I gave up our morning walk one excuse at a time

"You go on ahead."

I said that to my husband so many times that eventually he stopped asking me to come along — and then he stopped going too.

We used to walk every morning together. Down Fairview, around the pond, back up past the school — two miles, 6:40 a.m., for over thirty years. When it rained he'd bring the big golf umbrella and hold it over both of us, and we'd walk the whole loop shoulder to shoulder getting our shoes soaked.

It was never about the exercise. It was the one part of the day that belonged to just us.

Now instead of walking with me, he takes care of me.

He's taken over the standing jobs — the dishes, the chopping, anything that keeps you at the counter. And most nights he sits at the end of the couch and rubs my feet while we watch television, because by then they ache so much I can't settle.

He's never once complained about it. Not a word, not a look, in forty-four years of marriage.

That's the part that eats at me.

Somewhere along the way my legs stopped being mine

I'm 68. It started in my fifties — a bit of stiffness in the mornings I put down to a long walk the day before. Then it stopped going away, and every year since it's taken a little more.

Mornings are the worst of it. I sit on the edge of the bed and wait a full minute before I trust my ankles to hold me. They feel tight. Rusted, like something left out in a shed all winter.

Then there's the part I still can't make sense of.

Sitting down doesn't help. I'll rest in my chair an hour in the evening, and when I go to stand it's worse than when I sat down. I take hold of the armrest, ease into it slowly, and hobble the first few steps to the kitchen like my body aged twenty years overnight.

It takes the little things first

And here's what nobody warns you about. It doesn't take everything at once. It takes the little things, one at a time, so quietly you don't notice they're gone until you go looking for them.

• The morning walk. Gone.
• Getting down on the carpet with the little ones — my youngest grandson is three, and when he brings me a book now I pat the couch instead. Gone.

I didn't lose my life all at once. I gave it away in pieces, and I told myself every piece was small.

The morning I decided to try

Then one Tuesday in March I found his walking shoes shoved in the back of the hall closet, where they'd sat for two years.

And I said, before I could talk myself out of it: let's do the loop this morning.

I have never seen a man move so fast. He had those shoes on before I'd finished my coffee.

We made it six hundred yards. Not even to the pond.

I had to stop and sit down on the Kowalskis' garden wall. He sat next to me and said it was a nice morning to sit anyway, and we stayed there until I could manage the walk back.

That's how it goes, isn't it. Not all at once. Six hundred yards at a time.

Everything the doctors told me to try

I'd been trying to fix this for years. Every doctor told me the same thing in a slightly different voice. Wear and tear. Normal for your age. Have you thought about losing a few pounds.

And the advice was always better shoes. So I bought them. Hokas. Vionics. Gel heel cups. Three hundred dollars on custom orthotics from a podiatrist.

They helped. Not enough. I was still waiting on the edge of the bed every morning, still hobbling out of my own chair at nine at night.

So I stopped asking, and I assumed this was simply what happens to a woman my age.

Here's how I found out otherwise

Carol Bishop has the Thursday slot right after mine at the hairdresser. I was complaining about my ankles — the way you do, not really expecting anything — and Carol said, out of nowhere:

"When did you go through the change?"

I said fifty-one. I asked her what on earth that had to do with my feet.

Her sister had gone through the same thing, she said. Feet went at fifty-four, out of nowhere, and it was some hormone thing. She said look it up.

So I did. That night. Ten o'clock, kitchen table, reading glasses on.

It's a real thing. Estrogen doesn't just handle the hot flashes and the sleep — it helps keep the connective tissue in your body supple. The tendons, the ligaments, the tissue running through your joints. When it drops off, that tissue gets stiffer. And it shows up first in whichever parts of you have taken the most punishment.

I was still sitting there two hours later, reading women describe my exact mornings, my exact ankles, in my exact words.

It wasn't the extra ten pounds. It wasn't that I'd let myself go.

Three doctors, and not one of them ever said the word menopause to me.

I'm still a bit angry about that.

The two things that actually help

But here's the part that actually mattered, and I worked it out lying awake that night.

Stiffness responds to two things. Warmth, and something working at it.

That isn't a secret. It's why a hot shower loosens you up — and why sitting still all evening leaves you stiffer than when you sat down.

And it's exactly what Dennis had been doing at the end of the couch, night after night. The warmth of his hands, and the rubbing.

He'd been giving me the right thing the whole time. Neither of us knew why it worked.

So for the first time, I knew what I was looking for.

Warmth without massage. Massage without warmth.

The old heating pad first. The warmth is right, it genuinely is. But I'm pinned to the wall socket, and a flat pad will not stay wrapped around an ankle.

Then the massage gun my daughter gave me. It works, I'll give it that. But you have to hold it, and aim it, and keep it there. I used it twice.

One wouldn't stay put, and the other wouldn't work unless I held it.

I didn't need another idea. I had the right idea. I just needed something that could deliver it — both at once, on my ankles, without me holding a thing.

So I searched for a heated ankle massager, which I'd never once thought to look for in my life.

What I found

Lanarie ReadyStep — Heated Ankle Wrap

It goes around the ankle, heats up, and vibrates gently at the same time — not a machine sort of buzzing, more like a hand working at the stiffness. You put it on, press the button once, and sit back.

• Warmth and gentle massage together, in one wrap
• No cord — I'm not tied to the wall socket anymore
• Wraps the ankle and stays where I put it
• Nothing to hold, nothing to aim
• Runs half an hour and shuts itself off

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I ordered two, one for each ankle. Doing them one at a time is a lot of evening.

I expected to be disappointed again, honestly. But it said ninety days to send them back for a full refund, and the pair cost less than one visit to that podiatrist. So I thought — well, what have I got to lose.

The first night I put them on and sat in my chair, and about ten minutes in I noticed the tightness letting go. Not gone. But loosening, the way it does in a hot bath, except I was watching the news with my feet up.

And when I got up to make the tea, I just got up.

The next morning I put them on before my feet even touched the floor. Dennis brought my coffee up and I let them run while I drank it. That's the routine now — half an hour at night, half an hour before I start the day.

What it did, and what it didn't

I want to be careful here, because I've been oversold to plenty of times and I won't do it to you.

This did not give me back my thirties. My legs still feel heavy at the end of a long day and I still take the stairs one at a time.

What it does is make stiff ankles feel looser. That's all it does. But that was the thing that had been taking my life away in pieces.

Six hundred yards, then a bit more

The first week, the mornings got easier. Not easy — easier. When the half hour was up I could put my feet down and go, without that bracing moment first.

That week we walked to the end of Fairview and back. The week after, we made it to the pond. And then we just kept adding a bit more, the way you'd build anything back up.

It took until the end of the summer before we did the whole loop again. Down Fairview, around the pond, back up past the school. He kept a hand near my elbow the whole way and I let him.

Two miles. First time in over two years.

I cried in the shower afterward, if I'm honest with you. Not because of my ankles.

Because for two years my husband had been a man who looked after me, and for fifty-five minutes that morning he was just my husband again, walking next to me the way he's done since 1993.

He didn't make a fuss about it. He just started leaving his shoes by the back door again instead of the back of the closet.