Story Thirteen

In which I decide that discretion is the best part of valor.

It’s only been the last few years that I’ve started to admit that my body might finally be winning the war I have been waging on it for my whole life. I have put myself through decades of punishing work; endless hours on my feet, moving heavy things around, working through illnesses by simply refusing to admit that I have them. I birthed two kids. As I aged and my career changed, I took to working at a punishing pace generally, and nobody can argue that I’ve taken what might be the safest or least stressful of career paths. I was under forty, and nothing could have hurt me enough that I’d have to stop moving.

I’ve had sciatica since I gave birth to my youngest, and recently it’s moved into my lower back. In the last year, it’s gotten to the point that I sometimes find it difficult to stand or walk for more than about five minutes at a time. It is not particularly easy to be a dynamic, useful person when one always has to find a place to sit down or something to lean on while trying not to let on how much it feels exactly like you’re being stabbed in an internal organ. I was at first convinced that I was having some kind of dire problem; the pain was bad enough that my fever was spiking and my blood pressure was no less worrisome. But my body isn’t punishing me with organ failure just yet; the doctor said that what I had was a good old-fashioned backache. This did not particularly help me, because we are living in a time where pain patients are a political football between some drug companies and some politicians, and what that means is that you can’t have crippling muscle cramps and get pain relief medication, but you sure can take too much Tylenol and see if that helps.

The point of all of this is not that I’m in a particularly complaining mood; it’s just to say that this walking thing isn’t going very well for me. Some nerve somewhere gets pinched and my leg goes out from under me, which is the last thing you want when you’re delicately balanced and holding ten grand worth of glass and plastic equipment. It’s not that I don’t love an excuse to be a bit of a recluse, I absolutely do, but I would like to go out and take photos or run the errands or just go for a walk sometimes. I spent so long needing everyone to take care of me, and it feels like as soon as I learned to compensate for half of my field of vision disappearing, half of my mobility disappeared as well. Of course, because that’s what happened. I spent months barely leaving my own bed, terrified of tripping over a cat or a stray shoe or any of the other things that scatter the floor in any house. I didn’t really stretch, didn’t bend, didn’t lift. I just listened to hundreds of podcasts and audiobooks and tried not to move too much. Shockingly, what happened next is that I found myself somewhat weakened.

I have never been precisely healthy, but I’ve always been at least strong. Robust. Able to take a fair amount of punishment before I tap out. I don’t think I can call myself that these days. I am having to ask strangers for help; it seems remarkably silly to keep pushing through all this for sheer pride. And so I got what’s called a rollator, by which I mean “that thing that’s halfway between a walker and a chair.” This has brought with it a whole new kind of public interaction, because one might temporarily use a cane or crutches, but once you start building on seats and baskets and cupholders you’re talking about a longer kind of disability. (This is utterly spurious logic, of course, but it’s what most people seem to think judging by their reactions.) The first thing people notice is the equipment, and then it’s my relatively young age, and then it’s the eyepatch. Which has been at least a bit of a change, because until this last week it’s been mostly kids asking their parents in stage whispers why that lady has an eyepatch, and occasionally kids asking me if I am a pirate of some sort.

I’m also learning a whole new kind of etiquette. For example, how does one politely explain to the uber driver that it’s probably fine to just bung the thing in the trunk because despite that clearly being something I need in order to walk, I’m perfectly capable of walking from a trunk to a back seat unassisted? And if two people with walkers come to the opposite sides of a door that only opens one way, who opens the door for whom? Also, what do you tell the lady at the Walmart who asked could she borrow your mobility device for a while because she thought the store loaned them out like scooters? Why on earth do so many strangers ask me what happened to me? It’s like being pregnant again, where utter strangers take a perfect leave of their senses and start demanding medical information or to touch you on the part of your body you’re most protective of without asking permission or even bothering with a warning. And there is absolutely an etiquette to how sweetly one must bite the head off of these bothersome gnat-like people. One mustn’t make them feel like they’re imposing; they’re just interested! Today is the day they have decided to try empathy!

Of course, the corollary to all this is that I am discovering this wonderful hidden world of unhidden people, those of us who show our disabilities on our skin or through our equipment. The gear I bought was the last in the store, and its box had been so damaged I couldn’t take the stupid thing home to assemble. So I did it out front of the Walmart. It came together easily enough, and so I hung my groceries from the handles and took my maiden journey down the strip mall to the other store I needed. When I tell you it was life-changing! Suddenly the pressure came off my hip, and with it the pain. I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I’d taken a single comfortable step. I usually have to sit down twice to get from one end of that parking lot to the other; this time I just walked between stores entirely nonchalantly, as though I did this sort of thing all the time.

It is hard to explain mobility to people who have never lacked it; the world opened back up to me during those two hundred yards. I could take this out on the hiking paths I used to photograph and maybe actually make it all the way down to the next trailhead instead of wandering the same mile or two that I know have a lot of benches. I could actually stand in a line that was longer than three minutes long without worrying that I would fall over. I could still explore a city in my favorite way, on random streets and trains until I’m utterly lost. I could think about being a journalist again, out covering news conferences and court proceedings and the like, instead of focusing on writing less newsy things. I simply stopped being precluded from my life.

I live just over a mile from the Walmart. It takes about seven minutes to drive there from my house. I finished my shopping and called a car, and the man who picked me up called me ma’am so many times while he loaded my chair into his car that I asked him what branch he was in. It turns out he was in the army and had lost a leg during a deployment. He noted me, of course, in the way that all people who are part of this club clock each other as fellow travelers. He asked what I did for a living, and I told him. I used an eye-related idiom, because I find them funny, and this man with impeccable manners waited until we were chatting about his job, and deadpanned that he was just trying to get his foot in the door. What followed was four minutes of nothing but eye and foot jokes, the kinds of jokes that nobody gets to tell unless they’re part of the group of people who have earned the right.

I don’t love the pain. I don’t love running my left shoulder into every doorframe I pass, and I don’t love wearing plastic and foam on my face when it’s humid. But yesterday I went to the same shopping center, and the little store I needed to go into was locked, with a sign that just said “bathroom. Back in 5-10 minutes.” It was snowing, and the pavement must have been freezing, and the wind was blowing, and I never would have been able to stand and wait that long. I’d have had to sit on the curb, after dark, in a black hoodie, and hope that none of the cars that speed through that parking lot hit me. But instead, having brought my own chair, I sat down perfectly safely on the sidewalk and contentedly waited. That part is pretty great.

And at the very least, I get to tell the really good jokes now.