Cracks in the Pavement

To get from my house to the subway is a 15 minute walk - 12 minutes if you speedwalk as I do pretty much every day that I am commuting to work - and, on the way there, it is all uphill. Not steep, mind you - the street from our house to the main road is most obviously a climb and even that is fairly gentle, not all that pleasant at 0600 after a bad night's sleep or a wild night out partying, but manageable if you're on form - and then it's a steady upward trajectory to the station. The walk home, therefore, has pleasing psychology - downhill all the way to your place of rest. This is how the able bodied experience it. But when I started this blog, my left leg was encased in plaster, I wasn't allowed to put weight on it at all for three months, and I thought my biggest challenge would be working up the strength to haul myself to the end of the street. It wasn't. it took me two weeks just to work out how to get up the uneven, steep steps to my house. Only two of them, but there might as well have been a hundred for all I was able to get from the street to the door. No. Distance itself is the easy bit. It's the change in the pattern that is the hardest for the less mobile to manage. An upward incline is exhausting. I met my neighbour walking down the hill as I was walking up it yesterday. My neighbour was facing a possible permanent paralysis 6 months ago, from a combination of injuries to his lower back. He has been doing gruelling physiotherapy 24/7 to regain movement, and his progress has been extraordinary - a testiment to his steely determination, an inspiration to us all. His wife was walking next to him and she waved to me as we approached. He's just done his first hill walk! She called to me. It's exhausting, he said, with humour and a touch of surprise in his voice. No surprise to me. A hill incline that the able bodied barely register, is a huge barrier to the less mobile. But even that isn't the toughest challenge. It's the variations in the terrain - the cracks in the pavements. When I had my first child, the midwife advised me to take the pram out without the baby in it for my first ever outing, and push it to the end of the street and back, just to familiarise myself with the lumps and bumps in the sidewalk. I thought she was completely nuts till I tried it. When I was on crutches, every tree root creeping from its bed to the houses, was lethal. Every broken flagstone was extra effort to negotiate my way round. Every gap between the tiles was a trap for my crutch or for my one mobile but very tired foot. Make my way to the station? For three months it was all I could do to make it to my neighbour's house. We have no idea just how hard it is to get around till we are challenged ourselves.  I was out of action myself for six months, and it took me a further year to achieve full mobility again after my operation to rebuild my foot. I didn't just get a new foot (and a new lease of life) out of it. I also gained an insight I didn't ask for and could not have appreciated any other way, of the daily grinding difficulty of being less than fully mobile. It is really, really hard. Guys: an Easter message to you all. Stop worrying about whether you can afford those Louboutins, and take five seconds to be grateful your feet will take you somewhere uncomplainingly, whatever footwear you choose to encase them in. Perspective. I'm just saying.