–creating an exercise habit. I’ve been working out 6 days/week since early September. It’s not always easy to fit in and I don’t always enjoy the effort, but I love how important it’s become in my life and how good I’m feeling these days.
–reconnecting with an old favorite activity, canoeing, as I learn how how to paddle outrigger-style. A friend’s been taking me out on the Back Bay periodically through the holidays and I’ve decided to join a team so I can train more intensely and race. I can’t believe that I’m nearly 40 and I’ve just joined up with a new team sport. It’s amazing the places this journey of my life takes me.
–getting a spiffy new c-leg because mine’s an old out-of-warranty model. I had various fittings over the past 2 months and if all goes well I’ll have it in hand (or rather, on foot) Friday morning. This one will have a remote control. I kid you not. And no way am I telling my teenage kids where I’m hiding that little gizmo (no replay of “The Wrong Trousers” happening around here, I say)
–working diligently on my academic projects, including the first final draft of the diphtheria chapter for my dissertation. It’s a love/hate thing: love the process of history-making, hate that my intentions are always loftier than what emerges on the page. I love/hate diphtheria, too–love learning about the disease (fascinating stuff, that), hate the sorrow and horror of lives lost to it.
–finding novels again. For awhile I’d given them up, having grown weary of reading (not an unimaginable thing when you realize that I digest 4-10 books/week for my “work”). While in NYC I discovered books all over again. The joy! I’ve been coming home with a stack of novels from the library each week and am simply devouring them. I allow myself to read in that space of time after the daily work is done and I’m not quite yet ready for sleep. I just finished _The Blind Assassin_ and started _Arrowsmith_ last night.
How about you, what steps have you been taking lately?
When I received this ritual, it didn’t occur to me to remove my artificial limb. Most likely that was due to the fact that I wouldn’t have been ambulatory without it, and also because I was not sure exactly what the “rules” were about such things and no one clarified them for me (for the most part, these rituals are not explained beforehand, due to their sacred nature). Since then I’ve learned that women with breast prosthetics can choose to wear them during the ritual. I’ve never heard any definitive word on the wearing of artificial limbs, but I suspect that it is allowable.
Because of the staging of this ritual, it was not evident to the recipients that I was wearing an artificial leg until it was nearly completed, when the officiant bent down in front of me to bless my legs (while I was seated on a throne-chair). After undergoing the washing and anointing a few times, I learned to catch the gaze of the officiant as she reached out to touch my not-real leg. There was often a pause. Usually a knowing glance was exchanged between us as she continued on with the script of the ritual (were she to speak words other than those prescribed, the ritual would be deemed ineffective and would have to be repeated according the prescribed pattern).
In the moments after the ritual, as we waited for me to be escorted by an officiant to the next step in the process, there was often a moment for some whispered conversation. Usually the officiant would mention something about my leg, asking how did I lose it, or commenting that my prosthesis looked very lifelike (which was back in the day before I chose to let my robotic innards hang out).
Those ritual moments, are, for me, emblematic of how I view my relationship to my prosthetic leg. It seems as much a part of me as my tongue, or my eyes, or my liver. That I take it off at night and lay it next to my bed, doesn’t make it any less “me.” That it is a thing of metal and plastic and vinyl, doesn’t make it any less familiar than my other leg and foot. That it sometimes makes an audible whirring adjustment sound when I walk through quiet spaces, is no different than the familiar creaks of my organic joints. That its parts are fabricated from components that come from all over the globe, and are assembled by workers in Germany and are fitted to my body by men in Orange County, doesn’t make it any less me. Perhaps what makes it feel the most ‘foreign’ is the attention that my leg garners as I move through public space. It is the reaction of others that reminds me that I am different.
I suppose that being a cyborg comes “naturally” to me. I couldn’t live my life normally without the microprocessor in my knee, or the metal crutches that I use when I’m not wearing my prosthetic. These tools are so much a part of my life that they are my life. They are familiar in the same way that my hands are on my keyboard. I don’t think each time I type that I am sending letters from my fingertips to the screen and out to you. I just do it. Like that, I just walk. And stand. And move. The way that I do.
*Note: recently there were some changes to this ritual that include less physical interaction between officiant and recipient, and also how much clothing is removed beforehand. I am discussing how it worked back in 1992, when I first participated.