Going

I feel it in my legs, this latest trip of mine.  Is this what it's like to be 63?  Or quadriplegic and 63?  Whatever...this is what it's like to be home.  The trip, coming fairly close on the heels of a month in Britain, has left me more tuned into the home place than before I left.  I have things to do here.  Books to read.  Tomato plants that need propping up.  Space that needs occupying.  And the legs?  They need to forget.

And what do they remember?  A week ago, the legs held considerable fear.  They were sore in the wake of my trip to the UK.  Without the usual exercise machines, I had been walking up a storm.  Working the paralyzed leg particularly hard in such circumstances, which left a lingering soreness.  Had I done something permanently destructive?  Had I seriously buggered what was left of my right leg?  This worry had been with me steadily, following me through my days, making me fearful when I stood and felt the sore leg give way slightly.  Not to worry, said Perry, my physiotherapy assistant.  Just a little sore.  But worry I would, and fear of further leg destruction hung over me as events fell into line.  

Nathan, Marlou's nephew, flew in from Des Moines that very afternoon, the two of us set off for San Jose's Amtrak station.  And there it was, the Coast Starlight, rolling in big and steely, with me worrying about sleeping car 1432.  A long schlep from the observation and dining cars.  The last sleeper left, however.  So I thought of a variation.  Simple enough.  I asked the Amtrak ticket agent to roll the station's electric cart up to the door of 1432, let me get my wheelchair and bags aboard, then help me step off.  I would ride from my sleeping car to the car closest to the dining room.  And so it happened.  Getting me to dinner at least 15 minutes faster, minimal distance and minimal strain.  In fact, the train only began bouncing north as I slipped inside the dining car.  Trying not to slip on the floor.  That being the approximate goal for the next 24 hours.

Problem was the next 24 minutes.  Somewhere around Fremont, the dining car lurched, throwing my week torso the wrong way, scaring me badly.  Another whomp from the Union Pacific would knock me off the seat and into the aisle...or so it seemed.  I sat there staring at my salmon and wondering about the meaning of it all.  I was too old for this.  With Nathan seated opposite, 23 years of age, what should I say?  Nothing, pretending to be the impervious adult?  Somehow, this didn't make sense, not with me leaning on Nathan's arm as I made my way almost anywhere in the train.  So I made some half serious, half lighthearted remark about getting thrown around.  Which relieved me and included him.  And by the time dinner was over and we were fighting our way through 3 1/2 Amtrak cars, the tide had turned.  The trip had begun, I was recovering my train legs and my train confidence.  In short, we had a spectacular trip into the Northwest.  Proving that I wasn't too old.  

But that whatever could be done to ease the physical strain was well worth the effort.  And since moving about the train to pee takes considerable effort, I had wisely reverted to an external catheter and leg bag, a system unchanged since my hospitalization more than four decades ago.  There was a small hitch.  The leg bag valve proved to be open, and with my poor sensation, it took a while to realize that I was peeing into my shoe.  Not to worry.  At some point in southern Oregon, Nathan closed the valve, the shoe began to dry up, and for several scenic hours I almost forgot about my body and its odd demands.

Now in the past were the 3 1/2 car lengths we had negotiated early in the morning.  I had awakened in Redding, a Northern California outpost that marks the end of the state's great inland valley and the beginning of the mountainous and watery Northwest.  For a while I stared into the darkness, hoping for more rest.  But this was not to be.  An hour later, Nathan and I were moving through the cars.  At the end of the day, after all dome-car views seemed to have been exhausted, we stuck it out for one final half-hour with the tracks running right along Puget Sound.  The setting sun cast the waters shimmering.  The islands darkened and acquired mass.  The distant Olympic Range loomed.  And then, with announcements for Tacoma, we made our way through the bouncing cars.  'We are getting the hang of this,' I told Nathan.  It was true.  On a lurching train, it is difficult to tell people how to help me.  I don't know myself.  The rails jerk and sway with no apparent pattern.  There's nothing to do but have a go.  And after 24 hours, things were going quite well.  

And there is this possibility inherent in the disabled state.  Something about exchanging help, the physical proximity of people, that creates a bond.  Hard to say what Mt. Rainier creates, the sunset-pink cone of it rearing massive and surreal up the Puyallup Valley minutes out of Tacoma.  Memories, I hope.  For both of us.

That night at my brother's house, I joked about the feeling of getting off the train, how the floors feel like they're moving for an hour or so.  The drunken sailor effect.  Both my nephews got the joke, having made the train ride with me at various points in our lives.  There was no joking about my nephew's bed, though.  He had surrendered it for the evening, for which I was most grateful.  But he's a tall kid.  With a tall bed.  I can barely get into the thing, let alone out of it.  Jane was not due for another day, so for this night I was on my own.  The bed was too high.  Everything too difficult.  And I was too tired to care.  I had survived an ordeal, self-imposed and self-created.  This sort of thing that keeps me going, it seems.