“How’s your knee?” This is my husband’s repetitive greeting each morning.  I know he’s concerned, but I typically brush his questions aside with something like “Okay for now…” and continue with my morning routine, warming up my body for the daily dog walk.  This morning, however, I couldn’t hide my frustration with a body that is, apparently, determined to speak far more loudly with complaint than I am willing to hear.  My knee, injured many years ago when I was hit by a car on a morning run, made climbing our front steps an exercise in pain and discomfort, even though I’ve been wearing a knee brace since the arthritis flared up again.  Since I favor the injured knee, the sciatic nerve in my left side is also complaining.  Aging gracefully, I’ve decided, is no mean feat.  Coming to terms with the changing body isn’t something I’m enjoying, certainly not today.  When John asked (again) how I was feeling this morning, I burst into tears.  It was less about pain and more about frustration.

and the body, what about the body?
Sometimes it is my favorite child,
uncivilized. . .

And sometimes my body disgusts me.
Filling and emptying it disgusts me. . . .

This long struggle to be at home
in the body, this difficult friendship.

By Jane Kenyon (From: “Cages” in Otherwise:  New & Selected Poems, 1996)

I managed a wan smile.  “Let’s not talk about my body today,” I said, sniffling.  “I feel like it’s falling apart, and that depresses me.”  John took me in his arms while I wept a little, immersed in self-pity.  Just days ago, aching knee and stiffness aside, I received the diagnosis for a swollen left toe.  Fearful I’d broken it somehow, I submitted to an x-ray of my foot.  The verdict?  “Arthritic changes in the toe.”  Huh?  Arthritis of the toe?  Although I joked about it with my husband, it was one more thing, and enough to send my spirits plummeting.

The thing is, my body seems intent on challenging my self-image lately.  I have always been active and energetic, someone who shoves furniture around without thought or carries potted plants from one place on the deck to another without concern.  I ran; I danced; I walked briskly, feeling like a woman able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or at least, tackle them with agility and determination.  But now I’m crying “Uncle!” as my body, bit by bit, or rather, joint by joint, is forcing me to make imposing revisions to my self-image—like it or not, it’s all about the undeniable process of aging.  This long struggle to be at home /in the body, this difficult friendship.

I’m admit it:  I’m guilty of taking my body for granted despite some serious accidents in childhood, surgeries and illness.  I’ve pushed on, undeterred by these physical set-backs, or at least undeterred until my body protested.  Now I am learning to accept I may have to make concessions I never considered.

Which body part will be the next
To make you think that you’re a wreck
That you’ve gone so far over the hill
All you can do is take a pill

From:  Body Parts:  A Collection of Poems about Aging, by Janet Cameron Hoult, 2010)

Sooner or later, our bodies fail us, whether in illness the process of physical wear or tear and age-related change.  When they do, it’s difficult to admit we’ve taken our physical health for granted—even denied their inevitable aging. Our bodies, in illness or decline, are the subject of many poems, as Kenyon Jane Kenyon’s “Cages,” or  Marilyn Hacker’s, “Cancer Winter,” for example, where  she referred to her body as “self-betraying.”  Mark Doty, in “Atlantis,” described the body of a friend dying from AIDS:  “When I put my head to his chest/I can hear the virus humming/like a refrigerator”  (www.poets.org).   But it is May Swenson, perhaps, whose poem, “Question,” I find most thought-provoking as I consider my body this week.   In it, she comes to terms with the inevitable demise of a body that has carried her through life, a life she can no longer take for granted.  She writes the questions we all contend with as our lives develop and change.  I read it and remember to be grateful for the body that has carried me this far—and will continue to carry me in years to come.

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure…?

(From: New & Selected Things Taking Place, 1978)

I’m learning to bow to the demands of my body, but it’s a process of balancing what’s good with the body without giving up what’s good for the soul.  Acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, physical therapy, daily exercise—I do it all.  I’m may not be entirely at peace with the aches and complaints of the body I inhabit, but it’s mine, the only one I’ve got, and I plan to use it for a good many more years.

Has your body spoken too loudly at times?  Betrayed you?  Let you down?  Forced you to come to terms with a “new” normal?  What precipitated the change?  How did you feel?  How have you made peace with an altered or changing body?  Write about the body.