New Life, No Instructions by Gail Caldwell

Author:Gail Caldwell [Caldwell, Gail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60442-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

13.

By the end of that week, my sense of defeat over Danielle’s dismissal had turned into something else. I started walking farther at the reservoir. I’d barely closed out the rowing season that year, reaching my minimum required mileage from the boathouse where I was a member, and by December I had lengthened my walk in the woods to the reservoir’s entire circumference, about two miles. I didn’t mind that it took me nearly two hours. The dogs—I usually had both Tula and Shiloh—were accustomed to my amble, and they ran the hills above me as I walked. The pain I felt on city streets was softened by walking on pine-forest floor, and every time I made it all the way around the reservoir was a promise that I might do it again, might beat back the pain with muscle-building.

Then winter hit, snowstorms and ice that didn’t melt until the following April. I often met my friend Jean and her cockapoo, Max, for walks, and some days I had to hang on to her as well as to the fence. We wore crampons for the ice and I started picking up a fallen branch at the beginning of every walk to use as a staff. When the ice melted, I kept using it. The pool at the end of the day offered its usual relief. But I tried stretching and resting, tried walking and not walking, and no matter what I did I felt a pain so thorough and migratory I could barely explain or isolate it.

I told almost no one about the pain, about how ever-present it was, and I didn’t voice my worst-case scenario: that this was polio’s legacy, and would end in a wheelchair. Tula ran to me whenever I fell, but what filled me with despair was her adapting to what was now routine. Accustomed to my groans when I sat down inside the house, she still looked my way, but no longer with any surprise. The noise had become as familiar as car keys or laughter.

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