Shoes
My eyelids fly open at 4:30 AM, and cannot be coaxed downward. The bedroom, otherwise empty, has filled with a sort of buzzing or humming or silence...I cannot tell which. The herbal sleeping pills, stashed bedside for this moment, waltz to my stomach, change partners and head for Tierra del Fuego. At 5:30 AM it is dawning on me that dawn itself is dawning. This is happening throughout California, even parts of Oregon. The Dawn Patrol. I am part of it, do not wish to be, but there is no choice, and the inevitable action will soon begin.
I throw back the duvet and swing successive legs over the bed's edge. Although I do not pause to consider, there is every reason to feel grateful for my leg-swinging abilities. My paralysis, now into its 41st year, has not rendered me inflexible. Usually, the paralytic ages and loses joint movement. As the shortening of tendons outpaces even that of tempers, he winds up stiff and frozen as a rusty lock. There but for the grace of a trainer from Stanford's athletic department, go I. But I haven't gone there, thanks to Perry and his fortnightly joint stretching on the massage table he unfolds in my living room. I'm here, and my joints move, my abdominals pull, and dammit if I'm not sitting up and staring at the Marlou Memorial Carpet. It is 6 AM.
The counseling term for this level of sleep disturbance is anxiety, but to me, both problem and solution are physical. With better sense, long about 4:45 I would have sat myself up and pounded on the bed mattress. Sealey Posturepedic deserves this form of punishment. A direct blow to the mattress corner, one to the foot of the bed and a couple in the middle can usually get me going. Along the way, I can pound at Marlou for not getting a colonoscopy, at her cancer cells for being so virulent that it didn't matter, for whoever occupies the executive suite in the sky for dumping this shit on me. Pounding and pounding. It's downright aerobic, and after five minutes, I can generally fall asleep. Anxiety? I'll show you fucking anxiety.
The fact is that I do not sit up and slug the mattress, but continue to toss and turn. I rise, instantly transitioning from sleep avoidance to Lorna preparation. Her 8 AM arrival gives me a goal, a morning marker. I have to get showered so she can help me get dressed. Lorna can also get me on the rowing machine, but not without grabbing my arm in ways that knock me off balance. No, no, I tell her. She backs away one centimeter. I lower myself to the seat of the rowing machine and she gasps and can barely restrain herself from lunging at my quadriplegic shoulder. No, no, I say, later. I shall take this one, she says using a Filipina turn of phrase. Lorna lifts my foot, swift and energetic. This all but knocks me off balance. Not that I was ever on balance. She stares at me puzzled. No one knows what to do with me these days, and neither do I.
A friend invites me for lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club. I enjoy the experience so much, appreciate the attention so deeply that I decide I may just join the faculty myself. The place looks pretty much like my idea of a cool club. Yes, it's all California terrace outside where Vic and I eat. But inside there are comfortable leather armchairs, a fireplace which is dormant and a bar which is surprisingly active for midday. I'm not sure what I would do on the faculty, but for the moment it seems that I would hang out here, take a book, take a seat and wait for Phileas Fogg to get lost on his way to the Reform Club.
Thing is, these days once I am on the road, it seems best to stay on the road. I am extremely off-road, that is the problem. Mortal events may have overtaken me, but credit card records show that I fueled my van only once in the four months from November through March. And there are things to buy, things to do, and all these cannot all be accomplished within wheelchair range of my apartment, so I leave Vic and go in search of shoes. I have been off-road too long.
Winding through the parking acreage of Palo Alto's Town & Country Shopping Center sparks a reevaluation. I had been counting on the US Depression to clear the roads, but the place is jammed with cars. The wise thing would be to park and look for the shop, but this might be unwise. I have not purchased a pair of shoes since the Clinton Administration, and it is entirely possible that the shop has moved or never existed. Certainly, it is not on the north side of the shopping center. I head for the south half, but run out of roadway. The parking area is torn up with construction and cars funnel between cyclone fences.
