ANOTHER LEG OF THE JOURNEY

A week ago today, we crammed 2 suitcases, 2 rollator walkers, 2 walking sticks and a shopping trolley full of enough food for 2 days into a Mercedes sedan…not, as we had been promised, a people carrier.  We had booked the latter in order to comfortably house our stuff as well as the 2 of us, but in particularly to give “the leg” enough leg room.  Our driver, who looked old enough and pale enough to be near death, glumly told us it would be a 6 hour drive.  But in we piled, for what turned out to be 9 hours due to Friday traffic. 

I think we possibly deserve an award for embarking on 2 ridiculously challenging journeys in 9 days…or perhaps dunce caps would be more appropriate.  The first trip was the flight from Florence to London, with wheelchair access.  Who knew that it was Albanian National Handicap Day? That flight had 9 wheelchair passengers…NINE! All of whom had to be boarded first as their plane was due to depart 10 minutes before ours. By the time the 2 airport Mobility Assistants had maneuvered them onto their plane, ours was fully boarded and impatiently awaiting the arrival of this cripple. I won’t say it’s worth breaking a femur in order to experience the Ambi-lift that hoists you up and into the plane, but I was grateful to be skinny enough to fit into a child’s wheelchair and rolled down the aisle giving the royal wave to the less than amused passengers. If only they’d had such a wheelchair in London; the only size narrow enough to navigate the plane’s aisle.  But no.  We were seated at the very front of the plane…the Ambi-lift comes to the rear, giving me the opportunity to hop down the entire length of the plane in order to be lifted down its stairs.

Journeys.  So many of them in life. And how interesting that the word ‘journey’, depending on which Dictionary you use, originates either from the Vulgar Latin ‘diunãta,’ meaning a day’s time, or a day’s work, or a day’s travel; or, from the French ‘journee’, a day’s length, or from the Middle English, meaning all of the above but which finally became defined as a ‘long trip.’  And there we have it; the random nature of measuring. The folly of it.  When we thing of journeys now, we think of a long distance over a long time; a kind of long division equation with no solution. And let’s go all the way and say, as we do, “life is a journey.” Then, look how far we’ve come from a day trip to the span of a lifetime.

My latest journey started on May 11th when I broke my right femur into several many pieces. I call it the journey of the leg through many legs of the journey. And just like the rest of us I fall victim to measuring.  When I lay in Emergency in Siena that first evening, all I could think about was making it to Cornwall on July 15th, as planned months before. I summoned a mental calendar and figured I had roughly 8 weeks to mend enough to achieve this goal.  When the orthopedic doctor on duty that night came to gurney to tell me I had a “beautiful fracture,” – an understatement if ever there was one – the first thing I asked him was would I be able to go to Cornwall on July 15th.  He was doubtful.  But then so was the neuro-surgeon who doubted I’d walk again when I broke my neck 30-odd years ago. 

Perhaps it is also human nature to overcome the piles of shit that we are served during the course of a lifetime by looking ahead to a future goal. I don’t remember who it was, or where I heard it, but some well-known person recently recounted how she and her husband were in a boat in some lovely calm sea somewhere and so she dove overboard for a swim.  After a while she heard her husband calling to her and eventually made out the word, “sharks.” She turned toward the boat, saw the ladder on its side and swam.  Swam for the ladder. Just focused on the ladder.  Ladder as destination.  Destination: survival. For her, each stroke would have been a journey.  

For me the journey has had its setbacks but the destination remained the same: Cornwall, July 15th.  And yes, there were times I wondered if I’d make it through the day, never mind to Cornwall.  And although I’ve made it to Cornwall there are still days when I feel I’ll never fully recover. On those days I try to remember that instead of projecting into the future it is important to look back.  On the days when you feel like you’re getting nowhere you have to look back in order to see how far you’ve come, then you can believe again that you will arrive at your destination…where a new journey awaits.

So far I’ve made it from bed to wheelchair to rollator to, three days ago, 2 sticks.  I donated the rollator to the physio clinic I go to 3 times a week here in Cornwall. Yesterday was the first day since May 11th that I didn’t cry. This morning I had my first hydrotherapy treatment, after which I progressed to 1 stick.

Cornwall is no longer the destination, having proudly and gratefully arrived. However, it took merely 2 days to realise that no matter where you go, there you are.  The me that arrived here on 15th July is the same old impatient taskmaster of yore, filled with plans and ambition: do a series of drawings, work on a new novel, walk a mile every day.  So far I’ve done one drawing, written nothing besides this essay, and managed to walk half a mile a day before collapsing.

My destiny is no longer the horizon, it is looking at it.  To stay still and look out the same small window to the garden, the stone wall, the fields, the sea, the sky. I watch the play of light on all these textures and elements; the way the light changes everything from moment to moment. Yes, my eye is drawn to the horizon, but not because I long for what lies beyond it, but rather to marvel at the way sea and sky, water and air, become one.

Today is grey and misty, the horizon indecipherable, distance immeasurable.  When the going is tough and we are weak it’s useful to have a goal; a point of arrival worth living for. What’s just as important is resting upon arrival, of soaking up the achievement; of letting it all go in order to understand, as T.S. Eliot wrote:

“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

With love

Maggie