Blue Suede Shoes

Those are my new, only worn twice, blue suede shoes, My daughter, Jane, bought them for me. A present to mark the publication of my book. She of course knew my story - not all my story - but when she read the book, especially the sections that dwell, some might say dwell obsessively, on sneakers and my fascination with shoes, she immediately decided that she had to buy me a pair of shoes.

I am not a shopper. I did learn after my surgery that shopping for shoes didn't have to be the true chore it had been for years. Not having to wear a shoe with a built-up heel, or a shoe that could accommodate a large brace meant that the world of possible shoe choices had grown significantly larger. I wasn't sure about shopping with Jane for shoes. She has a refined fashion sense, I have none. She can spend hours in a mall looking for exactly the right thing and leave not finding it but still happy. I get antsy after a half hour in a mall and can handle at best three stores and if I don't leave with what I was looking for I leave disgruntled. And of course there is the real problem of the gulf between the shoes I might love to wear and the shoes I need to wear. I need shoes that have some support for the ankle, that can accommodate a brace, a slighter smaller lighter brace than those I wore as a child but still a brace.The combination of all of these issues had me anxious.

The shopping trip was a breeze. First store we were in, I found the shoes I needed, the shoes I wanted. When I was in my twenties, I loved desert boots. Never owned blue shoes before in my life. It was cool, fun and a small thrill.

The next week, I wore them to a reading at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library's Wine and Word Series. The night before the reading, I tried them out. Wore them around the house, walked about in them. I had to, I didn't want to trip and fall wearing new shoes. They were amazing. Some one in the audience at the reading asked how the shoes felt. I started talking about how the last time I ever wore sneakers was in the early nineties. Then I broke my foot one too many times and wearing a brace became the norm yet again. so twenty two years later I put on a pair of desert boots and I am transformed and transfixed. They are so light, they feel so not present that I am for a moment speechless.

At one point in my book I describe sneakers as a symbol of freedom. And of course that is a slight hyperbole. Freedom is much more complex than the lightness of a shoe. Regardless, when I put on those blue suede shoes for the first time I remembered exactly what sneakers had always felt like, they felt and feel liberating. They feel like freedom.

Trying to stay balanced...it is harder then we think...

The other day, in our kitchen, I stepped back from the granite island towards the stove. In doing so, my legs moved in order, right leg first followed by left leg and I was now in a significantly different spot and I turned to open a drawer filled with spatulas and ladles. As I picked up the slotted long handled spoon that I often use to scoop out rice and beans from a pot, I suddenly froze as I remembered that I had just stepped back from the granite island, without using the cane I normally have nearby, without any mobility aid at all.  Stepping back, not looking at the direction I am moving in, trusting my brain-body combo to get me there in one piece and upright. I had to chalk that one up in the win column.

Yesterday, on a streetcar travelling south on Broadview heading to a wedding, I ring the bell and stand, with my cane in hand, to head for the door, one leg moving confidently ahead, the second leg not quite finding a firm footing in the sliding shift movement of the street car and there I am almost tumbling down into the lap of a small child. Her look of terror at what might be about to happen and my sense of chagrin and embarrassment at not being able to stand steady on a moving streetcar resulted in me silently adding one to the loss column. But then I thought, well, maybe a tie...I didn't actually fall and no small children were injured in the construction of this life lesson.

Another week in my seemingly never-ending effort to conquer a very particular part of walking, maintaining my balance. Balance is about more than not falling though not falling is a big plus.

Trying to stay balanced is almost like using a yo-yo...it's harder than it looks and easier if you don't think about what you are trying to do. Sometimes, when I am walking, I catch myself in a stumble and when I do, I try and understand why I almost fell, why I almost lost my balance. Balance is about much more than a single activity, it is more like a process. It involves muscles and nerves in the legs and feet, eye and ear coordination, a highly tuned sense of space, some very complicated, very fast calculations by the brain with extensive feedback between the brain, the nervous system and the entire musculoskeletal system.

Balance is actually much more than a mere physical activity; it is a vital indicator of health and prospect. There is a reason the notion of balance gets used in so many contexts. It is about keeping things (mental, social, physical ) on track, on an even keel, so to speak. If you lose your sense of balance, in any one or all of the senses of the word, bad things can and do happen. As you can imagine, and as I have learned, there are all kinds of ways that balance can go wrong. But there is some very encouraging news about how balance can be improved through exercising and challenges.

This is something I learned in physio. Almost from day one Vaiva had me standing on foam, wood, and plastic boards, mats and beams. Some were pivoted on balls, some on half balls, sometimes she put me on trampolines. The idea was, learn to walk,step, balance and move back and forth by challenging the mind and body to conquer all of this. Improving balance is like most exercises; you get better through the doing.

Alex Hutchinson is a writer and a runner and he had a fantastic column in the New York Times a few days ago where he laid out his own experience and some of the fascinating new research going on in the science/medicine of balance. It is a fascinating read and as is true of much of scientific research, the news is good, change is possible.

I know that is true because a few days ago, I stepped back without thinking from the granite island in our kitchen....