My foot jumps. Jumping feet are nothing new to the experienced quadriplegic, just as jumping beans are said to be common in Mexico. What's worrying is the jumping of the non-paralyzed foot that controls the accelerator and brake. A little weird neurological activity here and there is to be expected and doesn't matter, if it doesn't happen again. Which, of course, it does. Naturally, I am now hemmed in by construction fences and creeping with a long queue of cars. There is little room for automotive error. Why my left foot, the good one, must begin spasming at this moment, is anyone's guess. But there is a simple, general answer that applies to anything these days. Grief.
Only moments earlier Vic, a recent widower at 85, was warning me about health and the grieving. He'd had a heart attack himself not long after his wife died. Very common, he told me. Stress, subtle and pervasive, is enough to make an otherwise cooperative foot spasm. The key is to stay calm. I have lost that key. Better to stay focused. Hysterical and purposeful, I direct the car into a parking space. And there's the shop. I roll inside.
Late in the Bush Administration, I did make a serious attempt at shoe purchase. I hit three shops in Stanford Shopping Center on the same afternoon and got the same results. Getting a somewhat swollen right foot into the same shoe with a massive plastic leg brace is asking for a lot these days. And shoe fashions do change, which I think is unfortunate and accounts for much of what is wrong in the national economy. But something tells me the shoe salesman does not want to hear this. I don't want to hear that the one pair of shoes he comes up with, right on the cusp of dressy enough for a wheelchair, costs $300. Reports of $300 shoes reach me through various sources, such as those glossy ads in The New Yorker. But I see myself on the back pages of The Nation, and the price tag throws me so totally off that I haul out my credit card and get the thing over with quickly. If the shoe doesn't fit, the salesman tells me, he'll personally stretch it. Never mind. One task is done.
The next destination is a racy, in the literal sense, bike shop in central Palo Alto. To ride my exercycle, I need bicycle shoes with the sort of clamps that Lance Armstrong probably uses. It's strangely embarrassing rolling my wheelchair in the door of a shop full of Tour de France aspirants and asking for shoes. Never mind. The sales guy listens to my story, one eyebrow slightly raised. Palo Alto has its share of loonies, after all. Something inside me is already fraying. The seems another aspect of the grief experience, extreme impatience, short attention span. The sales guy returns from some back room with several pairs of bike shoes. Doesn't he have anything with velcro closures? Well, sort of. But all shoes now come with a ratcheting buckle device, inspired by ski gear, he brightly tells me. I want to go home.
The problem is that my current bike shoes are literally falling apart. I need replacements. At my current rate of driving, tanking up on a quarterly basis, the matter needs attention now while I am here in this shop. Okay, I say, let me try them on. One thing for bike shoes, they open more ways than a Swiss Army knife, so my foot and brace actually make it inside. Unfortunately, I cannot release the ratchet thing with my one non-paralyzed hand. They're really good Bertolinis, or somesuch, the sales guy says, adding that the $397 price is a good one. I swoon. It's time to go home. In my last moment of consciousness, something on the display shelf grabs me. It's an $89 pair with laces. What about those? Someone will simply have to help me tie my shoes.
There's a Peet's just down the street in Palo Alto, and I head there, pausing in front of the Stanford Theatre to see what old films are playing this week. Someone else is eyeing the program, and I recognize her. It's Jana. She used to work at Trader Joe's, but hasn't been in evidence for ages. Turns out she's turned 55, back at Stanford in some graduate program, the specifics of which go in one ear and out the other, since all that registers is her physical condition bordering on the stunning. How are things? She never knew Marlou, probably doesn't even grasp that I am married or was married, this matter still being a matter of some confusion in my mind. Jana tells me what her week is like, because I ask. Classes and studying and working out. She runs. She lifts weights. She smiles, her breasts suspended by a network of invisible strings. Do I ever turn up at the movies here, she asks?
It is one of life's essential cosmic rules that when you desperately need women they are not there, and when you don't, they pop up all around. Jana, for all her buff physical attractions touches nothing of the heart. And life is all about the heart, these days. Mentally, I wish her well, hope she stays in shape and lie. No, I never make it to films. Marlou and I did, of course, and the last one we saw was right here, 'The Man Who Came to Dinner', which was one of her favorites, but not while cancer was infiltrating. She told me the experience of sitting in a darkened theater was frightening. This revelation, so unlike her, keeps me in shape these days. I may not be in the best shape, but I am in the right shape. I tell Jana that I'll see her around. This isn't true. But a high level of horniness seems to be part of grief, even in late middle age. And the next film I am likely to see will be among the octogenarians aboard the Queen Mary.
