That Good Pain

April 2 2020

That was the thing about running.

I always knew I could make my escape

outrace the fire

keep myself sane.

Go get help

when the car slid,

fish-tailing into the ditch

on that cold winter night

on a back-country lane.

I remember the wind in my hair

and the sting of sweat.

The invincible feeling of strength

when my leg pushed-off

and my foot flexed

and I momentarily left the ground,

letting go, for a second

and stretching fully out.

Until it felt automatic.

When muscle memory

conveyed me without any thought,

no pain, no effort

no shortness of breath.

But now, even walking is hard.

Which is how it feels

as the years add up.

The slow incremental succession

of loss after loss

that redefines who you are

and revises what counts.

And the happy talk

which is almost as hard.

Urging you to focus

on gracefully ageing, and all that you've gained

from the long passage of time.

Reframe, as they say

count your blessings

ignore the empty glass.

Is that perspective

     . . . wisdom

            . . . just making the best of it?

That it could always be worse

and will surely get better

and isn't really all that bad?

According to anatomy

and cultural anthropology

we are built to walk.

Even shuffling, limping, hobbling along,

falling, crawling, or taking a pause.

Because immobility

is certain death,

so rest, but never stop.

Perhaps I still run in my sleep.

Like the dogs, who yelp and stiffen and twitch their legs

in canine dreams of pursuit.

But I don't remember mine

and there's no one here to tell.

I can only assume

that my inner runner

is still grinding out the miles.

That the pain I feel, getting out of bed

is the same as those final few steps,

that good pain you get

drenched in sweat

and rounding the last curve home.

A bad hip and questionable knee long ago turned me from a runner into a swimmer. But lately, even walking has become a challenge. The poem takes a bit of licence and over-dramatizes things: I rarely get pain in bed or at rest. But it's absolutely correct about self-image and redefinition: my physicality has always been a crucial part of my identity, so when I find myself walking like a disabled 90 year old man, both my sense of self and self-esteem are fundamentally threatened.

We are built to walk. That's what our hunter/gatherer ancestors did to survive. They were long distance machines, and we are still probably the best endurance athletes among all the land animals. Slow, but steady. There's the sophisticated architecture of our feet; the mechanical advantage conferred by the achilles tendon; our ability to sweat; and the advantage walking and running on 2 legs, so we can continue take full breaths at speed – our bipedalism trading-off speed for endurance. (This has to do with the mechanics of the diaphragm, which favours us over 4-legged animals.)

When I wrote outrace the fire I had a particular incident in mind: the recent wildfires in California, when some old people burned to death in their homes. I wondered how that could have happened. Have people allowed themselves to become that unfit they can't move faster than a fire they've been told is coming? Throughout my life I've felt confident that I could handle myself in any emergency; that I wouldn't depend on others. But now when I go for a walk, there is the sober realization that I couldn't outrun anything; and even a slow-moving fire would get me if I didn't have either a vehicle or a navigable road. I don't like this feeling of helplessness and dependency. I need to get this hip fixed now!