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Nearly seven years ago, in a lazy effort to return to my pre-wedding/pre-baby weight, I decided to take daily walks around the neighborhood with Meredith in her stroller. When we first embarked on our daily walks, my ambition was reflected in my wardrobe. I wore cheerleader-esque zippers-on-the-leg pants with shiny new running shoes. I wore a sports bra (under my t-shirt, of course). I packed a 64-ounce water bottle. I felt like some sort of ultra-fit Flo Jo athletic wizard. The first few walks were outstanding. And then I suffered a minor setback. I fell down.
Our walk (which happened to be exactly 1/2 mile long), consisted of seven legs. As we finished each leg, I would make an announcement to Meredith such as, “Leg three is now over, MC. That means four legs to go!” (It’s always good to encourage mathematical curiosity in a five month old, correct?!) At the end of leg four on our Mommy Fell Down walk, I looked down and noticed that MC’s left foot was sockless. Ugh. This meant I had to retrace our steps to find Sockie. (Everything has a nickname, right? Right!) Because of my (often cute) control issues, I immediately began to lose my mind a bit. Our seven leg walk had the potential of turning into an eleven leg fiasco.
We turned around and backtracked through leg four. No Sockie. As we turned onto leg three (one of our most hated uphill legs), I looked toward the middle of the hill and spotted Sockie lying on the ground. “Sockie! I see the sockie!” I exclaimed for MC. (At this point I’m sure a few neighbors were nervously peeking out their windows in “I see a frothing rabid dog” style. Remember that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird?!)
We trudged down the hill, and when we reached Sockie, I performed the very athletic and graceful maneuver of bending over as I walked and sweeping up the sock without stopping. “I am like Tara Lipinski, MC! Or Scott Hamilton!!” (I lack creative athletic references, you know.) We then turned around and began walking up the hill again.
“MC, do you think we should take off your other sockie so as not to confuse your body’s temperature regulation?”
A bit too confident, I began pushing the stroller from the side. As I continued to march up the hill, I bent down and removed MC’s sock from her right foot. And then I ran over my own left foot with the stroller. And then I tripped over my left foot with my right foot and began falling in slow motion and yelling “Oh! Oh!” because I was terrified that I would accidentally let go of the stroller and MC would end up flying backwards down the hill at eighty miles per hour. I maintained a death grip on the stroller (which stayed upright, thank God) as my legs spazzed out beneath me and I crashed into an ugly mess on the road.
It took me less than a second to untangle my pretzeled legs and sheepishly jump up to an upright position as if I was in complete control, and perhaps simply rehearsing for the lead role in Irene Cara’s “Crashdance.” I glanced around and smiled the smile of a semi-depressed and ponytailed high school cheerleader as I quickly resumed the uphill battle of leg three.
“Tally ho, MC! Heh! Ow!”
We skipped the remaining legs of our walk that day, as I needed to return home and remove tiny rocks from my right calf and thigh.
Jeff: What happened?
Me: We fell down.
Jeff: Who fell down?!
Me: Me! I did! I fell down! And also, something about the sockie! Don’t talk to me!
(It’s fun to live with me.)
Our daily walks drastically changed after the Mommy Fell Down walk. I no longer wore athletic pants. In fact, I often wore my most uncomfortable pair of jeans which would serve as a restraining device in case I entertained the urge to pick up speed. Instead of being “Nancy Kerrigan and Her Baby Taking a Graceful and Polished Walk” we became “Fluid Pudding and MC Carefully Moseying.”
And I suppose that’s the way it should be.
(This is a photo of of moseying in October of 2003. As you can see by the look on my face, I was a lover of exercise.)
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