Well shit, you might think. When you know what you have to do you might as well do it. So I made an appointment with the sports doctor and told him it was time for new xrays of my right hip. Pete and I showed up early. I brought underwear and everything, but I didn’t need it. Yoga pants were fine. The tech remembered me, curious about why I needed new xrays again so soon. She rifled through files on the wall and came up with my last films, dated 2009. After that, I bickered with a physical therapist for months, started exercising nearly every day, toned up and trimmed down. Yes, I miss dancing. Still, this past autumn was hard on my hip and back and Pete was more frustrated than I was. The doctor stared at the alarming new films and did exactly what he did last time: stutter and offer me drugs. He wrote a prescription for physical therapy, so today I went to the massage therapist I’ve been seeing weekly in the same building, then skipped – hahahahahahahaha! – across the room to describe my hilarious infirmities to the facility’s director.

You’ll be pleased to hear the doctor’s heard of a hip replacement guru in the wilds of New York City who puts broken ballet dancers back to work. Twenty grand, he says, and I can grand jeté my way to more glamorous dotage. Surgery for me is years off, but stretching in awkward directions is in my immediate future. Everything old – including me – is new again.

Well, sort of. No matter how I firm up, I’m not going to get back the body I had in my thirties when I ate crumbs and lifted weights for two hours every day. Coming to terms with that even as you’re showing off your purple metallic folding cane to the sports doc is not as simple as it sounds. I don’t know what body I have, what body I can have, what body I will have, and there are decisions to make. Well shit, you might think. Take a damn aspirin and touch your toes. I’m thinking too much, I know. A best possible future body will arrive if I just choose an amusing soundtrack and move.