For Kiri, patience had never been a virtue. Never had she subscribed to the view that more haste led to less speed. Her sympathy, when hearing of the fabled race, was with the hare, although she did blame him for a loss of focus during the infamous race.
Loss of focus was not one of Kiri’s problems. She prided herself on completing tasks quickly and effectively. Always diving headfirst into a challenge, she was renowned for her efficiency and accuracy. And yet somehow, she managed to sidestep promotions at work and had gathered few friends – no time to waste chatting in wine bars, she always said when invited for after-work drinks on a Friday night.
Kiri’s leisure time tended to be spent in physically demanding outdoor pursuits. Scaling rocky peaks and hill walking in all weathers were favourite activities, where her urge to succeed carried her, quite literally, to great heights.
She was respected for her endurance in difficult outdoor challenges. She was not renowned, however, for possessing empathy and understanding of the trials and shortcomings of others. To be quite fair, Kiri held herself to the same exacting standards she applied to others.
This began to unravel with an accident. It was a stupid accident, and Kiri acknowledged her fault in falling many feet during a rock climb. She sustained a number of injuries and was quite unable to continue her climb. The rescue team was friendly and efficient, getting Kiri to a hospital accident and emergency unit from where she was wheeled to x-ray and on to a plaster room and finally to a bed in an orthopaedic ward.
Kiri was crushed both by the pain of her heel fracture and by the damage to her self-esteem. Having been informed that she was not to take any weight on her foot and that recovery would take at least of 3 months, she cried miserably.
One or two people from the rock-climbing fraternity called by to check on Kiri’s progress and offered sympathy and chocolates. Conversation was mainly about climbing, and Kiri struggled to remember names. Workmates also dropped by bringing flowers and magazines, none but Emily ever lingered. Kiri had assumed Emily to be rather slow and hesitant, a tortoise. She visited one day with a bag of wool and some scraps of cloth.
I thought you might be bored, so I brought these to see whether you’d like to start on some patchwork, or maybe make some simple crochet squares.
Kiri fought back the withering comments that were forming and thanked Emily. She needed help to get started, and Emily showed herself to be a patient teacher with a store of funny stories about things going wrong at work. They giggled about office characters and chatted about Kiri’s accident and the long recovery time. Kiri felt free of any pressure to complete her tasks and began to enjoy a bit of crotchet work.
Maybe the tortoise and the hare were just running different races.
