While my friends back home shovel snow and burrow into their blankets, I debate between a raincoat and a wool sweater. I might still have mittens somewhere in the bottom of the little cedar chest that a carpenter in Arkansas made for my son before his birth. I rummaged for something else the other day and saw a couple of warm hats; not the pretty boiled wool kind, but stocking caps that I knitted in the land of cold and ice. I ought to donate them. I shoved them further down beneath the summer shawls and my baby brother’s afghan.
The days have already started to lengthen. We had a week of rain. If the universe smiles on us, we’ll hit that sweet spot between barely enough water to keep us out of a drought and hopeless bogs of mud for months. I oiled my new Blundstone boots so I’m ready.
I bought those boots to use with the leg braces that turned out, so far, to be a monumental failure. I asked the orthotist why she recommended the exact type that now sits like deadweight beneath my twenty-inches of hanging clothes. She gave me a long-winded explanation that amounted to evasion. With more probing, I finally concluded that she has no regard for my decades of hard work to stay on my feet. She figured that I needed about a half yard of hard plastic to replace what she obviously considers to be useless calves. Sorry, friend; but I’ll keep my own muscles, spasticity and all. I didn’t say that, of course. I demurred and said that I would talk with her at my next appointment.
But the boots work for me, even though they are a size bigger than my customary choice. It seems that my feet enjoy the extra room. I tie the laces as snug as they will go and can still wiggle my toes. I’ve only fallen once in the last month, and that wasn’t my fault, really — the curb by the office at which I work must be a few feet high. My muscle memory kicked into gear and I landed on my bottom. I struggled back to vertical and took a few timid steps into the street. Suddenly, an SUV bore down on me, closing the gap from a block away in seconds. I screamed and the driver screeched to a stop. She rolled down her window and hollered, I didn’t see you, why aren’t you in the crosswalk, you idiot woman! I told her to slow down, it’s a small town, and struggled into my car.
She was right, of course. I’ve been hit by a car as a pedestrian twice in my life. once without injury (in a crosswalk) and once resulting in a crushed right leg (not in a crosswalk). I drove home still shaking from the encounter, wondering if the third time might have been a charm. I laughed as I traveled across the Rio Vista Bridge, reflecting that the third time getting married didn’t do much for me. Except, of course, for ruining Valentine’s Day; so, maybe not.
As I rounded the hairpin turn near my home, the sun eased itself into the bank of wispy clouds on the far horizon. A few minutes later, I sat in my cooling car, thinking about my first winter in the west. A loose line of cranes slipped through the sky. In the tree above my neighbor’s house, an owl called to its mate, low, mournful, deliberate. I stepped onto the slick of damp earth and drew a breath. To the left, a blaze through the trees announced the impending darkness. I spent a long minute watching the glow settle beneath the levee. When night had gathered around me, I collected my thoughts and went inside.
It’s the twelfth day of the one-hundred and twenty-first month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
I like your blog.
If you want to look again at leg braces, look for the non-RX type (ebay, Amazon). They ar r much more wearable and hopefully they will help, even if you only can wear them for a shorter period than you’d like.