I cannot wear cowboy boots.
My mother gifted me with her relentless calves, which preclude wearing shoes that go up past my ankles.
I've never been fashionable, so maybe it doesn't matter.
But then maybe it does, because even galoshes get stuck at the juncture where the goose egg of muscle rejoins the rest of my leg; when it rains I have the appearance of someone who does not believe in sensible shoes.
These calves would make my legs powerful, if I were the sort of person who does powerful things with her legs. But I am not that sort of person. My mother, on the other foot, is.
She power-walks, power-spins, and power-plays tennis, and with her Herculean calves she propels herself ever forward, fit as a fiddle. I suppose that would make me more of a cello.
When my mother was informed of her colon cancer, she planted those powerful legs on the ground, and she stood and stood.
I cried. She stood. The cancer bowed.
On one particular Wednesday, I ripped a hangnail nearly to my knuckle.
I had gone to a Zumba class that morning, couldn't keep up, and left early in shame.
I sat in my car, the paunch of my belly drooping perversely over the waistband of my pants, and I wondered, where is my tenacity? Am I even a trace of that powerful woman?
As my index finger bled onto my hopeful spandex, I looked down.
And there they were, my trembly and uncoordinated legs.
I do not feel powerful yet, but my legs tell a different story. They speak to my mother. They say, This is my tribe. I belong to you.
