A Brief History of My Knees
I did not really have them as a baby. No bone, all cartilage, flexible to exit the womb, to wobble and fall without breaking. Pure articulation. Each knock or bump promptly kissed better, twin pom poms, soft and freckled. I was two, three, six perhaps, before the caps hardened to bone. Before they met the unmalleable world.
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We were not allowed to ride bikes in the cemetery, so of course we rode our bikes directly to the cemetery. There was no traffic there, the streets paved and good for racing, and behind it? The construction site for a warehouse, one that had left a hill of displaced dirt about fifteen feet high. Slopes gentle enough to walk up but steep enough to speed down. We had named it Devil’s Hill. The older kids took turns, gathering velocity with glee. When it was my turn, I made it all the way to the bottom, but the wheels slid out as I braked, and I crashed onto my left knee, scraping off a large patch of skin. Gravel and loose dirt mixed with blood. We wiped the wound the best we could with leaves and grass before making our way home. I headed straight to the bathroom, rinsed it, tried not to touch the raw and tender skin. I slapped on a Band-Aid, figuring if no one saw it, I wouldn’t get in trouble. I took care to keep the bandage on through baths and changes of clothes, but I couldn’t avoid favoring that leg, and when my father removed the bandage, the wound bloomed with green pus. He wasn’t angry, but he told me he had to clean it, and it was going to hurt. He was not wrong, the peroxide plunging its needles into the wound and peaking into white foam.
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I was always on the move as a teen, and my knees were a wonder. They danced. They flipped off diving boards. They crouched to hide behind bushes when the police drove by the park where we drank beer. They ran around softball diamonds, turning and diving to grab line drives down the third base line. They shivered when boys laid hands on their bare curves, peeking out from my uniform skirt. Oil-shot, fluid. Bliss hinges. Bruised and tender fruit, the kind whose battering makes them sweeter.
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Axis. Bend. Bond. Bracket. Bridge. Connection. Copula. Coupling. Crux. Elbow. Hook. Joint. Juncture. Link. Pin. Spring. Swivel. Unity. Vinculum.
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I started to run in my twenties. I completed my first marathon at twenty-nine, and I continued throughout my thirties and forties. No race was easy, and none were pretty. The last marathon involved hours of tears and, upon finishing, crawling into a hotel bed with bleeding feet and ice packs tied to my knees with towels. My knees still handle workout stress in various ways. One knee gets stuck in position if I don’t move it enough, and I cup a hand over the top as if to cradle the pain, like catching water from a pump. They swell, and I ice them. They pop, and I rest them. RICE, RICE, baby.
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Nemeses of the clumsy: Coffee table corners. Uneven sidewalks. My own feet. Hems of flared yoga pants. Hidden divots in gravel or grass. Deep stairs. Worn stone stairs. Wet stairs. Stairs in general. Midwestern winter parking lots. The knees are the first responders of the clumsy, heroes bearing the brunt of each misstep. Little turtle shells. Little armadillos.
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The closest they have come to a serious injury was a torn meniscus at age fifty-five. Not from some feat of athleticism or bravery, but from walking my dog when he stopped and stiffened and turned me two directions at once. The doctor pointed out the minor tear and evidence of significant arthritis, explained that surgery wasn’t warranted, suggested rest and low-impact exercise. It was all a bit anticlimactic. After years of being told my knee pain was nothing, I was expecting a revelation. As it turns out, they are simply imperfect, things that I depend upon despite their flaws, like a car that has no heat and a door that won’t open, but still starts and gets you where you need to go.
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Pop and lock. Buckle and twist. Contort and hyperextend. The therapist says lunges and squats. Cobblers and figure fours. Dead bugs and happy babies. Clamshells and step ups. Deadlifts and foam rollers. No burpees, says the orthopedist. They keep me in business.