After nearly two years with MS, I still amaze myself — with my impatience. Here I am, able to walk and type and pull up my own pants and I’m still prone to fits of discontent because my walk is not as graceful as I once imagined it to be, nor are my multitasking batteries as easily rechargeable.
Just when a cloud of complaint settles over my head, True Reality whomps me hard with the everyday beauty of the created world. Remember: things don’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Real wisdom from my once-4-year-old daughter.
Last week’s “Word in Time” column describes how my attitude, if not my gait, was straightened out during my morning walk.
Emptied of vacationing school children and their dutiful parents, the park welcomed me with quiet as I set out on a mid-morning walk. Night’s chill remained beneath the shade trees; even the sunny patches of pavement kept an early-fall air of crisp cool. I walked along the curving loop of asphalt drive that dissects south Blue Bonnet Park and savored the still silence.
On the surface, the park seemed empty of activity, a relief to a woman with an uneven, sometimes halting gait. There was no need to step off the sidewalk for joggers or dogs. I didn’t have to stop at crossings to wait on cars that throbbed with jangly music.
My morning walk felt like a solitary foray into an empty world. In some ways, that was a relief. For me, exercise on foot is as much a matter of perseverance in the face of humiliation as it is a question of willpower and calorie-burning.
Once I was a competitive long-distance runner, sent off to train with the boys’ team because the girls offered no challenge. To focus on nothing but the next step for mile after mile was a peculiar discipline I loved: sweaty progress in the flat Kansas heat, the chemical rush that erases pain and replaces it with a natural runner’s high, the bone-deep, honest fatigue that settles in after the course is complete.
Decades later, all that is gone, replaced with nostalgia when I see the Liberal High School cross-country team trace a route around town. They can do with ease what is unavailable to this 42-year-old. I sometimes struggle to get my right foot fully off the ground when I walk at a brisk pace. The same ailment that nibbled away at the myelin coating my nerves removed most of the smoothness from my walk and made running a herky-jerky effort.
Instead, I walk. And, most days, I’d rather walk alone than in a park full of fast-moving people no matter how good-natured they may be. You can’t be too slow on an empty sidewalk. When you’re the only one on the route, you can’t be behind.
This morning as I stepped along, I saw the park was not as still as it first looked, nor was I alone. Robins hopped in the nearby lawn, lush green grassblades sharp against the dull red of their breast feathers. Cottonwood leaves ruffled in the breeze, silver undersides of leaf flashing shamelessly above my head. Sunlight glinted on puddles left by the sprinkler system, highlighting the tracery of water bugs on the surface. A squirrel paused to assess my progress toward his high-wire crossing: I’ll fuss if you interrupt me, he warned with a look, his bristly tail a stiff exclamation mark. I’m busy. Always am. I’ve got an agenda of my own.
The squirrel, like the monarch butterflies that have begun to drift through the High Plains on their way back to Mexico, is a work in progress with a schedule to keep. The flowers, too, are at work against time and have given up beauty for fruitfulness. They have replaced silky petals with dry, husky seed-pods to fulfill their purpose of propagation.
Nature constantly streams along, silent, present, too often ignored. It is utterly unconcerned about what the rest of us are up to, even when we interfere. At such times, it finds a way around our human interventions, along with the vagaries of life, like water carving an alternate course around an obstacle.
Examples of this quiet forward motion keep us company as we careen along, blind and hectic, deaf and dumb. It takes a spell of silence before reality registers. On the route I walk, I pass trees that have weathered wind storms and electrical-line amputations, lost branches, grown over the scars and offered homes to the birds and squirrels that don’t dismiss imperfection. Broken eggshells from a plundered nest do not deter the birds from trying again. Regular mowing by the park people doesn’t stop the dandelions from sending out more bright blossoms.
In a world determined to rush forward at any cost, it is easy to disconnect from the natural wonders around us and the wisdom they offer. We try to be productive, fit, prosperous and successful. We lament the losses that come with age and time, measuring ourselves against humanly constructed ideas of how life is supposed to be.
Too many days, I head to the park wishing I could clock myself in a two-mile run, sad that these effortful steps are the best I can manage, dismayed that my middle-aged body doesn’t match up to the ideals on a glossy magazine page. I envy the cross-country kids, as if aging is not a normal part of life.
I know better. I prefer the taste of orchard-grown apples that come without shiny supermarket wax. I’m fond of the battered, unpretty maple tree in my back yard, though it falls far short of landscaping standards.
Yet in regard to myself and my own poor, human body, I yearn for a surface perfection that makes no sense. Even if it were attainable, such an existence would rob me of the ability to appreciate the richness of a real life fully lived, complete with errors, pain and redemption. To walk in this diminished state — to walk at all when paralysis could have been my lot — is a victory. To compare this day’s movement to my thoughtless, 16-year-old sprints is false and foolish.
This week, I went to the park on a quiet morning. I traveled slowly. My path was occasionally uneven. I walked alone and the world spoke.
When I walk the way that I do, I am in good company. Overhead are the cottonwood branches, the wheeling kites, the orange-and-black sojourners who won’t stop till they reach their destination.
We should all be so content.
