Gait analysis

Dear Z,

You started walking, really walking, on Monday. We were in our Parenting Education class and you were happily playing in the middle of the baby mosh pit when you suddenly stood up and walked 128 steps toward me (okay, maybe it was more like 10). I was shocked and enveloped you in a big hug. Ever since then, you walk like it’s your job. Your face is full of concentration. Your gait is a little stiff and arrhythmic, your arms out in front of you like Frankenstein. Your feet pad along, with or without shoes, on grass, concrete, hardwood floors and rugs. And, often, you walk fast, arms reaching towards me with a big grin on your face, knowing that you will be greeted by yet another huge hug. This is my job.

I suppose I could get all weepy and “now-you-can-walk-away-from-me” about it, but I have to say it’s a welcome change from being permanently stooped over your toddling form, making yet another endless loop around the house and backyard. I love that you can go where you want to go. I love standing back and seeing where your curiosity takes us.

There are still some noticeable asymmetries in your body and movement, probably leftovers from your torticollis. I can’t decide whether this is a product of my imagination or a karmic joke on me. I cannot ignore what I see but I also know that I am primed to overreact given the fact that I spent the first 30 years of my life obsessed with dance and movement, trying anything and everything to get my body to approximate a perfect dancing instrument. My limitations as a dancer haunted and frustrated me. It took years of therapy to let go of them and accept my body as the beautifully imperfect thing it is. And sometimes when I look at you I think: here we go again.

Yesterday, we went to see Amy, your physical therapist, and she says you’re doing really well. And she says it’s not all in my head. You are still a little weak on that right leg, still stiff in the right side of your rib cage and shoulder. We need to watch your asymmetries so that you don’t develop any scoliosis. She’s worried about your lack of skill- and fear- with steps; since you never learned to crawl up them, you have no idea how to safely go down them. So I intervene and force you to use your right leg as you pull up, walk up steps and balance. I force you onto your pudgy knees and make you move down stairs safely. You push my hands away and get fussy as I try to change the movement patterns that you think work perfectly well.

And I whisper to you: “I know you’re frustrated, Z. But this too is my job.”