It does hurt, just like I always thought it would. The difference is, now I am not letting that stop me. For twenty five years, maybe longer, I let it slow me to a relative crawl. That and the wobbly gait, the left leg that doesn’t quite push off or land like the other, longer one. The discrepancy isn’t much, maybe three quarters of an inch, but the bone also set a little twisted, on account of there wasn’t much there to hold it together when all was said and done.
In the summer of 1966, when I was ten, I climbed up a eucalyptus tree in some yet-to-be-developed patch of woods on the outskirts of Riverside, California. There was an irrigation ditch, my friend Patty, who always had been a bit dodgy in the friend department, and some construction workers not too far away, who were in the process of changing the yet-to-be-developed status of that particular piece of ground. In my memory, it was a remote and somewhat exotic place, as trees were not something we encountered on our usual expeditions, up into the dry southern California foothills, with their caves and rattlesnakes and jackrabbits.
To be honest, I have no idea where that place was in relation to our homes or our usual stomping grounds, or even how we got there, though I imagine we must have gone on our bikes. It was good then, to be able to just go, get the heck out of the house and the yard, so long as we were back by dinner. My mom had a cowbell she used to ring for me and my two sisters, and we could hear it for miles. Somehow, though, I suspect this place was not within cowbell-calling distance of home. Whatever. There we were, with me up the tree, and Patty away down there on solid ground, shading her eyes, looking at me silhouetted against the hot afternoon sun, perched at the conversion of two gigantic limbs (very few actual, what you would call branches on a eucalyptus tree) feet planted at that point on bare wood, the slippery, semi-detached bark in patches, like challenges on an obstacle course, between me and terra firma. Or not. Patty. Looking at me or not. I suspect not, but if I do include her in the memory, she watches, because she’s worried, thinking I may have gone too far. In the hospital later, I would often dream I could fly, but that was after the fact, and turned out in any configuration of time, motion and logistics, to not be true.
To be continued ...
