Autumn: If Wishes Were Horses, Then…
“I wish I could walk like her.”
A woman,
about my age and hobbling with a cane, said this to her younger male companion,
possibly her son or caretaker.
I had
never seen this pair before this day, but I greeted them as I do everyone on my
walk.
They
nodded in my direction and moved on, to the yard sale down the street.
The
comment was not meant for my ears, but I’m always hyper-aware around strangers,
especially in a neighborhood teetering on the edge – one reason I don’t listen
to music on my outside walks.
My
hearing sharp, I could hear the woman’s plaintive wish, half a block away.
I felt a
little shamed.
Here I
was, bouncing around and walking fast, and…
Feeling
sorry for myself.
I had
just made the painful decision to go back on my CPAP – I could feel myself
slipping into old habits: sleeping late, going to bed late, getting up late,
eating as if were just coming out of a famine, and slacking off on my walks –
for me, the last bastion of healthy body weight and overall health.
The
slacking off had its roots in a pulled butt muscle from which I had just recovered,
but, the truth is, I had been slacking off before that.
In all
ways.
I could
feel my body becoming sluggish, bloated, and tired again, my face puffy and
red.
The
weight gain was only 17 pounds, but I understand all too well the story arc of
the future: In another six months, that gain would double to 34 pounds.
A year
and a half later, a 50-pound weight gain, back to where I started.
I felt
helpless to stop it.
Of
course, a healthy person is never helpless – just unmotivated.
I see
myself in that lady with the cane.
In
January 2016, shortly before I started on my journey toward better health and much-needed
weight loss, I was using a cane for a short time; I had tripped over a box and
cracked a bone in my shin.
Fortunately,
within a week, I had healed enough to hobble around without the cane, but my
injury was a reminder of what could be in my near future.
I still
have that cane.
It stands
as a reminder to an old woman that good health is conditional and, yes,
temporary.
We don’t
leave this life alive.
But we
can help write the narrative of our life journey and take steps to head off
those ailments that plague the elderly – keeping in mind that there are never
guarantees.
We can try
to take hold of what we have in the here and now, thank our lucky stars for
what we have today.
I was
allowing that all to slip away.
Here was
this woman, whose story I didn’t know, who was hobbling on a cane and sad that
she couldn’t have what I had: the ability to jaunt like a 20-year-old girl.
Shame on
me.
I suspect
that her leg or hip problems were permanent: she didn’t say, “I can’t wait until I can walk like her.”
It was clearly
an unattainable wish, expressed in a moment of yearning, a raw honesty that can’t
be retracted or qualified in a more analytical moment.
What was
her story? When she was younger, did she worry about her health and take steps to
improve it, or was she like me and spent most of her middle years slacking off?
Did she smoke? Eat fast food? Eat too much? She was overweight, but not
extremely so.
The truth
is, most adults in the United States are overweight to varying degrees, to the
point where it has become normalized – another story.
Did the
lady exercise or at least move around more? Did she get enough sleep? I don’t
know the answers to these questions. For all I know, her condition could be
congenital – in any case, not my place to judge.
In the present
and for whatever reason, she was hobbling to the yard sale I had just left.
My heart
broke for her…
And in
her I saw my future.
I was
rewriting my story in a manner leading me in a direction I didn’t want to go.
Her words
were a wake-up call.
I’m still
teetering, but less so than I was a week ago.
Back on
the hated CPAP, walking again, eating better – not perfect – but in a more
positive direction.
The lady
with the cane and plaintive wish will never know, but I will remember her.
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