I throw back the duvet and swing successive legs over the bed's edge. Although I do not pause to consider, there is every reason to feel grateful for my leg-swinging abilities. My paralysis, now into its 41st year, has not rendered me inflexible. Usually, the paralytic ages and loses joint movement. As the shortening of tendons outpaces even that of tempers, he winds up stiff and frozen as a rusty lock. There but for the grace of a trainer from Stanford's athletic department, go I. But I haven't gone there, thanks to Perry and his fortnightly joint stretching on the massage table he unfolds in my living room. I'm here, and my joints move, my abdominals pull, and dammit if I'm not sitting up and staring at the Marlou Memorial Carpet. It is 6 AM.
The counseling term for this level of sleep disturbance is anxiety, but to me, both problem and solution are physical. With better sense, long about 4:45 I would have sat myself up and pounded on the bed mattress. Sealey Posturepedic deserves this form of punishment. A direct blow to the mattress corner, one to the foot of the bed and a couple in the middle can usually get me going. Along the way, I can pound at Marlou for not getting a colonoscopy, at her cancer cells for being so virulent that it didn't matter, for whoever occupies the executive suite in the sky for dumping this shit on me. Pounding and pounding. It's downright aerobic, and after five minutes, I can generally fall asleep. Anxiety? I'll show you fucking anxiety.
The fact is that I do not sit up and slug the mattress, but continue to toss and turn. I rise, instantly transitioning from sleep avoidance to Lorna preparation. Her 8 AM arrival gives me a goal, a morning marker. I have to get showered so she can help me get dressed. Lorna can also get me on the rowing machine, but not without grabbing my arm in ways that knock me off balance. No, no, I tell her. She backs away one centimeter. I lower myself to the seat of the rowing machine and she gasps and can barely restrain herself from lunging at my quadriplegic shoulder. No, no, I say, later. I shall take this one, she says using a Filipina turn of phrase. Lorna lifts my foot, swift and energetic. This all but knocks me off balance. Not that I was ever on balance. She stares at me puzzled. No one knows what to do with me these days, and neither do I.
A friend invites me for lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club. I enjoy the experience so much, appreciate the attention so deeply that I decide I may just join the faculty myself. The place looks pretty much like my idea of a cool club. Yes, it's all California terrace outside where Vic and I eat. But inside there are comfortable leather armchairs, a fireplace which is dormant and a bar which is surprisingly active for midday. I'm not sure what I would do on the faculty, but for the moment it seems that I would hang out here, take a book, take a seat and wait for Phileas Fogg to get lost on his way to the Reform Club.
Thing is, these days once I am on the road, it seems best to stay on the road. I am extremely off-road, that is the problem. Mortal events may have overtaken me, but credit card records show that I fueled my van only once in the four months from November through March. And there are things to buy, things to do, and all these cannot all be accomplished within wheelchair range of my apartment, so I leave Vic and go in search of shoes. I have been off-road too long.
Winding through the parking acreage of Palo Alto's Town & Country Shopping Center sparks a reevaluation. I had been counting on the US Depression to clear the roads, but the place is jammed with cars. The wise thing would be to park and look for the shop, but this might be unwise. I have not purchased a pair of shoes since the Clinton Administration, and it is entirely possible that the shop has moved or never existed. Certainly, it is not on the north side of the shopping center. I head for the south half, but run out of roadway. The parking area is torn up with construction and cars funnel between cyclone fences.
My foot jumps. Jumping feet are nothing new to the experienced quadriplegic, just as jumping beans are said to be common in Mexico. What's worrying is the jumping of the non-paralyzed foot that controls the accelerator and brake. A little weird neurological activity here and there is to be expected and doesn't matter, if it doesn't happen again. Which, of course, it does. Naturally, I am now hemmed in by construction fences and creeping with a long queue of cars. There is little room for automotive error. Why my left foot, the good one, must begin spasming at this moment, is anyone's guess. But there is a simple, general answer that applies to anything these days. Grief.
