My brother’s wife once told me a story that I misunderstood completely. She and my brother had been in New York City for the weekend, she called to say, walking all over to shop and sightsee, when she tripped on a curb and fell down. “And a guy standing near me said, ‘Look, that woman fell,’” she said, anguish in her voice on the telephone.
“What a jerk,” I said. “I hope you said ‘Thanks, Captain Obvious.’”
“No,” my sister-in-law said, “it wasn’t that he pointed out the fall. It’s that he called me ‘woman’!”
I was so confused. “What was he supposed to call you?”
“A girl! Why didn’t he say, ‘That girl fell down”? It made me feel so old.”
Ah, there it is. That moment of heart-stopping realization that you have crossed the invisible line away from youth and into maturity. I don’t think you ever see it coming.
I know I’ve wrung every bit of literary inspiration possible out of the time a bouncer called me a cougar, but the truth is that didn’t make me feel old, just offended. My watershed moment came, like my sister in law, in a moment of physical vulnerability, a moment in which my body seemed to have defected to the opposing team.
It started with a little soreness at the bottom of my right foot a few summers ago, and, as is my instinct when there is an earthquake, a carpet stain, or a missing loaf of bread, I initially blamed the dog. “If I didn’t have to walk him so much, my foot would be better,” was what I told myself and my husband. I looked forward to our week at Family Camp, in fact, thinking that a week off from dog walking would cure the soreness that made it hard to put any weight down on my right foot when I first woke up.
Forty-eight hours into camp – hours filled with waterskiing, hiking, and squaredancing, the land-based activities performed in flat shoes with no arch support – I stood up from my bunk in the middle of the night to walk to the bathroom. And immediately crumpled to the floor, in agony. My foot was officially Messed Up, and all I could think as I lay on the cold, gritty cabin floor was, “What is happening to me?”
Short answer – plantar fasciitis, long answer – some expensive custom orthotics and months of rehab exercises before I finally got back to normal. It was the first time I had to call in medical help to help me manage the deterioration of a body that had always healed itself, bounced back, soldiered through. It was a whole new ball of wax.
I am not surprised, these days, when I wake up with a sore shoulder or a weird clicking coming from my knee. As I write this, I am on Day 4 of a pain that has steadily traveled in the shape of a capital M from lower right back, to upper right shoulder, to lower middle back and is now at the top of my left shoulder and heading southwest. Each morning brings a small surprise; it’s like Days of the Week underwear, except with pain. If “you’re only as old as you feel,” well, I feel my age and then some.
But I’m not powerless. I do some stretching, I hike with the blameless dog, I try to eat right, particularly when it comes to the resveratrol recommendations. It helps, but not much – the other day I was dancing in the kitchen to some Robyn when I felt a twinge and had to grab my lower back and hold onto the table for support.
I figure the only real defense is to maintain a youthful mental outlook. And my memories.
Here’s the Robyn song that I like to listen too when I’m cleaning the kitchen after dinner. Dance at your own peril.