iced and elevated.

I don’t like weekends. Peggy usually works; the stores are crowded; and my regular radio talk shows aren’t on. Ironically, I prefer weekend radio, but it throws a ratchet into my world’s predictability. Change might be the sauce on life’s menu, but I ordered my baked potato plain. With that thought in mind, I will drive over to Harbor Freight for excitement, and to buy some casters for a seat I want to make so I can sit while doing work for which I have always knelt.

One of my coming jobs is re-roofing the den, and I haven’t figured out how I am going to handle it since something strikes me as vaguely ill advised about using a wheeled seat on a sloping roof. Peggy’s well-intentioned suggestion was to hire a roofer, but she has no idea what that would mean. I have already been forced to give up my plans to climb mountains this summer, but I am by no means willing to give up the work I love and by which I justify my existence.

I am trying to regard the obstacles presented by my physical limitations no differently than I regard the obstacles presented by any other part of a job. For example, I have never been good at vaulting from the ground to the rooftop, and have used ladders to overcome my deficiency.

I am on the mailing list of a mountain climber who lost both legs when a boulder fell on him. Instead of giving up the activities he loved, he used his disability as an inspiration to excel. Some people perform greater feats handicapped than they would had they remained normal. It takes a challenge to make a hero.