Limping Into the Future

We bought a knee scooter.

Borrowed a wheelchair.

Assembled a shower chair.

I am officially old and falling apart. I can no longer, even in the dusty attic of my mind, where self-delusions refuse to leave, claim to be late middle-aged or pre-elderly.

 I’m seventy-something. I’m old enough to die a natural death and no one will say, “He died so young.” I can talk about Watergate or the first landing on the moon like it happened in real time by way of television and those years seem as close as yesterday. Well, it’s because I did watch as those events unfolded. And it’s because, especially when extraordinary news impacts a country or even the whole world, certain events are like scars on the soul, barely seen but deeply felt.

 If I limp—and I often do—it’s because of the damaged (according to an MRI) Achilles tendon on my left foot. It should be repaired. However, the knee scooter and its companion support systems are because of my right foot. There, a tendon is torn. I could share its highfaluting medical name, but it’s enough to view an MRI on a computer screen and observe that one of the several tendons in my foot has seen better days. Apparently, so says the surgeon who will probe inside my foot, I have a spare bone in the same area. It needs to be . . . deleted. Who knew there could be bonus bones anywhere in the body? Will removing it help my lifetime quest to lose those final ten twenty pounds?

 I wish I could say I experienced a dramatic occurrence that led to my torn tendon. What if adrenaline surged as I leapt onto the train tracks and saved a damsel in distress? What if, as with Tom Cruise in the filming of Mission Impossible: Fallout, I soared across a chasm and smashed my leg into a building. Like Mr. Cruise and his suddenly broken leg, I kept going (limping, grimacing) to finish the scene.

[You can watch the video clip here.]

My wishes remain only that: wishes.

Indiana Jones, in the first Raiders film said to Marion of his injuries, “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.”

For me, it’s both.

Age and mileage.

Were my tendons weakened over forty summers of backpacking? Sure. 

What about the daily running I did until my first knee surgery? Why not!

What about the baseball I played as a kid and the tennis as an adult? Could be.

I had no Tom Cruise moment.

From the earliest memories of playing catch with Dad until a recent time of walking my dog Kynzi, my flesh and bones have been in motion. Awful events can happen in seconds. I’ve had those; everyone has. I broke my left leg backpacking when I was thirty. Are three decades of birthdays a late youth or an early middle age? No matter. After butt-sliding over a mountain’s snowy slope for a little wilderness amusement, I slammed into an overlooked rock and acquired a tib-fib spiral fracture. The long months of recovery that followed sure made a mess of all of my personal and professional plans.

But many events, like my torn tendon, take time. Years. Decades. Maybe there was a last whisper-quiet straw added to the camel’s back, but there were all those many silent or noisy straws that preceded the tear the surgeon pointed at on the MRI’s image.

I learned several life lessons after pinballing down that mountain. I needed the support of other people. I’m not always in “control” of everything. Indeed, giving up control can be blessing, a deepening of relationships, a strengthening of faith in God, self, and others.

Once I was a young guy.

Now I’m an old fella.

More life lessons ahead as I limp into the future.

 Thanks for reading. More next week . . .

in Peace,

Larry Patten

One “quiet” note to add. Our eleven-year-old puppy Kynzi died on Friday, September 18. We brought her home, and became part of her pack, when she was eight weeks old. We dearly miss our sweet puppy.