Ten or so years ago I was over weight and over 40. I was visiting family and my niece asked me to skip with her. We were on a long wooden dock in Newburyport. At first I declined, but when she challenged me that I was the "fun sister,"(insinuating that her mother was no fun at all!) I grabbed her hand and sprung into action. A few steps later I had an odd sensation... it was like my foot had plunged through the thick wooden dock. I froze and looked down, both feet were where they should be. Yet my left foot was numb and I could not walk normally. As it turns out I had torn my Achilles tendon completely. There was surgery, a very painful recovery, and weeks in a cast. I have a really ugly scar and some hideous veins to show for it, but am grateful to be pain free and able to walk normally.
A few posts back I wrote about attending a dance class. There are people of all ages who go there... young beautiful types, older beautiful types. A petite woman in her 60's leaps and hops like an 8 year old. Everyone there moves and leaps and runs and hops and skips. Except me. I realized at the last class that I forget how to move that way. Sure, I dance and spin and move, but my feet stay pretty much rooted to the ground. I am hop-less, leap-less. I remembered this week how much I used to love running and all things that lifted me for one gossamer moment above the earth. But that injury? It scared me. It limited me. It made me earthbound, tightly. I literally forget how to move like I once did.
My dear friend Liz is 63-ish and NOT earthbound. She and I discussed a while back that as we age we become CAREFUL. We are careful not to fall, careful not to strain ourselves, careful not to move in ways that might cause harm. Because, after all, we are not kids any more. Liz says she makes a conscious effort to be care-LESS. She flings herself around and defies gravity. And it shows. She is youthful and vibrant and fabulous. On the other hand, I have become very careful because my subconscious is terrified to repeat that injury.
So I am making a new effort... an effort to shrug those "surly bonds of earth," to jump and hop and relearn to move the way I did as a kid. I want to skip and dance and chuck gravity and aging to the wind, where it belongs.
1 comment:
Since the sprained knee in June 2009, which led to the hip bursitis a few months later, which (I believe) led to lower back pain for the first time in my more than fifty years (because I was "walking funny" to keep the hip from hurting) I know whereof you speak. But what really has kept me earthbound is wearing anti-skid shoes nearly all the time. (Water; shampoo; dog hair. You know.) It means I can't just suddenly spin around, or leap--I have to stop and think about what's on my feet.
Mary Anne in Kentucky
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