When life is unbalanced

Obsessed with Steps, Or…

Look where I’m going

For the next two hours and thirty-five minutes, I don’t have to think about the situations transforming my life or the frailties that limit what I can do. I am on an Amtrak train moving along the picturesque Hudson River estuary from Midtown Manhattan to the Albany-Rensselaer station.

[N.B. I include estuary because I am fascinated that the ocean tide pushes about 150 miles up the Hudson to Troy twice a day. Having grown up near and sailed on the fabulous estuary known as the Chesapeake Bay, I have a thing for tidal forces. Don’t get me started on the Bay of Fundy.]

Travel gets me moving not only on modes of transportation but also walking. Trips to NYC result in days in excess of 6k steps. Broadway from Herald Square to Times Square is about half a mile.

At present, walking is my chief form of exercise. It is also the chief threat to my well-being. Given the conditions I have affecting my balance, I am careful when walking and always use a cane outside the house.

In places like Midtown Manhattan, the sidewalks can get crowded. People stop to look up at things. People look at their cell phones while walking. Navigation requires looking where one is going.

I shoulder check people in crosswalks who don’t move over as I am approaching. It’s either that or risk toppling over if I abruptly tack to starboard to avoid them.

Travel by train is relaxing to the point of soporific. No need to look where one is going. In fact, I think I will take a nap.

That’s better.

At home (where I am now), my principal form of exercise is going to a large store and pushing a cart up and down the aisles long enough to do 2000 steps.

On good days, I don’t know where something I want to buy is located in the store. I visit a lot of aisles, backtrack, back up, etcetera, for some time.

If I keep my cell phone with me around the house, the steps add up. Except I’m not good about keeping it with me. God knows how many more steps I take that aren’t counted by that multipurpose device.

My trip to Paris in September gave me a 15k step day. That’s my record.

I was amazed and pleased by the amount of walking I did in Paris. There were a few times, though, when I told my travel companion to continue on with our guide without me.

Taking the trip counts as a step. I have wanted to have a week in Paris for twenty years. I am grateful that desire finally was fulfilled, and my interest was warranted.

For a while, I have subscribed to Bonjour Paris, a weekly e-newsletter. The articles highlight aspects of the city beyond landmarks and museums. One of my favorites identified the “hidden” cats.

Recently, Bonjour Paris has offered Zoom presentations describing where to enjoy a walk in each arrondissement. Our guide and our cooking instructor provided the real deal, leading us through the central and northeastern districts.

[N.B. The French refer to flâneurs. From flâner, meaning to dawdle or stroll, it is the perfect word for people who walk around Paris. It wouldn’t work in English because stroller means a vehicle for toddlers, which rhymes with dawdlers, which doesn’t sound cosmopolitan enough to substitute for flâneurs.]

It is now three days since the train trip. I am on a plane. The photo shows my location.

[N.B. If you look really, really closely, you still won’t be able to see skiers on those slopes. But they are there, I assure you.]

I have walked about 6400 steps since I got off the train. That is not a good total for three days.

Monday had a very low count of 148 steps. I had anesthesia for a medical procedure in the morning and spent the afternoon trying to write with a muddled brain.

Not that I need prescribed fentanyl to be off balance. Last count I have five diagnosed conditions that affect my balance.

The most serious is the absence of a kneecap, aka patella, in my left knee. All but one fragment was removed on July 11, 2016, after my patella shattered on July 8 when I fell outside a Broadway theater.

No kneecap, no brake on my forward or sideways motion.

I have to take care with every step I take.

Did I mention I bought a pile of bulbs and bare roots that needed to be planted? With everything going on, my intentions regarding the new specimens for the gardens crashed.

I must be most cautious when stepping if I bend forward to reach something on the ground. Even when I sit in a chair and reach down to put in a plant, I have almost fallen.

Fortunately, we discovered two people who, for a price, wanted to help us close the gardens for the winter. They even had a gadget that you press into the ground, twist, and it pulls up the soil leaving a hole for the bulbs.

[N.B. Someone needs to write an illustrated book, like the one I have on animals, that shows all kinds of gadgets, provides the name and describes what uses it has. Perhaps I should say approved or intended uses. I would explain why, but this is a PG essay.]

Purchasing plants and things that will become plants has been an obsession since October 2020. We moved into a newly built house in March 2021. I wanted to hit the ground running installing gardens around our new home.

[N.B. Hit the ground running was a glaring choice. I can’t run due to my patella problem. If I tried, I would hit the ground. And possibly break some ribs or fingers, as has happened in the past.]

I have designed at least a half dozen gardens in my lifetime. The newest opportunity, combined with the side effects of a medication, fired me up to find interesting specimens of common species, unusual species, and multiple variations of individual species (e.g., Lenten roses and floribunda roses).

It’s now ten days since I started writing this. This morning, I filled the bird feeders and walked around the house.

That perambulation is my favorite way of adding steps to the day, examining the plants and making note of anything that needs to be done.

Deer chewed off the ends of almost every branch of the forsythia and flowering quince that our garden helpers put in on the northeast property line. The kerria japonica and the lemony lace elderberry planted last year along the house on that side were also pruned by the four-legged forager.

Gardening is a journey. Now I have to decide what step to take to protect those shrubs.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Chapter 64 of the Dao-de-Jing, attributed to Laozi.