Be grateful, and go kick!

First, a big thank you for the sweet get well card from the womens' class (plus Nick)! I so appreciate your support and your friendship. Thank you.

All you active, kicking martial artists reading this have an advantage over me: you can kick with your right foot, since it's not wrapped in an ace bandage and covered in a black boot. I can't put weight on my leg for a good six weeks, so I won't be kicking anytime soon.

Holy cow, I miss it. I really, really do. And I've been realizing some irony: in class, I have always thought of myself as the most awkward, the clumsiest one. Everything seems to take forever for my mind and body to grasp (just ask anyone who tried to teach me a double knife hand strike). But I kept trying, and eventually I got it.

However awkward a martial artist I was, I did not fully appreciate my body. That leg encased in black used to be able to kick! It used to pivot. My foot used to form itself into all the different toe shapes the cute Tiny Tigers practice (I can hear Master Sorenson's voice in my head: "Sidekick toes! Front snap kick toes! Roundhouse toes!). Now my foot can barely write the alphabet (the exercise prescribed by my orthopedic surgeon).

I think when I return to tae kwon do, I will be even more awkward than before, and more timid. I am freaked out thinking about kicking something with my fragile right leg just now. I have no idea how long it will take for my feet to angle like they're supposed to for a sidekick.

But I'll be back. No idea when, but I plan on returning. And when I'm there, I will be so, so grateful just to be sweating and kicking with all of you again.