Morning Walk

The day dawns heavy, thick and uncooperative, and it is through this morning weariness that I fight my way to the front door.  Lorna arrives at a modest 8 AM, and to prepare for her entry I must unlock the front door.  Hit the kettle switch.  Stare numbly at a cup of tea, make it into the bathroom.  This morning it is all very hard.  Some would argue in favor of delaying activity, waiting until the natural evolution of the day and successive infusions of caffeine boost the personal affect.  But today I am not of this mind.  Stormy weather.  That's what the sky promises, the spirit receives, and one might as well go with the meteorological flow.

I have gotten over the shock to the neuromuscular system known as the Coast Starlight.  The train, or walking through the train, made quite a dent in my bodily enthusiasms.  My lower back ached for days.  So as any quadriplegic stud worth his testosterone understands, having attained a new level of athletic competence, there is no return.  I have to keep walking.  Have to keep the train gain.  Which explains why at the ungodly hour of 8:30 AM, I'm asking Lorna to hand me my crutch and turn on the lights throughout the apartment.  I stagger to my feet and begin schlepping about the place.

At first, Lorna is confused.  She turns the lights off, instead of on.  She isn't quite clear why I am not in my wheelchair eating a breakfast she has prepared.  And the thing with the lights doesn't make a lot of sense, unless your balance is so poor and unpredictable that a few extra lumens couldn't hurt.  I lurch from office to hallway to bedroom.  From bedroom I return to office, then seriously consider the front room.  No doubt about it, the Marlou Memorial Carpet does its job.  The pile is so tight that my paralyzed foot drags as it should, straight ahead, and with a pull from the pelvis, even spasms as it should, lifting then dropping itself right in front of the left foot.  This inspired imitation of a normal gait is the creation of my physiotherapist Dan Brady.  He deserves full credit, and I would urge him to sign my right foot, if such a thing were possible.  It isn't.  Don't even think about it.

Besides, I'm thinking much darker thoughts as I head for the front room.  What lies beyond the right side of my body is a neurological dead space, and if I totter in that direction, lose my balance, and tilt toward the floor -- that wouldn't be good.  So I like to keep strong building materials just to the right of me.  The wall of the entranceway will do, and that's what I'm passing right now, thinking that my penchant for brushing against right walls for neurological reassurance, could prove dangerous.  For just to my right hang a couple of Hawaiian watercolors painted by Marlou's father.  It wouldn't take much of a misstep to knock the pictures to the ground.  Which provokes a serious moment of self-examination in which I concede that something in me wants to destroy these and other odjets de Marlou.  I have had it with the grieving process, it seems.  

At the door to the entranceway closet, I reverse course and head diagonally across the living room to the dining table where Lorna's breakfast languishes.  Lorna herself is tidying up the kitchen, and for this I am unusually grateful.  I seem to have lost the capacity to wash a fork.  Never mind, for I am reaching the apogee, hanging a sharp left and now walking with Marlou's breakfront to my right.  Might just break the breakfront, I am thinking.  The truth is I had never heard of a breakfront until Marlou broke into my life.  Even now, I am not sure what breaks in a breakfront.  Except the highly breakable contents, of course.  

For this is Marlou's glass menagerie, her collection of porcelain miniatures.  Joan, Marlou's mother, long ago suggested that these figurines, miniature teacups and other sub-normal sized display objects should go to people as memorabilia.  Which is, and remains, a splendid idea, doubtless a better one than smashing all the contents.  This naughty thought drifting through my pre-breakfast mind for reasons that are unclear.  And, it turns out, a bowl of high-fiber Cheerios from Trader Joe's sheds no light on the mystery.  I am in a smashing mood, and that is that.

As the day wobbles on, my mood will improve.  But why dwell on this?  Why not just let the mood be whatever it is?  I have nothing to produce, no particular deadline to meet and no one to impress.  Furthermore, the waning of life's energies is perfectly natural.  All right, maybe they are not waning geriatrically so much, at least at this very moment.  But there is a downward course, as this year has demonstrated, and there is no particular sense in resisting it.  In fact, this morning I am into observing it.  At least when you're headed downhill, you can coast.

Paul Krugman isn't giving up.  Just a couple of days ago he had a perfectly sensible, eminently just argument to make about job creation.  I stared at his New York Times column dumbfounded.  Not at him, but at my own narrow bandwidth.  I cannot take in polemical arguments these days, no matter how urgent.  And this one was.  The nation has become a mad dog gnawing on its own limbs.  And I can do nothing but watch.  No, not even watch.  Stare at the carpet as I don't watch, finally grabbing Lorna's arm for the last few steps back to my wheelchair.  Why the arm?  Because although I have no serious worries about falling, I am just plain tired.  Tired of worrying about my balance, tired of staring at the carpet, ready to lean on someone.

Back in the chair, yes, my back does feel better.  Walking around the place loosens things up.  I should do this more often, but can't say with any certainty that I will.  Even leaning on someone takes effort.  And serious leaning would take serious effort.  It would even spark serious anxiety.

For the people you lean on can lean right out of existence.  They can tilt toward a death that is slowed by agony then flips them up and out of your life like an astral pancake.  Buckwheat, buttermilk, hold the syrup because this one isn't headed for the pan.  The people you lean on can shrink away like something forgotten in the corner of your freezer.  Even when you open the plastic bag you cannot be certain what it is, or was.  What's certain is that things left are behind, which become places you might crash against on your morning orthopedic stroll.  Relics.  And increasingly of interest only to experts.  You can't get rid of the stuff.  You don't want to.  You'd like to see it all go away, and you fear it will.