Poco a Poco
All things in moderation, the Greeks counseled, and who argues with the sense of that, even if you don’t always follow the advice? Little by little is a common variation on the advice, a bit of wisdom that suggests that good things come through perseverance, and that, after all, Rome was not built in a day. “Bird by bird” was the way Anne Lamott’s father gave her the same advice when she was writing a report in high school. In other words, one step at a time.
One step at a time is literally the challenge for my neighbor, a gentle, unassuming woman in her 90s. She lives with her daughter and son-in-law in the house at the end of the lane. It’s on my left as I sit on the sofa in my living room, looking out at the lane, on my right as I arrive home and unlatch the gate to enter my garden. “Your mother,” I told the daughter just days after seeing the old woman again, “your mother is in great shape!” I meant she was totally alert mentally and very positive emotionally. She had suffered a fall and a broken leg six weeks earlier, requiring a hospital stay and rehabilitation in a clinic, but she was home now and still the same woman as before her fall: polite, welcoming, with a gentle, cheerful smile at the ready.
Yes, her daughter agreed, her mother doesn’t take any pills at all. She has no diseases or conditions to treat. It’s just her bones that are fragile, even disintegrating. Hence the difficulty of repairing her broken leg and the prolonged stay at the rehab center, supposed to be even longer. But after a month at the center, she’d wanted to come home. Her daughter told me she herself had lost six kilos in six weeks with the worry. Would her ancient mother withstand the surgery? Would the bone repair work? Would she be able to care for her mother at home? Would she find the help for when she couldn’t? Would her mother lose her good spirits? Would she ever walk again? The questions piled up almost overnight, these and others. Little by little, one by one, the answers are revealed: yes, yes, yes, yes, no, and remains to be seen.
The last question, about walking again, was not the most important, the daughter said and I agreed. Until all the others are answered. For now, her daughter said, her mother wasn’t allowed to put any weight on the leg at all. None.
Her daughter has someone come to the house to help in the morning with the worst part: lifting the woman from bed to wheelchair. After lunch, she gets moved from wheelchair back to bed for a siesta and to get her feet up, important for circulation, and then back to the wheelchair for the afternoon, then back to bed for the night.
“How is your back holding up?” I asked the daughter a few days later, when on my way to do an errand I bumped into the two women, out in the lane for some fresh air. We had already laughed about how strong the daughter would be getting, pushing the wheelchair. The lane is flat, but the house sits on a rise.
She was definitely feeling her back, the daughter said. Her mother beamed up from the chair.
The daughter explained that her mother had had an X-ray two days earlier that showed the bone was knitting nicely. She could now put weight on the leg, for a short time to begin with but a little longer every day.
“So now that you can put weight on your leg, it should be easier for everyone,” I said, trailing off.
“She can, but she doesn’t!” answered the daughter. The mother protested. “A little I do,” she said. “Oh, mother!” exclaimed the daughter. On we went, laughing and chatting in the lane. In the past, when I’d meet the mother and daughter taking a turn in the lane, the mother, leaning on her two walking sticks, would apologize after a few minutes to say she had to move, she couldn’t stand there any longer. Now, with the old woman comfortably seated, the three of us were talking without any sense of hurry. “She needs to do more,” said the daughter.
“Well!” said the mother. “I can only do what they tell me to. Poco a poco is what the doctor said. Poco a poco.” Charmingly she leaned forward to confide: “I don’t want to undo all my progress, do I?”
“Of course not!” I said. To her daughter I added, “And you can’t even scold your mother, she’s so pleasant and agreeable.”
Both the mother and daughter laughed. “Oh, yes, I can,” said the daughter, tossing her head, at the same time that her mother lowered her voice to whisper, “Oh, she does indeed!” They agreed on the scolding. Poco a poco they would come to agree on everything else, I expected. Then I strode off while my neighbors rolled on toward home.
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