#34. The Joy of Independent Activity, in the Young, the Old, and the Injured

Musings following my intimate encounter with a rock in the woods

Credit: Jani Bryson

Dear friends,

Recently I became a 2-year-old. Well, not literally; I’ll be 80 in a few days.

What happened is this. I was riding my bicycle on a trail in a wooded area, as I often do, and as I was making a U turn my front wheel hit a tree root and I fell with my bike on my left hip. It was the kind of fall from which I would normally get up, dust myself off, check to be sure the bike is OK, and continue riding. But this time I couldn’t get up. If I tried to move my left leg at all the pain was excruciating. In 75 years and over 100,000 miles of bicycling, this was my first accident in which I got hurt.

After laying there for about 15 minutes hoping the pain would subside, I finally got out my cell phone (yay for cell phones!) and called my wife who, after arriving and realizing I could not get into the car, called 911. A cop arrived before the ambulance and said to my wife, “Yeah, that’s what men do; they won’t admit they need 911, so they call their wives; and their wives call 911.” I then had my first ever ambulance ride. This happened two weeks ago.

After 5 hours of my waiting on a gurney in a hospital hallway, they took some X-rays and found I had a fractured pelvis. When I fell my hip hit something hard, probably a rock. “It’ll heal,” they said, “but it’ll take a few months.” “You’re not a kid,” they said.

Ah, but in a way I am. I’m experiencing some of the frustrations and joys I see in the faces of toddlers. As I go through this period of healing, I want to do things for myself that I’m not quite capable of, and that is frustrating. But every day, partly from healing and partly from learning new ways to move, I find I can do more and more, and with every new achievement I feel some of the joy that toddlers feel.

I can toddle across the room, on crutches, like a child learning to walk. Gingerly at first, but then more confidently. In fact, yesterday I started doing laps around a circle through the dining room, kitchen, and living room and timing myself. I remember well the triumphant smiles my son showed, at about 12 months of age, when he first made it from the kitchen table to a nearby chair without falling, and then, again, each time he stretched his two-legged journey farther. I am feeling something like that with each new achievement. Now I can get in and out of bed by myself; dress myself; get to the refrigerator, open it, get out the eggs, and make my own breakfast. Yay! I see improvement every day, improvement I would not have experienced had I not had that fall. Each achievement is an adventure.

All of us want to do for ourselves what we can do for ourselves. We don’t want help we don’t need, at least not when the help implies that we are helpless. I’ve long been writing about that as applied to children; but it applies to all of us. Yes, all of us, regardless of age or injury, need help at times and are grateful for it. But we also need independence. We want and need to do for ourselves what we can do for ourselves. And we also want to help others when we can. That’s human nature. That’s how we stay alive.

With my best wishes,

Peter