Only moments earlier Vic, a recent widower at 85, was warning me about health and the grieving. He'd had a heart attack himself not long after his wife died. Very common, he told me. Stress, subtle and pervasive, is enough to make an otherwise cooperative foot spasm. The key is to stay calm. I have lost that key. Better to stay focused. Hysterical and purposeful, I direct the car into a parking space. And there's the shop. I roll inside.
Late in the Bush Administration, I did make a serious attempt at shoe purchase. I hit three shops in Stanford Shopping Center on the same afternoon and got the same results. Getting a somewhat swollen right foot into the same shoe with a massive plastic leg brace is asking for a lot these days. And shoe fashions do change, which I think is unfortunate and accounts for much of what is wrong in the national economy. But something tells me the shoe salesman does not want to hear this. I don't want to hear that the one pair of shoes he comes up with, right on the cusp of dressy enough for a wheelchair, costs $300. Reports of $300 shoes reach me through various sources, such as those glossy ads in The New Yorker. But I see myself on the back pages of The Nation, and the price tag throws me so totally off that I haul out my credit card and get the thing over with quickly. If the shoe doesn't fit, the salesman tells me, he'll personally stretch it. Never mind. One task is done.
The next destination is a racy, in the literal sense, bike shop in central Palo Alto. To ride my exercycle, I need bicycle shoes with the sort of clamps that Lance Armstrong probably uses. It's strangely embarrassing rolling my wheelchair in the door of a shop full of Tour de France aspirants and asking for shoes. Never mind. The sales guy listens to my story, one eyebrow slightly raised. Palo Alto has its share of loonies, after all. Something inside me is already fraying. The seems another aspect of the grief experience, extreme impatience, short attention span. The sales guy returns from some back room with several pairs of bike shoes. Doesn't he have anything with velcro closures? Well, sort of. But all shoes now come with a ratcheting buckle device, inspired by ski gear, he brightly tells me. I want to go home.
The problem is that my current bike shoes are literally falling apart. I need replacements. At my current rate of driving, tanking up on a quarterly basis, the matter needs attention now while I am here in this shop. Okay, I say, let me try them on. One thing for bike shoes, they open more ways than a Swiss Army knife, so my foot and brace actually make it inside. Unfortunately, I cannot release the ratchet thing with my one non-paralyzed hand. They're really good Bertolinis, or somesuch, the sales guy says, adding that the $397 price is a good one. I swoon. It's time to go home. In my last moment of consciousness, something on the display shelf grabs me. It's an $89 pair with laces. What about those? Someone will simply have to help me tie my shoes.
There's a Peet's just down the street in Palo Alto, and I head there, pausing in front of the Stanford Theatre to see what old films are playing this week. Someone else is eyeing the program, and I recognize her. It's Jana. She used to work at Trader Joe's, but hasn't been in evidence for ages. Turns out she's turned 55, back at Stanford in some graduate program, the specifics of which go in one ear and out the other, since all that registers is her physical condition bordering on the stunning. How are things? She never knew Marlou, probably doesn't even grasp that I am married or was married, this matter still being a matter of some confusion in my mind. Jana tells me what her week is like, because I ask. Classes and studying and working out. She runs. She lifts weights. She smiles, her breasts suspended by a network of invisible strings. Do I ever turn up at the movies here, she asks?
It is one of life's essential cosmic rules that when you desperately need women they are not there, and when you don't, they pop up all around. Jana, for all her buff physical attractions touches nothing of the heart. And life is all about the heart, these days. Mentally, I wish her well, hope she stays in shape and lie. No, I never make it to films. Marlou and I did, of course, and the last one we saw was right here, 'The Man Who Came to Dinner', which was one of her favorites, but not while cancer was infiltrating. She told me the experience of sitting in a darkened theater was frightening. This revelation, so unlike her, keeps me in shape these days. I may not be in the best shape, but I am in the right shape. I tell Jana that I'll see her around. This isn't true. But a high level of horniness seems to be part of grief, even in late middle age. And the next film I am likely to see will be among the octogenarians aboard the Queen Mary.
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