Of the moment

A story about a timely matter.

24 April 2023

Sarah Cedeño —

The Cane

I

That the cane was delayed in shipping created in my mind the desperation of needing it immediately. I’d ordered it half-heartedly from Etsy after many clicks and zooms on the carved wooden features. I’d shown it to my mother, who appreciated the pretty measure of safety.

The cane arrived after a conference in Seattle when I fell, slamming my nose and cheek into the crossing guard’s toned and unforgiving thigh. There had been a smattering of writers and some families waiting to cross. 

Do not ask if I’m okay, I sent out to the universe. I probably made some kind of guttural, embarrassing noise as I landed. Life’s parade of tiny humiliations. 

I was horrified. 

I was fine. 

My knees turned the terrific colors of a sunset and then the yellow-green of a tornado sky. 

II

Consider a cane, my fifth and current neurologist had said at my last appointment, after we’d discussed how the illness had progressed from relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis to secondary-progressive.

So you slow down. 

So you feel more secure. 

So people will give you space. 

So you don’t fall. 

III

I hadn’t told my two sons about the cane. They’d been protected from seeing much of my MS, though I had fallen flat on my face twice in their presence—once in the middle school with their friend, and once on State Street. 

I’d always been clumsy, and most every symptom could be blamed on aging. And yet here I was, with a cane I might never need, six months into forty. I never knew the appropriate amount of concern.

IV

One afternoon, I pulled up to our house, and in a mangled box, the cane held up its own cardboard. The boys microwaved a mountain of pizza rolls as I hurried through the kitchen with the box. 

My right leg had become slow to lift at the hip, a constant resistance, and my left foot scuffed the floor as usual. Over the last few years, my walk had become a source of distraction rather than second nature. Like a running song in my mind, suddenly and increasingly off-tune. My brain kept pace in the background, tried to right its pitch. 

In the living room, the boys fed their faces pockets of scalding cheese and sauce and did not wait to finish what was in their mouths before they asked. 

“What is it?” Sam, a month from turning twelve. He had probably thought, new hockey stick?

I sat the box on the couch next to Johnny, fourteen. 

“A cane,” I said.

“A what?” Johnny asked, lifting a pizza roll. 

“A cane,” Sam said, chewing.

I struggled with opening the box so inefficiently it became obnoxious. I’d expected it to be wrapped in tissue paper, but it had been banging around in the box. It was fine.

Our dog Maisy nosed the cardboard to the floor. I held the cane up for examination, but the boys didn’t examine it really, and neither did I. 

Johnny glanced and kept chewing as if the cane were an unwelcome guest. I’d likely misread his face as something between sadness and rejection, when maybe it had just been confusion. 

I set the cane down and it rolled into a casual lean against the couch, rested at the angle of ordering a drink at the bar.

I became embarrassed I had bought it at all. I worried that people might roll their eyes for how unafflicted I appear. 

“It’s not like I need it right now,” I said. 

Though increasingly, when I was tired, hot, or anxious my legs dragged like two heavy suitcases and I felt like a Weeble Wobble.

“I might never need it at all,” I said. “Or I might, and it will be fine.” 

Sam lay, a bridge between two couches, head on one couch, feet on the other. He tapped his phone from beneath his Bills’ hat. 

“You’re my mom. You’re always going to walk,” Johnny said, carrying his plate to the kitchen. 

My legs, little fuckers. 

I brought the cane to my office, leaned it in different places, under different lamps. I situated it against the shelves holding my Alice Munro collection and against the old green metal typewriter desk, where it took on the appearance of waiting. 

V

When everyone was at hockey, I took out the cane. 

Maple, richly toned, carved with folk art suns, a wide strand of diamond pattern, and flowers. I had worried about regarding it as an accessory rather than a tool, but I didn’t know why. From the living room, I’d caught myself admiring it through the office doorway. In shadows, the cane appeared hopeless. In light, it was fine. It was beautiful. Maisy slept on the chaise as usual, face in my direction. The cane, like a service dog, but not at all. 

Its handle was a little large for my hand, maybe. I didn’t know. Maybe it was comfortable. What did I know? At first, I leaned on it, which required some balance. I made sure the height was proper according to the Internet. I set it at different angles, arms at fifteen degrees for effectiveness. 

I walked entirely out of sync with the cane. I learned that it could trip, like real legs. I tried it in either hand, stepped first with either leg. I tried to coordinate the cane to sync with either weak foot. This would take more than one session. 

Maisy paced the room with me and the cane. I walked through the foyer, listening to the thud of its rubber bottom, louder than my own steps. When I messed up and started over, I was glad I’d been with Maisy in an empty house instead of trying to cross a street in Seattle.

Before the boys returned, I leaned the cane anywhere in the house. Against the dishwasher. The window ledge in the pantry. The vanity in the bathroom. Off the back of the couch. I was trying not to be fussy with an object at my mercy.  Like any new addition, I’d accept it settling randomly, organically, around the house. It would be waiting. 

Sarah Cedeño’s chapbook of essays, Not Something We Discuss Often, was published by Harbor Editions in November 2022. Her work has appeared in Brevity, The Journal, 2 Bridges, The Pinch, The Baltimore Review, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Sarah holds an MFA from Goddard College. She lives in Brockport, NY with her husband, two sons, some old ghosts, and a dog. She teaches writing at SUNY College at Brockport.

Photo by KJ Hannah Greenberg

KJ Hannah Greenberg tilts at social ills and encourages personal evolutions via poetry, prose, and visual art. Her images have appeared as interior art in many places, including Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Les Femmes Folles, Mused, Piker Press, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Front Porch Review, and Yellow Mama and as cover art in many places, including Angime, Black Petals, Door is A Jar Literary Magazine [sic], Impspired [sic], Pithead Chapel, Red Flag Poetry, Right Hand Pointing, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The Broken City, Torah Tidbits and Yellow Mama. Additionally, some of her digital paintings are featured alongside of her poetry in One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).