Thursday, September 20, 2012

Slow

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.”
Ellen DeGeneres

Lying in my bed, I shift my left knee this way, then that. There doesn’t seem to be a position my leg is willing to consider for longer than a few minutes. My knee has every right, after all, to be resentful after everything I’ve put it through in the pursuit of a more healthful lifestyle. At any rate, the torn meniscus should be easy enough to fix, but until then I find myself relegated to going against my very nature. Slowing down is anathema to me. The faster I can do something, the better. I tend to be impatient in lines, driving behind people going the speed limit, waiting of any kind. Moving about in a pokey way holds no charm for me, but I have had to learn to stubbornly go along with it, because my knee seems to want me to, and at the moment, it’s the boss of me.
This injury has put me on a slower, more equal footing with my son, Cliff.  I mean this in the sense of our “mph” rating. He’s not a fast mover, generally speaking. The word I might use to describe the way in which he does most things, is languidly. This morning, for instance, when his van arrived in the driveway and beeped once at 8: 10, Cliff sat in front of his unfinished breakfast, lifting the fruit cup in slow motion to his mouth. The van driver beeped again at 8:14. I fidget and pace; he eats with a tortoise's sense. The fruit cup finished, he has to digest for a minute before he finishes his orange juice. I hover, sing-songing my pleas to hurry, hurry, hurry up. When he is finally out of the chair, he stays true to his nature—in the time it takes him to get from the breakfast table to the van, I could have run up and down the street twice (That is, I could have before the injury). It’s a rare morning to find Cliff ready on time, despite all my pleading, which doesn’t seem to have any effect.  It’s like trying to push the positive and negative poles of a magnet together.
After completing physical therapy for my knee, I was admittedly impatient about getting back to running. I love to run; I feel strong, powerful, as if I could live forever. I’m a sometime believer in the Greek motto, “Nothing to excess”, but not when it comes to running.  When I last left the house alone for some exercise about three weeks ago, my knee hurt but I assured my husband I would just walk. “I’m just going to walk, see how it feels”, I told him as he looked at me skeptically. My promise lasted about a thousand feet. A quarter mile later, it felt as if some small being, a teeny-tiny knife-wielding troll perhaps, stabbed me in the right side of my left knee, thereby causing such pain as to force me to turn back and sheepishly hobble home, to admit what I had done.
If Cliff is the tortoise then I am the hare in this relationship. The hare is humbled and the tortoise is grateful for a mother who is as slow-moving as he is. Our walks have been more pleasant of late, because I’m not urging him along to work off a few calories. To someone driving past, we must look adorable, strolling arm in arm as I point out something or someone interesting around the corner. We stop occasionally to watch the roofers on the house nearby, and admire their skill. “Oh boy, Cliff, do you suppose they’ll fall off?” and “Shall we ask if we can come up there?”
 He replies with a giggle, “Silly mother!”
Here is what I would have missed today if I had run past it all: the perfectly imperfect spider web extending out from my little maple tree; my neighbor’s new hopeful white arbor in her side yard, the first sign she’s moving past her husband’s unexpected death of two years ago; the brindle-colored terrier standing so still I mistook her for a statue; a little boy stepping off the yellow school bus in his pine green, fall jacket, backpack bouncing, as he ran towards his mother, waving the artwork he’d been waiting to show her. And 13-year-old Maddie across the street, singing out on her walkway, uninhibited and joyfully swaying with the music in her head.
I’ve often heard, from others who parent someone with an intellectual or physical challenge, that they have learned patience from their children. Cliff has been a good teacher, but I have no more learned patience from him than he has learned to be in a constant mad rush from me. I must say, however, watching how Cliff walks and moves about in the world, I’ve at least developed an appreciation for the joy of a pace that isn’t all bad. I have had to adapt, just as he’s had to adapt his whole life to a world that doesn’t always wait for him to catch up. He seems okay with that, very happy even.
Thoreau said, “If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured, or far away.”
I’m inclined to agree. Of course, as soon as my knee has forgiven me my transgressions against it, it’s a safe bet I will get back into my running. For now, though, I have no choice but to walk in Cliff’s shoes awhile longer, languidly making my way to wherever it is I’m going. Can’t promise I’ll completely embrace the walking life, but I will certainly endeavor to try.
 
To move in spirit to and fro;

To mind the good we see;
To taste the sweet;

Observing all the things we meet

How choice and rich they be. To walk is by a thought to go;
To move in spirit to and fro;

To mind the good we see;

To taste the sweet;

Observing all the things we meet

How choice and rich they be.

 
To walk is by a thought to go; To move in spirit to and fro; To mind the good we see; To taste the sweet; Observing all the things we meet How choice and rich they be.    
 

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