Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System by Sonya Huber

Author:Sonya Huber [Huber, Sonya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: LCO010000 Literary Collections / Essays
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0083-9
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2017-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

A few days later we visited an evening fun fair in the parking lot of his grade school. I parked and pulled the cane from the trunk to clomp through the cotton candy fog. He ran ahead, scowling back at me across the dark asphalt.

“I hate that. Put it in the car,” he said. “Everyone is looking at us.”

I called ahead to him, explaining in a patient mom-singsong how all bodies are different, and each one is fine the way it is. His lithe, tan legs galloped and scissored his body away from me, and I could not dash to chase and catch him. I could not bend to gather him up and hold his warm body close to mine.

A few days later, the ache calmed. I left the cane near the door and stepped gingerly on my own, relieved. In the months that followed, my knees and ankles regained stability. Here’s how it goes: There are months where I can forget about the cane entirely, and I can sometimes even jog for brief moments and dash to catch my son. I can pass him a soccer ball. But I always feel it. It’s not like a sore muscle where the ache comes hours afterward. Right in the moment of use, the synovial pockets say no. I walk on the treadmill and walk the dog to stay active, but the dashes and feints of recreational soccer or the mind-clearing hum of a solitary run are no longer options for my skeleton. It’s not that I am afraid to hurt myself but that I am entrusted with taking care of this system in which my soul hangs.

I have gone as long as six months without needing the cane. I walk easily when a complex combination of diet, stress relief, exercise, supplements, and medication calms the inflammation. After each bout of difficulty with walking, a fairy-tale part of my brain says take that and I beat you and shoves the cane into a corner, as if the metal tube itself had caused my weakness, as if by hiding it I could erase my need.

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