Knee Deep

We were visiting my oldest daughter's house, getting ready for church on a Sunday morning. My youngest walked out of the bedroom in her church outfit, and her older sister made a noise of alarm - "AAHHHH!" She frequently despairs when faced with the fashion choices of her family, but I couldn't see anything wrong with the way her sister looked. I mean, she was dressed for church, not even in her "grubbies."

"What?" I asked.

"Her knees!"

Well, OK, the dress hit above her knees, but she wasn't flashing. Thinking that she was worried that the dress was too short, I said, "She's wearing leggings."

"NO! They bend backwards!" - in a tone of horror.

I sometimes wonder if my family has been paying attention for, well, pretty much their whole lives. Her sister was a teen - had she never looked at her legs before?

"Yeah, they do. She has my knees. Haven't you noticed?"

My daughter and I both have knees that bow backwards - our legs are shaped like parentheses. In order to have them look "straight," we have to bend our knees slightly. My daughter's might look a bit more obvious because her legs dimple over her knees, but the curve is virtually identical. How had my oldest never noticed this? On either of us?

"Can't she do something about that?"

"Well, we could try a complete knee replacement, but I'm not sure that would work. Maybe we'll find out when we're old."

My oldest is a very sweet, well intentioned human being. But when something offends her sense of order, she gets rattled, and how things look is very important to her.

Of course, my youngest and I have a diferent frame of reference. We have to make these knees work. They not only bow backward, but inward - we're "knock kneed."

Yes, our legs look like the letter X from behind, and the letter C from the side.

You know that walk that women do, where they cross one foot in front of the other as they step, and it looks elegant? Yeah; we will never be able to do that.

As a teen, I knew that I had "bad knees," the kind that hurt when a storm was coming, and might seize up or collapse while I was roller skating. Falling on my right knee (off of a horse) when I was 13 didn't help. I sounded (and often felt) middle aged, but what are you gonna do? You have the body you were born with.

I never understood it when people said - and they sometimes did, as my oldest daughter did again, "How can you stand that?" Easy; there's no choice. What sense would it make going through life being disgusted or aghast, by your own body, every single day? That would be far more miserable than my knees made me.

After I had surgery on my feet, I had to learn to walk again, and everything felt wrong. Plus, putting my feet where they were "supposed" to be made my knees literally smack into each other. I watched my daughter walk; her knees glide past each other, always touching but never smacking. I couldn't figure out how to make my feet and knees and everything else work properly. ("These Feet Were Made For Walking")

I pretty well have it figured out now, I think. I suspect that I've taken on a "cowboy who's been too long in the saddle" wide legged walk, but that doesn't bother me.

Howdy, Partner.

I'm walkin' here!