BY AMES K. SWEET

On the subway this morning, I saw an advertisement for a local podiatrist. It showed a picture of a foot – a classic Before and After shot, replete with yellowed nails, hammertoes, bunions, corns, and God knows what else. It was one sorry foot, trust me, and I began to imagine whose foot it actually was. Clearly, it wasn’t make-up; no stand-in (so to speak). This was somebody’s actual foot. Inside my shoes, I could feel my own toes curling up in sympathy.

Next to the Before photo was, of course, the After – the hammertoes straightened, the bunions and corns removed, the yellowed nails buffed to a shiny pink, like tarnish removed from old silver. While still not overly attractive, the After shot was a considerable improvement. Skeptic that I am, I wondered silently if it was even the same foot.

With my body jammed up against the door, I studied the photos for any clues (discreetly, of course, as the advertisement just to the right of the podiatrist screamed out with the headline “Don’t let impotence ruin your sex life” and the one just to the left was for 1-800-BANKRUPT, so I didn’t want anyone thinking I was looking at those ads. Quite a range of options for a New York City rush hour: bankruptcy, hammertoes, or a vanishing sex life!). After examining the photos for a few stops on the local, I came to believe there were just enough similarities in the overall shape and size of the foot to make it one and the same. With nothing else to keep my mind off the crowded subway car, thinking about the foot and its miraculous transformation led me, as things often do, to considering my own transformation, my own Before and After.

As an alcoholic in recovery, I am a perfect candidate. Without much trouble, I can produce any number of Before photos: like the mug shots taken one night in the State Police barracks in upstate New York where I was pulled over in a blackout, or the photos taken by a friend of me jumping off a cliff into a pile of sand below, stoned out of my mind. Any one of them would suffice to sum up my state of being in the Before days. Yes, we alcoholics are perfect candidates. No dearth of material there…

Yet, as I turned to the After segment of my life, the sober side of the equation, I came up against some difficulties. What photo to use? What snapshot in my sober life could adequately sum up my recovery?

There were many possibilities, of course – my wedding pictures, pictures of my kids when they were babies, pictures of the family as we have all grown up – each one a powerful testament to recovery, indeed. Yet, somehow, no single photo seemed to capture the transformation from drinking to sober; instead, what I saw in my mind’s eye as I stood in the crush of humanity getting on and off the subway at Times Square, was a string of photos, running, perhaps, the entire length of the train.

I have spent a lot of time in my life striving to be in the right place. But, inexplicably, each time I’ve gotten there, I’ve found that the action has moved on. For example, at one week sober, I figured everything would be okay if I could just make it a couple of months. When I hit a couple of months I figured everything would work out if I could just get a year. At a year I thought if I felt this good, just think how I’d feel at five years. But, at five years everything was falling apart again and I guessed that maybe the magic number was ten. Ten turned out to be magical, indeed, but not nearly as transcendent as twenty…

And so it goes. Here I am, well into the After life, still sober, still inching along – and still no photo to authoritatively hold up there beside my Before. Everything keeps moving, changing. Different vantage points, different lighting. Serenity is a moving target.

As I was thinking about all this, somebody stepped on my foot getting off at 28th Street, crushing my toe. What was that podiatrist’s number?