Healing Ankles, Frozen Waters

I am sitting at the dining room table with my right foot atop two pillows. On the ankle, no longer broken, but healing, is a full bag of ice—frozen water, my daughter informs me—working assiduously to reduce the swelling. I’ve been in physical therapy for the past 6 days—working aggressively (the therapist’s term) to get me back to my regular running, well, moving, program. I nodded at him anxiously and with a little anxiety.

Can I really just move back into the life that stopped abruptly six weeks ago when I broke my ankle? How can I ever move back into the life without the memory of breaking the ankle? As Dylan writes, “I used to care, but things have changed.” I long for that moment when I can walk unassumingly and without limp. I anticipate the time when I need not calculate every move so as to accomplish my purpose with greatest conservation of energy. I cannot wait to give up my crutches. Well, to do without at least the metal ones on which I stand; the psychic ones, well, we’ll address them another day. Now, I want once again to run on the roads.

But I broke my ankle once, and I cannot live without that memory. I cannot forget. And I am wondering what that might mean to me in my daily life. Certainly, I will be very cautious when I am around ice—frozen water—and will no longer be so cavalier about my steadiness of foot. Certainly, I am now more conscious of the earth’s subtle undulations: I feel the slightest depression.

Perhaps I will enjoy in a new way the movement on the roads when I compare it with the sedentary nature of my present existence. But now, my ankle is very cold from the ice—frozen water—and I am weary and tired.