An app on my phone counts my steps. Yesterday, according to Appie, I walked 5615 steps. Half of those steps were in the neighborhood with Luci. Half were walking through a huge packed parking lot to the football field and back. 5615 steps, Appie said, equals 2.3 miles, my record on my fake knee.
Does everyone do this: walk around and watch yourself walking--as if you are your younger self looking? Or paying for popcorn and watching your fingers, not as nimble as they used to be, and thinking, "Whose hands are these?"
My gait is not yet what I'd like it to be, the left leg a tad wooden. To top it off, last night was what I've started calling a leg night--burning gnawing pain in the left leg. Will met me and helped me into the stands and by the time the halftime show was over, I couldn't get down the last steep step without putting my arms around his shoulders for a swing down.
The popcorn girls are sweet, maybe fourteen. I'm wearing a gray shawl and a denim skirt and one tells the other about me: "She's so cute." Cute is a word the young use for gray-haired women who are still upright and mobile, possibly more agile than their own grandmothers, possibly alive and their grandmothers aren't.
I look like a little old lady in their young eyes. I know this because I was once fourteen.
The younger women working the windows at the drive-throughs have started calling me "Mama" or "Sweetheart"--which has started to be just fine. All words of affection are welcome.
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