Played handball today with my six-year old - felt really good and triggered some 'thinking-
At first, I was amazed at how much my body remembered - spent a good part of my teenage years playing handball growing up in the Bronx - and it all came back. First, the pain....hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, at least at first. I used to play so hard that my hand would swell to the size of a plump grapefruit - and then I'd go and try to make music at the keyboard. Switched by my early 20s to a raquet, which insulated me from the pain....'kinda stopped playing all together by 40.
But playing today, and feeling the pain -and exhilaration to see that even my gimpy left arm still knew in some deep place how to return a ball - watching my daughter run this way and that to whack the ball - all the pain of PD faded and I saw myself back in the Bronx, not much older than my little girl trying unsuccessfully but happily to return the effortless volleys shot by my Uncles Joe and Uncle Izzy, the pickle maven (ran "United Pickle Co".,or so he said...probably was some front for the Mob, looking back)...and, if but for a moment, it was all OK.
So, seems I have stumbled upon an organic form of Deep Brain Stimulation -
buried memories triggered by the whack of an errant tennis ball - 'gots to beat the kind where they pop electrodes into your head and turn up the juice in your cranial toaster-oven.
Parkinson's strips away the insulation of any happy plans you may have - think I'll start playing again....without the racket. Feels right.
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