In the story the mermaid meets up with a fisherman a few times. The wish for her to be on land with actual legs is granted. Initially it works out for them, but the trouble is, with each step she feels sharp pains, like stepping on knives. She longs for the sea. She’s in-between.
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When you’ve done your figure eights and learned your sow cows and triple-lux you move on, solo. The ice opens up from measured patches to the entire rink, and most skaters leave. You and a few others combine spins and steps, arm and foot gestures. In-between you gain momentum by doing backwards crossovers. You look over your shoulder to see where you’re going. Your coach and you make it up.
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Last Thursday after three months of only touching the ground lightly with my left foot or toe, the surgeon shows me the X-rays. “See, the bone has healed. Well, it’s healed enough.” The bone grew to meet the plate and screws. “You can do what you want,” he says.
I take off my brace and walk with one crutch, a hand free to pat the pups, and fill their water bowls, carry a basket with my laptop, tea from stove to table, hold a handful of roasted almonds, pop a couple into my mouth as I walk, open the kitchen door, carry a small potted plant from one room to the other room, swing my arm freely, circling my fingers and free wrist. (Initially I didn’t know what to do with the free arm, it dangled by my side).
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Most sea creatures have no need to walk, and when they do walk— if you’re a turtle your paddle feet can inch along, and if you’re a bird you pick up your long legs at the knees. If you’re a starfish or octopus, or barnacle, is that called walking? You feel, think, sense and move with your suction feet. You mix with water.
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I step on my left leg and feel an unfamiliar swell of tremendous weight flush through my leg into torso, into my brain, and a wave of exhaustion and pain in my ankle and knee stops me. No longer swinging along with two crutches, float and touch. Now I step. Pause. Step. My left hip lifts as I step, like an old woman wearing practical shoes, support stockings, a scarf and her cane. I need to quit the pivot habit I invented with my right foot inching sideways in the shower or kitchen. Now I must lift a foot, and another. I feel for toddlers (is that what they call them?) beginning to walk. I look up “toddler” and find there is no upper age limit defining a toddler. I’m a toddler!
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What I love about watching the skaters is listening to the soft swoosh of blades as she cuts through the very slightest surface of ice. Then the sound stops and there is complete silence before the big move. Another silent moment while the skater is in the air and the sound of landing. The sound of turning and the still moment while the skater opens her arms and pushes forward skating the entire circular space in the rink. Taking the whole arena.
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I can stand firmly enough on two feet to lift the cat. People say I’ll walk the dogs again, soon, like I used to three months ago. I’ll lift the pups into the car and I’ll naturally press the clutch and shift. We’ll walk down a path, around a small lake. I’ll say to them, “We’re doing it. We’re doing it!”
People spring to help like popping blossoms. In public places people run to grab the door.
I spent thirteen weeks being a different creature, an exoskeleton left leg, and I walk with the strength of arms and shoulders pushing my weight down on aluminum sticks with rubber stoppers. Glide, touch, glide, touch. Float through the air. I catch a door open with my crutch and let myself in. I can guide my way along by tracing my left big toe on the ground in front of me. My palms calloused and the left sole of my foot soft.
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The dream repeats. I walk. It’s easy. There was a mistake. The surgeon was over-cautious. I can walk normally after all. Twelve weeks was really eight or five weeks. I leave my crutches leaning against the car or kitchen door and walk through fields behind the Lifebridge church and over a wooden bridge over a familiar river and down a road I’ve been down before and I think, What a strange mistake. The dogs are with me in their three-legged status, and we walk and we walk and we walk and we run.
Will I dream now of the other life; the one where I was not exactly land bound, another creature, in-between? Push lift, glide, swoosh. I’m the passenger, driven through town and past the lake. My friend and my other friend bring me dinner, and my brother sends money and a student, a gift. The dream of people’s faces and their animals in their rooms in their squares on my laptop wishing me well and asking what I need.
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Alone in my kitchen I hang a crutch on the same hook where dog leashes go. The physical therapist says a guy with my injury and the same hardware in his knee went from crutches to no crutches in three days. It’s three days. I try it. Heave my body forward. I join the clumsy ones. Slow. Step Left. Quick right. Step left. Right. My mind starts to feel back to normal. I’m just someone with a couple swollen joints and a little pain in my ankle and knee. I’m just someone a little weak, my mind thinks. This walking is. But also not. I’m in the between.
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I roll half-way over in bed. Jake is already lifting his slow paw to my arm, face. “Look, look It’s morning-time!” I say, in a high excited voice that makes the dogs wag. There’s the luxury of sleeping and now waking with no leg brace. It feels like a tight rubber band is installed in my left knee. My knee feels like some strange body pasted in my own body, like a child’s drawing of a leg. No connection really, to the rest of my leg. Will it hold me up? Jake & Chloe paw my head, my arm. I pat bellies, ears. I kiss noses. I feel for any bumps, stickers, pine pitch between toes. I run my fingers down their spines and massage their shoulders. I keep up my happy voice about the morning and what we’ll do today as I stand and grab a crutch. The dogs are curious, and only slightly judgmental as I throw a foot forward and lunge along.
~o~