Hobbling back to childhood

My husband had one of those moments the other day, and was swept back 50-odd years to his grandfather's stonemason's yard. It was the sound of hammering that did it, the clink of a chisel on a hard surface. But he was far removed from the dust and bustle of that long-disappeared haunt. He was lying in the scrubbed environment of an operating theatre in our local hospital.

They'd opted to give him a 'regional anaesthetic' for his hip replacement, so even through the bland music washing through his headphones he could hear everything the surgeon was doing. And there he was, a little boy again, watching his grandfather at work.

Within four days he was home again, to a house with every obstacle tidied away and new helpful gadgets in place, and the likeness to a little boy hasn't quite disappeared, even if he doesn't feel very youthful. For a start, he's got a strong woman standing over him to make sure he keeps to the rules, just as his mother did all those years ago.

He faces six weeks of building up wasted leg muscle and learning how to use the new hip, and, in the meantime, there's an awful lot he's forbidden to do. Don't cross your legs, the leaflets say. Don't bend the hip more than 90 degrees. Don't sit for too long. Always sleep on your back.

No gardening. No sitting in the bath. And absolutely no driving. It's the last prohibition that's the worst, if you're an independent sort of person. Now he can't even get into the car without great difficulty.

After years of responsible adulthood he finds himself confined to the house and garden. It's not quite second childhood, but it's a taste of it.

The trouble is, boredom makes you do things you shouldn't - think of all those teenagers filling idle hours with anti-social behaviour. Not that he's going to spray graffiti on walls or destroy trees, but he does get impatient with the restrictions, especially if I'm not around to nag him. It was a bit of a giveaway when I came downstairs the other morning and found him having breakfast in the dining room - with his crutches on the far side of the kitchen.

And as for how he got the jug from the bottom shelf without bending down... no, I don't even want to think about it. Especially as the 'helping hand' gadget he has for picking things up was still upstairs.

Before the operation he'd made all sorts of plans to fill the weeks of recovery. Write letters. Improve his Italian. Finally get to grips with the computer, so he could actually learn how to answer those emails people send him. But though he can walk a good bit, he finds he can't sit for long. The hospital's advice isn't altogether helpful. 'Do not put your feet up on a footstool' orders one page of the sheaf of 'dos and don'ts'. Another page commands: 'Build rests into your day: get your feet up on a stool'.

There's one pleasure left to him: food. I'm more or less confined to the house too, apart from quick dashes to the supermarket. I like cooking; we both like eating. So I cook - his favourite meals, new things to tempt him. He loves puddings so I've abandoned our usual 'only on Sundays rule' and serve them up daily.

He doesn't easily put on weight. Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply to me. I have a nasty feeling that, in spite of all the running up and down stairs and the fetching and carrying, I'm going to get to the end of all this several pounds heavier than I am now.

But at least when at last he's able to stride over the hills like a young boy, I shall be delighted to run panting after him in a bid to lose that extra weight and be once again the slender girl he married all those years ago.