Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir

12. Elliptical Journey

167 12 El­ lip­ ti­ cal Jour­ ney When Bev­ erly woke up I was stand­ ing a few feet from the end of our bed, naked, im­ mo­ bile, no ­ longer sham­ bling to­ ward the bath­ room. All my ­ weight was on my right leg. My left hand ­ probed my left hip. “What’re you doing?” she asked. “Try­ ing to fig­ ure out if I’m ­ really awake.” I heard ­ sheets rus­ tle be­ hind me, then the clack of eye­ glasses­ snatched from the bed­ side table. “Is some­ thing wrong?” “I think my hip just broke into a hun­ dred ­ pieces.” She got out of bed. This is some­ thing I al­ ways love to watch her do, but I ­ couldn’t turn ­ around to see her. ­ Couldn’t put ­ weight on my left hip, ­ couldn’t pivot or let the joint ro­ tate in its ­ socket. I­ doubted I’d ever move again. Which was ri­ dic­ u­ lous, and why I’d been con­ sid­ er­ ing my fa­ mil­ iar ­ it’s-only-a-dream ex­ pla­ na­ tion. “What hap­ pened?” “I don’t know. I got out of bed, took a ­ couple of steps, and my hip ex­ ploded.” I ­ didn’t think I’d done any­ thing out of the or­ di­ nary.­ There’d been no warn­ ing some­ thing was about to go wrong, and the in­ tense pain ­ seemed worse for its sud­ den­ ness. So at ­ sixty-four, de­ spite Cartwheels on the Moon 168 never hav­ ing had a hip prob­ lem, de­ spite lack­ ing a di­ ag­ no­ sis or even a hint of an ex­ pla­ na­ tion, my mind went right for the only ob­ vi­ ous con­ clu­ sion: I need hip re­ place­ ment. Today. “I think this is a bad sign.” “Can you sit down?” “I don’t see how.” With her help, I ­ hopped back­ ward on my right leg and sat on the bed’s edge, but that hurt al­ most as much as walk­ ing had. None of this made sense. It was like there was a gap ­ between then and now into which all the im­ por­ tant in­ for­ ma­ tion had fal­ len. Bev­ erly sat next to me. We ­ looked at each other, not say­ ing what we were both think­ ing: We’re sched­ uled to leave for Spain in eight days. No way . . . c Through­ out our first win­ ter liv­ ing down­ town, Bev­ erly and I had gone to the gym every other day. This was some­ thing new for us. We’d spent thir­ teen years liv­ ing in the mid­ dle of ­ twenty hilly acres of woods, our home a small iso­ lated cedar yurt she’d built an hour south­ west of Port­ land. For our daily walks we’d fol­ low deer ­ trails in a broad loop ­ across the land­ scape, often ac­ com­ pa­ nied by our three aged cats. Even in foul ­ weather, shel­ tered by Doug­ las fir and the great limbs of old oak or wild ­ cherry, we could be out­ side most days for a half hour of ex­ er­ cise, some­ times hack­ ing over­ growth, some­ times wad­ ing ­ through the risen creek. I’d found the chal­ lenge of walk­ ing the woods to be more pow­ er­ ful than the hard ­ five-mile runs I used to take daily in the years be­ fore get­ ting sick in 1988. It took years of rep­ e­ ti­ tion be­ fore I could avoid get­ ting lost if I could no ­ longer see the house. But I loved these walks. They ­ helped me re­ gain some ­ strength and bal­ ance. They ­ helped me gain con­ fi­ dence that I could get ­ around in the world, that I could find my way when ­ things ­ around (and ­ within) me were con­ fus­ ing, Elliptical Journey 169 frag­ mented, ob­ scure. Walk­ ing like this ­ wasn’t just about ex­ er­ cise or re­ gain­ ing a mod­ i­ cum of fit­ ness. It was about claim­ ing my place again, too. Now that we were in the heart of the city, liv­ ing by the river, our daily ex­ er­ cise in­ volved walk­ ing or rid­ ing bikes on the flat path­ ways along...