broken toes - the narrow and wide

In many ways narrowing down really focusses the mind and senses.

When you can't use and know you mustn't use some unprotected snapped or fractured bones (and note, as my highly-qualified medical niece recently revealed to me, in medical terminology 'fracture' means 'broken', not a milder version of the same, which is what I and my literary friends used to think because why would you use two words to mean the same thing? - I am beginning to wonder if there is a potential pot of funding waiting here for an impactful creative writing research project to identify and expose/disseminate other such common but deeply-confusing misunderstandings experienced by people like me who won't take a broken bone seriously if it is called a fracture), yes, when you are unfortunate to have such a broken bone, or more than one, then you begin to appreciate everything those bones so quietly enable - crouching to garden; twisting to reach from a top shelf; the spontaneous little stroll down to the market, coffee shop, train station, running - in any form, yoga, trekking over rough country, inching over rough pebbly tracks - indeed every time I need to shift balance in one tiny way or another, those little toes really pull their weight.

When they break, or if they break, you also get to appreciate the foresight of the planners, designers, lawmakers in buildings and public transport systems that have taken the option of providing special seats, escalators, lifts. A visible limp, or even more visible crutch (I didn't get to have one of those), really clears the air, giving you space to move, averting that fear that someone will bump into you or tread on your foot, and bestowing upon you the right to ask for someone to give up their seat to you, together with the probability of receiving a very gracious response as well.

It reminds me of the time, after my first session with the Theatre Anthropological group in Japan as part of our year-long training to act in the Noh play I and a friend had translated, that I had to go to work with severely deeply sore tendons in my legs from over-exertion at the simple exercises our unrepentant director had had us do for a rather too extended period. I learnt, slowly and painfully, that you could negotiate your way all round Kanazawa University on disabled ramps without have to lift one foot up a stairway, despite the fact the campus is set up in the hills. I learnt because I needed to. I couldn't move up or down without great cost, so much so that in order to leave the room after teaching a class in a more or less graceful manner I found myself clandestinely clutching the table so as to lever myself up without too much of a grimace of pain.

And now? It's hard not being able to nip out when I like, but the compensations do stack up. Incapacity awakens such kindness and generosity in others, friends, sister, niece, colleagues, neighbour - offers of lifts, shopping, drives, cinema trips, meals, a supportive arm, an invitation to come to stay while I heal. It also provides plenty of writing time and a great excuse not to hoover or dust or weed for a while if I can manage to let the resultant clutter not get me down. It is an interesting experiment in exercise-desistment and how that might affect well-being and how to compensate for it - more meditation is a good idea.....  As conditions prolong, it becomes, too, needful to work on my own reluctance to receive help, and also to work on learning to ask for it, as well as beginning to decipher the thin but very important line between keeping safe and stable, letting things get stronger, and the alternative of striking out best or even worst foot forward to allow weight-bearing to play a positive role. I don't want to learn funny walking habits by hobbling around on my heel for too long and then promptly create some other problem as a result of that. Been there already....

There is the joy of firsts, coming outside for the first time in a week to hear and feel the sunny growing green airs of summer, climbing up (very carefully in a toe-footed sort of way) and picking the now very ripe, because not picked for so long, clusters of black blackcurrants and red gooseberries on my steep grassy bank, making a trip to my local town, to the big city, an afternoon stretched-out half asleep on the slightly damp grass near one of the outdoor sculptures at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park soaking in the unusually strong sun of early northern July, and revelling in the (imagined?) sense of a vitamin D topup in process. Mmmm can still feel it now. Narrowing down, widening up.