I've fallen & I can't get up
I have a bum leg. Actually, it’s a bum foot.
A motorcycle accident in ’79 banged up my right side pretty good. 1979 was not a year of a lot of doctors or self care for the jodi. It got better, but now and then it still acts up. My foot swells, or I can’t feel it at all, or I stop being able to anticipate where the ground is going to be on that side when I walk.
It was a bad week, the week of that accident. My husband tried to kill me, I got fired, I was locked in a roadside motel by a pimp, there was a fire, my apartment was infested with roaches, overnight. All that happened the week of the motorcycle accident. Thirty years later, when it acts up, you’d expect me to think about the accident. Or even one of the crazy things that led to it. (Click on any one of those links if you want the gory details). Thing is, I don’t. I never do.
I think of the boy who walked into my life three years later, and how every time my foot went wonky he’d take care of me. I’d sit in the comfortable chair and he’d sit on the floor with a bucket, turning my foot in the warm solution, massaging it, drying it off and wrapping it — same way he’d treated the horses he used to train. Gently. Patiently.
When my foot goes wonky today, I think of how he took care of me then. How he took care of me every time, but especially when I was hurt.
It’s a precious memory, that feeling of being taken care of. While I love the warm feeling that still gives me, I can’t help but wonder, if my brain could have just managed to remember the disasterous choices that preceded so many of my aches, breaks & pains (physical, emotional & spiritual), maybe I could have gotten by with less of them.
