Thick-soled boots. Thick socks. Thin black lycra onion-layered. My outfit about 1/8th Ninja, 1/8th granny-on-a-hike. Even on Gloucester Road, where you could wear a cat on your head and no-one look twice, I swear I had a few second-glances.
“Well you do have quite a neat little figure”, said J – ever the gentleman, as we walked to meet L, after breakfast of soft-poached eggs, fried mushrooms, chewy buttered-toast, and coffee.
“They were looking at my socks and boots, not my arse”, I said, “anyway, you’re biased”.
He dropped us off, and in the town square there were loud drums and loud bright people to send us off. L grimaced. I grimaced back. We had both pulled our lycra vest tops down as far as they would stretch to cover our bums.
We walked quickly through the small crowd, and made ourselves a little smaller as we passed the open-air stage.
Sometimes all you want is ordinary.
Registering, our names ticked off by smiling women who weighed down their papers with water bottles as the strong gusting wind grabbed at them. Then hanging back a little, we joined the walk.
We smiled and said thank you every little while to the stewards, who stood patiently and pointed the way as the rain dripped down them, and we trailed by. A long thin line, following the tow-path out of the city. Ahead of us a father with his two children, and an eager dog sniffing the air and pulling at the lead. Quite a few fathers walking alone with their children. Older couples. Small groups of friends.
All wearing purple t-shirts with the slogans, ‘Let’s walk together’. And, ‘Living Well with Cancer’.
After her diagnosis, L’s husband had run a marathon for her.
Mine left me. Trapped a while by my illness, he came back to sit next to me, white-faced as my plastic surgeon told me, how he would “Scoop it out” and then gently measured my pound of flesh for reconstruction.
We talked through treatment options, and in the day-time he would sometimes hold my hand to steady me along over-bright hospital corridors as I stumbled on. But my love, father-of-my-child, was a ghost to me. At night he haunted our house staying for our boy, sweet two-and-a-half. I would listen to daddy’s expressionless voice reading bed-time stories, as I lay in my room. Then he would tuck him in smothering his baby-face with kisses, and walk quietly past my door, up the next flight of stairs, hand stroking the mahogany bannister, to his own bed in the attic. I would lie listening out, sleepless. Untouched, un-held in the darkness. Breathless with fear and loss.
L and I found a steady rhythm to our walking. And we didn’t stop talking, not for a minute. Chatter shimmering in the air between us as the grey light over the muddy water. Past the floating harbour. Past an ex-lover’s red-painted boat. A Banksy mural. Stopping to take a photo smiling broadly, with the suspension bridge, towering above us. Walking with the water beside us – always a promise of wider seas.
My face open to the warm wind and rain. Warm perfumed pricklings of sweat in the gulley of my chest bone between my old breast and my new one. We walked together, two friends, talking about everyday things. Our mouths moving as much as our legs. Ordinary. Little bits of gossip. Children, school, dancing, kisses, house plans, ours and other people’s. One foot in front of the other for seven miles of our lives. Strong and well, and chatting.
We have both come a long way. Some of it together, and some of it beautifully ordinary.