Lurching

I was once pulled over for drunk driving on my way home from work, though I had drunk nothing more potent than filtered water all day. The steering on my car was going out and even my most sober efforts could not keep it from drifting from side to side. Fortunately the officer was persuaded by a brief conversation of the true problem, and I got off with no more than a warning to get that steering fixed soon. I never had to get out and walk the line.

Since I'm not driving at all right now, I hope I will not have to walk a straight line, because I'm sure I could not do it. My walk is more of a lurch, drifting from side to side rather like the car with broken steering, scattering small children in my wake. (And woe betide any small child who has left small, invisible toys on the floor in front of me.)

In C.S. Lewis's space trilogy he compares reentering planetary gravity to being pregnant, only faster. I haven't reentered planetary gravity, but I do have the advantage on him in pregnancy, and I'm sure it's quite different. More gravity makes everything heavy at once; pregnancy is concentrated in one place. It's like wearing a securely attached but poorly balanced backpack on the front. I was surprised one day, when wearing the backpack we use for a diaper bag, to realize that I felt balanced for the first time in months. It was almost tempting to start wearing it around all the time, except it would make it hard to lie down.