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Epigraph

"She had devastating damage to the brain. She was always very motivated, but I didn't think she'd ever be able to do this running. She very pleasantly did not confirm my prognosis."

-Dr. Albert Goodgold, New York University Medical Center, neurologist Quoted in the Boston Tab, "One Step at a Time: Stroke survivor overcomes disabilities," November 12, 1991

Chapter 1: That Intrinsic Joy

In mid-sentence he stepped away from me, deeper into the center of my living room, not focused so much on the movement as on his thought and the words he'd chosen to express it. I'm not sure he was even aware he'd moved.

Me? I was watching as much as listening. Watching and noticing.

It was different now, the way he moved-smooth, more fluid, more confident. It was almost as if, after thirty-five years of living in his body, he'd discovered its extent, and understood that extent now too; understanding the parameters of its parts, internalizing as well, the purposes for each of those parts. It was as if before, his body had been only packaging for his brain, unworthy of his consideration as long as it continued to get what his brain needed and to move his brain where it needed to be.

"It's strange, you know," he was saying, "most of the time I really hate running. I have to make myself get out there and do it."

He stepped, closer to me. I'd begun serving dinner, ziti heaped with steaming hot eggplant stew, one plate already on the table.

"When I was a little kid," he said speaking softly, "if we were thinking about going out just to exercise, my father would tell us to get out the lawn mower or do something constructive-wash the cars, work out back -so it's strange . . . to be just running." He pursed his lips in a tight smile, eyebrows raised. "Sometimes," he continued, then correcting himself, "-and it happens a lot, as I'm getting to the end of my route, I feel as though I could go on running forever-my legs working, my arms pumping, my heart pounding . . . "

He clenched his hands waist-high, shoulders square, and showed me, jogging only his upper body-his feet unmoving, his cautious, tight-lipped smile shrouded behind his beard.

"I remember," I murmured.

And I did. I remembered running-on hard-packed sand, across grassy playing fields, over red North Carolina dirt, along deep Florida sand, around the Wheaton Dimple, in Central Park, running and laughing between the bases in a spirited game of "pickle," with and playfully away from schoolgirl boyfriends. In that moment, I remembered the feeling of my body running anywhere. Running wherever and whenever I chose to take it.

But especially I remembered running on the beach, on the hard-packed, sandy beach at low-tide in front of my folks' house. Even after ten years, sometimes I still dreamt . . . "What do you suppose it is?" David asked.

We sat down to eat. And to talk more.

"It," I said, dragging myself from my reverie, trying to recall his last remark, and then remembering. "The feeling you could go on forever?"

"Yes," he said, the next forkful poised to eat. "I couldn't, of course. There's a limit to how far the human body can run before it wears out."

I nodded, thinking. "I wonder," I paused, an explanation formulating in my mind, "don't you think feeling you could go on forever has everything to do with the intrinsic joy of a body doing exactly what it's designed to do?"

"What's that?" David asked, deep creases between his eyebrows, at the bridge of his nose, another forkful of pasta suspended between the plate and his mouth.

"Move." As I spoke the one word a wave of sadness passed over me. Only fleetingly- after ten years, the sadness rarely swept as it had once. I'd almost gotten used to limits on my abilities-the physical and those other hidden limits-though I'd never stopped picking away at the limits. I was still "rehabilitating" myself-still punching the envelope of ability despite disability.

"Rehab" was what they'd called it in the hospital -after all these years, I kew it as my life. Two, three hours I worked each afternoon-stretching, strengthening, and on fine movement patterning-type exercises and activities making up a well-rounded physical therapy regimen.

This talk about running had raised an old memory: racing down the middle of the field chasing an unguarded ball, my hockey stick loosely cradled in both hands, parallel to the ground and suspended at mid-thigh, my one-size-fits-all shin pads rubbing their many folds against my ankles, the rubber cleats gripping the turf, my toes pulling, propelling me forward, the muscles in my calves, my thighs, my buttocks, my feet straining.

I remembered picturing, as I ran, a long-legged gazelle bounding gracefully over a field of tall grass, not the elephant on stiletto heels I see in my mind's eye now.

"Hmm," David remarked, interrupting my recollection of my fourteen-year-old self-my thick, mahogany-brown braid slapping the hollow of my spine as I raced after the white, rock-hard and fist-sized field-hockey ball. "That's an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that," he finished.

Even as David and I talked long after dinner, in the back of my mind I remembered how the air had burned in my lungs, almost feeling it. Long after school closed, in the late Autumn, toward the end of the game, the sun shining between barren tree branches, the cold air chilling our bare legs, when we'd chased up and down the field too many times to count.

I awoke to my alarm the next morning only vaguely aware of a dream about running the beach in front of my parents' home. Twisting the hot and cold handles to the shower one at a time and adjusting the temperature, I thought about how much I'd love to be a fly on the wall for one of David's toward-the-end-of-the-route moments, wondering how else I could actually see him feeling as though he could go on running forever, this man who, for as long as I'd known him, had eschewed exercise of any kind. Or see him even wanting to go on running forever.

But better than that, the thought seized me: What if I could do it myself? What if I could run again?

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