The Woman Who Always Wore Two Different Shoes
What can polio teach us about surviving the COVID-19 pandemic?
I exist in a state of suspended animation. My life is on hold — even my handshakes, hugs and the ubiquitous kisses on the cheek, which are part of practically every human interaction if you live in Montreal. All our lives have been affected, in one way or the other, by this pandemic.
The world has lived through AIDS, SARS, Ebola and Zika virus. Yet for me and many baby boomers, COVID-19 is strangely reminiscent of the polio epidemic, when the lives of many also changed overnight.
One of my earliest memories is spying on the boy next door from my upstairs bedroom window. When he looked up, I quickly ducked. Andy limped along and wore a metal brace on one leg from his ankle to his thigh. Other than being mesmerized by his limp, his brace and the brown shoes that he always wore, one with a thicker sole than the other, I was too young to understand that Andy had been infected with polio.
In university, I fell into an easy friendship with a woman I met at the campus bar. I don’t recall the details of our first meeting except that Lynda was shy, wore two different coloured sneakers, said “no thanks” to the guy that asked her if she wanted to dance, and walked with a pronounced limp. She was…
