Still Standing
A Brief Meditation on Gravity and the Body
This morning, while making breakfast for the boys, I caught myself saying something strange.
“Every part of me feels awake except my legs.”
It surprised me because I hadn’t noticed it until then. The coffee was working. My mind was already moving through the day. But my legs had apparently been keeping score. And they were tired.
I started thinking about how much I walk and how often I am on my feet. The train platforms. The classrooms. The grocery stores. The sidewalks. The kitchens. The carrying of books, bags, groceries, responsibilities, and children who are no longer small enough to carry but somehow still are.
Then I had one of those ridiculous thoughts that feels like it belongs in a word problem. What if I added up all the years I’ve spent standing? Not all at once, of course. Subtract sleep, chairs, couches, and benches. Add bicycles, buses, train rides, childhood wanderings, teaching, parenting, and pacing while writing—especially the pacing while writing. Then imagine turning around, not to look back a block or two, but across decades, and seeing every place your legs have carried you.
At some point, distance begins to feel like time travel.
No wonder my legs are tired.
One of the places I travel back to is Queens, New York. I’m a child again, riding home from school on a crowded bus, sitting all the way in the back when, at one stop, my mother climbs aboard carrying several grocery bags.
My first instinct is to stand and wave her over so she can take my seat. Before I can get her attention, though, someone near the front stands and offers theirs instead. Rather than pushing my way through the crowd, I stay where I am, figuring I’ll help carry the bags once we get off the bus.
For the rest of the ride, I keep sneaking glances toward the front. Every so often the bus sways and a shoulder or elbow shifts just enough for me to catch sight of her.
What I remember most is how tired she looked. She had already worked a full day. She was carrying groceries home. There was probably a box of our favorite cookies in one of those bags, and probably something she was planning to cook for dinner, which meant even more standing. There she was, getting a few moments of respite before the bus reached our stop and gravity had to be dealt with again.
That memory has stayed with me because it taught me something I wouldn’t understand until much later. When you have children, there is often another notch you can reach for, another reserve you didn’t know was there. The heart volunteers for another shift. The knees, however, may have a different opinion.
As someone who has spent much of his adult life carrying a few extra pounds, my legs have probably had a tougher argument with gravity than most. Maybe that’s why I notice them now. Maybe that’s why they occasionally remind me they’ve been part of this story the whole time.
These legs have carried me from Haiti into so many other places, through countries, states, transformations, and seasons of life. They’ve brought me farther than I could have imagined, all the way to this morning, standing in my kitchen by the sink.
I think about the elders I grew up watching. They always seemed to be moving—walking to the store, walking to church, walking home, walking because there was something that needed doing. I didn’t think much about it then. Now I do.
Sometimes when I get up too quickly, or after a long day on campus, I catch myself understanding the wisdom of a walking staff. Not because it means old age, but because it knows something about weight. It’s a small engineering of mercy, a way of telling gravity, “Not all of this has to go through me.”
Maybe that’s what aging is. Not the sudden arrival of old age, but the slow realization that your body has been carrying you for decades, quietly doing work you’ve rarely stopped to acknowledge.
Every now and then it asks you to notice. Not with pain, necessarily. Just with a gentle reminder.
I’ve been standing here a long time.
Maybe you have too.
Maybe some part of you is quietly asking to be noticed.
In practice, not perfection.
Yours,
Enzo