Walking had always seemed effortless. Until I lost the skill

I don’t remember the first time I learned to walk. Little, pudgy feet with tiny toes and even teeny, tinier toenails gingerly stepping out.

Chubby legs staggering and bowing, arms waving madly for something to hold on to. A fierce look of determination. Mouth open in concentration.

We don’t remember learning to walk as children.Credit: Stock

Someone cheers loudly, disturbing the chugging train of thought and action. Losing balance in surprise and falling over, landing precipitously on a bottom cushioned by a well-folded nappy.

That’s how I remember my children when they first learned to walk. They were twins. Of course, there was an element of competition, as there is in every facet of twins’ lives: a winner and a loser, first and not first.

Twin One was first to crawl, leaving his sister flailing on the loungeroom floor, alone and crying, as he excitedly explored the house on all fours. Twin Two, naturally, retaliated by taking the first steps, and soon enough there were races with push carts up and down the hallway.

I do remember the second time I learned to walk. It was terrifying and excruciatingly painful. Standing, wobbling, trying desperately not to pee, telling my left foot, just lift up a bit and move forward. How do you do that? It had always seemed so effortless. Not that I had ever previously thought walking was easy because I had never really consciously thought about walking before. Natural, thoughtless, flowing movement. Those days were well in the past.

We take walking for granted until we can no longer do it easily.Credit: Joe Armao

OK, concentrate. Hard. Look at foot. Try not to fall over. I try talking inside my head to my unresponsive extremity. “Foot, it’s time to move now.” I add somewhat desperately, “please!” It listens, sort of, and shuffles gingerly forward. No weight on it. It didn’t really lift up. But it did move, right? Yes, just a few centimetres, but a small step for a woman is a large step for ... wait, getting dizzy. Focus.

“Arghhh, right foot, it’s your turn.” Concentrate again, breathing hard. Leaning heavily on two nurses, desperately just wanting to lie down.

I had been the victim of a truck going too fast on a dirt road. It flipped, I fell out and was left with multiple broken bones including a burst vertebrae. I spent two months in hospital, lying flat. Then one day, I was told to get up and walk.

Although year-on-year, the numbers are falling, road trauma in Victoria is horrendous. In 2022, the state recorded 240 deaths as we have hit the roads – sometimes literally – after the confines of pandemic lockdowns. But the number of serious injuries is far higher. In the 12 months to May 31 last year, the TAC processed 5183 claims involving hospitalisation. In fact, this is a drop on the five-year annual average of 7270. But behind those numbers: pain, disfigurement, disability, and post-traumatic stress. How many people are unable to ever run, skip, jump, love or laugh again? Lives forever changed. A road toll that, indeed, none of us ever want to pay.

Many people told me I was lucky to be able to learn to walk again. And so, I tried to tell myself, as I shuffled on, the pain shooting up my spine, flinching under the loud voice of the physiotherapist: “I don’t think you’re trying hard enough.” The blessed relief of standing in water, supporting my jagged bones. I wanted to be like a Dalek, suspended in fluid, enclosed in a protective cocoon, instead groping for my wheelchair desperately to get back to my bed and lie down. But yes, baby steps, I took them and eventually the pace quickened.

There’s another saying: don’t run before you can walk. In my case, it’s more just don’t run.

However, in an attempt to encourage some fitness, I turned to the fine example of my elderly father, who had resumed his youthful pleasure in athletics after he retired from his desk job.

The first time I learned to race walk was with him. In his 70s, he gave up running marathons and turned his attention to that graceful art of never lifting more than one foot off the ground while flying past more casual dawdlers. I consider myself in the latter category, and am rather ashamed to admit that a man in his 90s left me choking in his dust as he raced on by in a competition walk.

Sometimes willpower is just not enough. As I watched my children learn to connect their brains with their feet, unfortunately I also observed the reverse happen to my mother. A victim of Alzheimer’s disease, she gradually collapsed inside her addled self. She couldn’t walk upstairs, then she couldn’t walk far. Then, after a fall, she couldn’t walk at all. And there was no way she was ever going to learn to walk again.

Yes, a journey can start with a single step, but sometimes we lose balance through no fault of our own and fall over.

Jocelyn Suiter is an Age producer.

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