Aix for the Maladroit

When I was 4 years old, I started taking ballet lessons. I think I was willing to do the endless relevés and pliés all year just because I was rewarded with a cute skirt and a pillbox hat for the year-end recital. After I graduated to crowns and tutus, I was permanently hooked. Or maybe I really loved ballet....I can't remember. During all those years of lessons and training, my mother always made sure to point out how graceful I was. She made me feel like a delicate flower. When I reached age 13 and had to continue my training in the big city, my mom drove the hour and a half to and from, every week. But only for a year.


Because during that year I realized she had been lying to me all that time! Maybe I should just call it positive reinforcement. Not only was I too tall, too big and too well-fed to be a ballerina, I was most definitely NOT graceful. Standing at that barre in the cavernous, ancient, technique room, trying to digest the ballet master's orders over the sounds of the pianist, and regarding my big-oaf self in the ever-present mirror, I realized this was never going to happen. I was not only the elephant in the room, I was the bull in the china shop.


The word for clumsy is maladroit in French, though the word is used in English as well. I'm one of those people who sprouts mysterious bruises, never even knowing where they came from. I trip on everything, drop, break shatter something daily; the kitchen is a disaster when I cook and I have a tendancy to run into doors (normally straight on the edge). It could be that I'm just trying to do several things at once....but the fact is, I shouldn't.

Now, I live in a city/country that is unkind to people of my kind. There are obstacles at every turn: deep, dark pits of danger in every quarter. I want to walk while looking up so I can find all the architectural lovelies that one can only see with their eyes toward the sky. I want to. But I shouldn't.


A normal street here, with its cobblestones and ancient oddities is tough enough.  There's that trough that runs down the middle which carries water to wherever it belongs. Step in this wrong, and there goes the ankle.

Every day after the market, the square is cleaned. What were these people thinking wall-to-walling the square with those slick stones? They did not have people like me in mind. Getting across this takes every bit of concentration I have. No reading and walking here.

This is the street that I take to the market each day. Rue Mignet is under construction but it is not closed off to pedestrians. It simply can't be. But it is not like a construction site in the United States with lawsuits lurking under every obstacle. It just is what it is....

 a minefield for the maladroit.

 And this is the corner I have to maneuver...at night.

The street will be beautiful when it's finished this spring. Aside from the major renovations happening underground, the surface is being painstakingly paved by hand. The masons use a string to keep their work level and even. I'm just telling you that I've come to know it as a tripwire.

I am continually wrenching my already car accident-injured back by stepping in holes and trying to catch myself before taking a digger. Recently however, all had been going well. Until last week.  I was leaving the perfectly safe, modern pharmacy. While reading my prescription that had just been filled, I came to the clear, sliding glass door that opens automatically. Except it didn't. And I didn't see it. I would say I was like a bird crashing into the living room window, except that description is too delicate. I was much more like the elephant...or the bull.  And I felt like the Roadrunner after he runs head-on into a rock, my body re...ver...ber...a...ting from the crash.  And to make it worse, there were plenty of witnesses. The impact was so loud, everybody on my side of the square caught a glimpse of large-animal-gone-mad. 

Today I'm making another appointment at the kiné, the man who has now become my savior. He should offer me a membership or a coupon book...you know, buy 10 sessions get 2 free.  But I keep thinking that perhaps if I just sport a tutu and a crown EVERYDAY, I'll believe, (like I used to) in my grace enough to save myself the pain...and the euros.

Have a great week, everyone!

dancer image courtesy of GraphicsFairy