Physical therapy

These are my instructions for minimizing pain when ambulating:

To walk properly you must lift and bend through the knee, throwing the feet forward and parallel to each other, not diagonally out to the side, wooden solider-like.

Hold the shoulders up and flared back, chin angled upward, eyes full speed ahead, torso unslumped, with a tightly contracted core.

Perform the prescribed leg strengthening exercises multiple times on awakening, in a cab, at your desk, walking to the art department, wherever you are, throughout the day.

Don the right shoes, properly supportive with a high arch and a spongy cloud-like inner sole. This will make all the other instructions possible to carry out. It will be a revelation.

I know you probably already do all these things without thinking, but when it comes to walking, it seems I never learned the proper way.

The photo here is not, however, of my walking shoes, but my son's athletic ones, propped against a hurdle at the Armory, where for four years of his high school career, he competed in track and field for Fordham Prep. He is back there today, competing in heptathlon in the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference, also known as regionals. He titled this self-portrait #homesweethome. If I can slip out of work early I'll be able to catch him doing high jump. And tomorrow, I'll be right there in the stands again, chest high, chin angled upward, my recently acquired, properly supportive rubber-soled boots propped on a blue metal chair as I intermittently scream my lungs out, also know as cheering.