INNER GRAVEL

On this beautiful Seattle morning, Flynn and I made our way up to what has become one of our favorite destinations, Greenlake Park. We took our place in the “For Feet” lane of the paved trail that surrounds the lake in a 2.5 mile loop and made our way along the sunny east bank. In the “For Wheels” lane, skateboarders, bicyclists, and in-line skaters whizzed past us as we walked.

Flynn had gotten into the lake to splash and to drink and, when he was finished, we continued on. We had nearly reached the boat rental area when I saw something that caught my eye insistently. On this late summer morning, most everyone around us had on as little clothing as law (and only in few instances, good taste) would allow. Shorts, halters, tank tops, sports bras and running shorts were all in abundance. And yet, walking toward us was a woman who stood out in striking contrast to everyone else. She was wearing a black, long-sleeved top that reached her mid-thighs, a lovely persimmon-colored scarf wrapped loosely about her neck, long pants, a black, large-brimmed hat, and large dark glasses. What I particularly noticed about her was that she was not wearing shoes. Not only was she not wearing shoes, she was not even carrying shoes, made even more peculiar by the fact that she was choosing to walk in the gravel on the lake side of the footpath. Directly across the footpath was soft, well-tended grass; but this woman was deliberately striding barefoot in the gravel. From the time I first took notice of her to the time that she passed by us, not more than 15 to 20 seconds could have elapsed. In that time, as we drew nearer to one another, I also realized that she was not wincing as she walked. Her gait was strong and purposeful; yet, on her face there was no sign of the effort that it clearly must have taken for her to walk over those sharp pebbles with bare feet. As we neared to pass one another, I noticed that the hat on her head did not completely cover her scalp and, where it was exposed, I could see that her hair was quite patchy and quite short; perhaps as though she had lost it and it might be just coming back in, or she was on her way to losing it and it was on its way out. “Chemo?” I immediately wondered… and then, the bare feet in the gravel made perfect sense to me.

When circumstance affords us the enormous opportunity to stare down the barrel of our own mortality and we don’t blink, we are inwardly realigned. This I know first-hand from trauma of my own, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my supposition about her was true, that she had been afforded a similar experience in the form of an illness. Having gratefully emerged out the other side of my own peek behind the curtain between this world and the next, I wondered if she wasn’t walking barefoot and steeling herself through that discomfort because the pain of it made her realize she was still alive.

That also led me to ponder something deeper that a dear friend had told me about the years and years of physical abuse they had received at the hands of their parents. This was coupled with corporal punishment relentlessly doled out in the parochial school they had attended. Good deeds went unnoticed, and the only time attention was paid to the child was when they received a beating. I didn’t understand at the time when they told me that, “at least when you received a beating, you knew you were alive.” I understood it today.

As Flynn and I continued our walk and eventually left the park, thoughts continued to flood in about what I had seen, what I had supposed, and what it had led me to further speculate. With as much physical and emotional pain as I have endured in my own lifetime, I realized that I have come to re-imagine pain as a positive tool. As it has relentlessly rolled through and taken me into an excruciating darkness that I feared I may never emerge from again, I learned that I had had a choice. I learned that I could choose to submit to it and allow it to devour me; or that I could choose to stand up to it and allow it to empower me. Pain can be a torturer and it can be a teacher. How we ride out that experience is largely determined by the lens we choose to look through when facing it down.

I also know full well that this philosophy may not always apply… none of us knows what the future holds in store for us, and there may come a time when life hands me a bill that cannot be paid with the currency of hindsight and the placement of a well-turned phrase. I thought I knew all about pain after going through natural childbirth twice. I learned after the bone and vascular trauma that nearly took my life that I knew nothing about pain and how debilitating and devastating it can actually be. Pain with an end in sight is a completely different entity than pain that refuses to leave the room, sits in the corner with a surly smile and watches you dispassionately as you suffer.

Perhaps that woman was walking that gravel barefoot in the joy of the triumph of her ability to stare pain down and win. I realized that perhaps, the hard edge of the joy that I derive from my walking the lake trail on a knee that is throbbing and a calf that is aching with claudication is my own “inner gravel.” I walk now through the comparatively minimal pain of a reconstructed knee because in comparison to what I’ve already been through, this is nothing; and because I take full measure of the now humbly comprehensible gift it is to know that I’m still alive.