Slip Sliding Away

“I could walk forever,” I confidently told Linda one comfortable afternoon, late January in 2009, as we strolled the Town Lake Trail in Zilker Park. “I could walk home from here.”

Linda stopped. Linda looked me in the eye. Linda shook her head. A challenge. The bet was on; no money wagered, just pride.

A Sunday or so later, Alex dropped me off at the Zilker Playscape at 8. Just about 15 miles from home. I walked, alone (well, there were other people around, but none of them were walking with me) out of the park and onto Bee Cave Road. My fans, if I had any, could track my progress in near-real time on Facebook. I posted pictures of such landmarks as the McDonalds where I stopped for a “sausage biscuit and pee break.” I generously disclosed the iPod musical selections that accompanied vistas like “Eanes Elementary School. Wind at my back. Aaron Neville on Dock of Bay.”

About five hours later I walked in the front door. My family immediately accused me of cheating. Really? How does that work? There’s no Uber in 2009. Hitchhiking was increasingly dangerous for rider and driver. I’m sure a bearded man with his thumb out on a road headed out of town could easily score a lift to the next scenic overlook where he could shoot and post another bit of faked-evidence. Or maybe some secret accomplice ferried me from spot to spot, sharing sausage biscuits and my great music collection as we waited for what seemed the appropriate interval before moving on.

But really, really. One of Linda’s friends saw me walking about two miles shy of home and called her to ask if I was OK. (I’ve always wondered why she didn’t just stop and ask me?) My jeans and boots were dusty. And 3 mph is not Usain Bolt speed. The walkie icon on Google maps puts the trip at 5 hours and 13 minutes.

Believe me or not, I did what I said I could do. I walked from there to here. As one Facebook friend wrote, “Now whenever you decide to sell your house you can say ‘walking distance to Zilker Park.’” I certainly could have walked longer, but I just as certainly didn’t want to.

So that was 14 years ago. 14 and 1/2 but who’s counting? And I realize 14 and 1/2 years is a significant span of time in a person’s life. About 20% of mine to date. But it doesn’t seem that long ago. It’s not like I was in college or something. It’s not like I wasn’t still smoking a half-pack of Marlboro Lights every day. It’s not like I wasn’t still not working out. So I had a little more hair and what I had was a little less grey. I just don’t see myself today that far removed from the me that really did walk those 15 miles.

My legs – the legs that walked home from Zilker Park – don’t agree. My sciatica is now waging war on walking. And the Tet Offensive launched about two weeks ago. Casualties are mounting. Ten steps, sometimes 20 or 30, can set off nasty spasms that begin in my hip, run across my thigh, down my shin, to the top of my foot. The cane is now useless. If I don’t have the motherfucking walker, I lean against a wall or lurch to a chair to get the weight off. (BTW, I’m still overweight, but I’ve slipped back under the obesity line.)

Carrying anything heavier than a gallon of milk brings on the pain faster – an effect that seems to persist, loading up future unweighted steps. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna stop picking up and hugging Remy, or snuggling with Lindan and walking her to sleep on my shoulder. (I’m not nearly that attached to bringing the groceries in from the Jeep. Nathan doesn’t like it much either, but he’s willing to carry the load.)

Pain pills, other than the huge doses the trippy night nurses gave me in the hospital after surgery, are worthless. I don’t mean to demean the millions of Americans who have lived the opioid epidemic, but I’m struggling to understand why someone would keep taking pain pills if they don’t take the pain away. My leg hurts the same after a pill, so now I’m hurt and buzzed.

I walked 15 miles in a single morning. The same I now can hardly walk 15 feet regardless of the time of day.

The NSFW adjective a few paragraphs up proclaimed my love for my walker. It does help, usually, if I have to travel far on foot. It does have an almost-comfortable little seat where I can rest mid-trip or if I arrive at a seating-lite destination. (A guy who saw me resting on it at a Van Wilks show at Gruene Hall the other night thought it was a great idea and said he’d ask his walker out for the next concert along with his girlfriend. Or maybe not the girlfriend.)

Day to day, the walker is a pain in the ass. It’s too wide to fit through any bathroom door in my house. My not quite precise movements team up with my fuzzy vision to steer the walker into wall scrapes and excursions across strangers’ shoes. It does fold up, but not enough. It (or maybe it’s just me) is awkward as hell to get into the trunk of the van. After several monumental struggles, I can usually subdue it into resting quietly in the back of the Jeep. But only if the back seat is flipped all the way forward. If we want to take much else in the Jeep, I strap the walker down onto a steel carrier box that attaches to the trailer hitch. I enjoy strapping the son of a bitch in place. Can’t deny that. But it’s another something to do that reminds me of my infirmities. And my shin and that steel box have become bitter enemies.

More than anything, walkers are for OLD people. Just think about the jolting contrast of the walker in the same visual frame as the top-down, anything-goes freedom of that little Jeep. Young people use crutches to navigate while a temporary ailment heals. And you need the strength and stamina of a youngster to walk with crutches for any real distance. Canes do trend somewhat older. But a walker (with sincere apologies to my friends who’ve spent all or most of their lives using a wheelchair) is just one step away from a wheelchair. With someone pushing you. Or you running amok and out of control in a scooter, straight across the set at a Nickelodeon Studios show in Orlando. (My very own dad, rest his soul, kinda sorta actually did exactly that. The kids howled. My kids especially howled. My mom did a different kind of howling. The Mark Summers-type dude was not impressed.)

But my PT told me today my leg and hip muscles aren’t tied quite so tightly into knots. I’m walking with a more normal gait and have pretty much ditched the limp. The tissue around the incision in my back isn’t quite as swollen and inflamed. And I gotta admit the pain isn’t automatically pouncing on me every time I try to take four or five steps. I can do 10 or sometimes 20. And the pain, when it does come, isn’t quite as bad as and doesn’t last as long as it did, say, last week.

I know I can’t hope for a pain-free future. Too many parts of my body are misshapen and out-of-place. (As my new internist said yesterday, looking at the results of my kidney function tests, “At 35, everyone’s body starts to fall apart.” Thanks a lot for that, doc! Maybe I can sign you up for a guest post here. At least he didn’t say, “Ooof.”)

But I can dream of days when pain stops controlling my life. I can dream of days when I can pick up Remy and snuggle Lindan without fearing the next minute’s or the next day’s consequences. I can dream of days when I can walk into a ball park without a walker and cheer on the world champion Pittsburgh Pirates! (That second part might be asking too much, but, hey, it’s a dream.)

I dream of those days right now. Today. And I keep walking.