Walking Lessons for Life’s Act III

I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped walking like a regular person. There was no headline. No breaking news alert. Just one day, amid the slow swirl of appointments, meds, and blood draws, I caught a glimpse of me in a reflection and noticed I had quietly exited the “normal ambulation” club somewhere along the way.

Not to say that normal ambulation is impossible these days. With a little mental locker-room pep talk, I can still sort of fake it. But it takes more out of me than it gives back. That kind of walking – the easy, breezy kind where your limbs know what to do without supervision – requires a level of coordination and mojo I now have to budget, like vacation days.

Normal folks walk with their arms swinging gently at their sides, like they’ve just been cast as extras in a big pharma commercial. I, meanwhile, walk with my arms raised ever so slightly in front of me, as if I’m cradling an invisible basket of laundry or sharing my own subtle tribute to C-3PO. If a droid and a dry cleaner had a baby, that’s me. (See Fig. 1.)

Fig. 1

Then there’s the left foot – my early arriver. Always eager to hit the ground a beat too soon, giving me a kind of tentative, old-man shuffle. The shuffle means I’m constantly making micro course corrections, like a sailboat fighting a headwind across the living room. I do not glide from Point A to Point B. I negotiate. I bargain. I file flight plans.

And the stooping. Ah yes, the stooping. I can’t usually see how stooped I am, because my eyes are, unfortunately, installed in the stooped head itself facing forward. But I can feel the difference when I straighten up. The air changes. My lungs remember their job. For a few strides I resemble a distant cousin of my old self. The trouble is, standing up straight has become a premium service. To access it, I have to book the “upright human” option in advance and hope I still have enough brain power in the account when the reservation comes due.

All of which is to say: the simple act of ambulating from any Point A to any Point B is now a project. It comes with strategy meetings, risk assessments, and a strong recommendation to wear sensible shoes. (See Fig. 2 in which I demonstrate my difficulty in remembering how the arm swinging cadence is supposed to work.) But doing nothing doesn’t help either. Do nothing long enough and the body starts quietly unsubscribing from functions it no longer feels are being used regularly. “Oh, you’re not doing stairs anymore? Great, we’ll just delete that feature in the next update.”

Fig. 2

But here’s the kicker: when I push too hard – say, with an ambitious set of gentle toe lifts – I sometimes wake up the next day feeling wiped out like I ran a marathon in a dream.

Somewhere along the way, one medical professional offered an analogy that stuck. She said that each day, we all get a bucket of mojo – energy, strength, focus, the whole lot. Most people, when they use up that day’s bucket, can borrow from tomorrow’s. If they do it right, they can over time earn themselves larger buckets.

But with degenerative muscle conditions, she said, you can’t live like that. You can’t plunder tomorrow’s bucket every time today gets interesting. The trick is to respect the bucket you get each morning. Use it gently. Use it wisely. If you notice your bucket is a little smaller today, don’t pretend it’s bottomless.

So what to do?

I’ve decided I need a plan. With a capital P. A plan to help me use the daily mojo bucket without sloshing it all over the floor. A plan that includes walking – not as something I’ve lost, but as something I’m learning again, slowly.

And, if I’m being honest, coming up with a plan buys me a few more days before I have to actually… start the plan. Planning to plan is one of my spiritual gifts.

So I’m working on it: Walking Lessons for Life’s Act III. Less about speed, more about noticing. Less about passing for “normal,” more about honoring what still works and coaxing along what doesn’t.

If you’re somewhere on your own strange path – shuffling, stooping, improvising your way across the room – I’m right there with you, C-3PO arms and all.

Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I reveal The Plan I’m planning to plan. I’ll get there. One wobbly, hard-won step at a time.