A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  Learning to ski revealed how free my body felt without my prosthesis attached. There was such joy in movement unencumbered by the “ball and chain.” My body’s movements were lighter. Even crutching uphill using my outriggers, I felt unchained; there was something pure about the movement. In essence, I felt a renewed connection to my body.

  But as pure and free as I felt when I was on the mountain, I still daily fought the sense that I was an outsider in a world where people seemed to understand one another. The trial was behind me, but the anguish of hearing someone blame me for my accident lingered. And the blame I’d heaped on myself after the abortion was often present as well. My craving for a connection with others who might understand and validate me was like a visceral yearning.

  I was disappointed I didn’t become better friends with Becky or Linda. We never socialized off the mountain. They were nice women, but we didn’t really click. So while I achieved part of what I wanted through skiing—an understanding of how I could use my body—I didn’t achieve the social connection I was seeking. I knew there were people out there who I could relate to, who could understand me; I just hadn’t found them yet.

  To manage my loneliness, and to avoid the anger I felt continually brewing under the surface, I made a not-quite-conscious decision to throw myself into as many physical activities as I could. Maybe if I poured myself into risk-taking, I could make myself into someone I could admire—someone others would want to connect with.

  Always a lover of saltwater and intrigued by the idea of exploring its depths, I signed up for scuba-diving lessons. I was excited to swim in the Puget Sound and discover her treasures. Unfortunately, the four weeks of classroom instruction were boring, and I was disappointed when the class offered only two dives. And while the experience of scuba diving had its own pleasures—the feeling of my body undulating in water, the weights counterbalancing the fat on my stump, watching fish swim by—scuba diving ultimately wasn’t for me. The equipment felt too cumbersome and was difficult to transport without wearing my prosthesis. Besides, scuba diving is a partner sport, and I didn’t have anyone in my life who was interested in it. Everyone else in the class had a partner. And while they all admired me and were very kind, I felt distanced from them, like I was from a foreign country. I was on the outside of the group knocking to get in, but they just wouldn’t answer the door. Though I was successful at the scuba diving itself, I wasn’t successful at making new friends among divers.

  Skydiving was the next activity to catch my interest. Since I lived with fear every day of my life—fear of needing to get out of the way of a moving car faster than I could walk, for example—I thought the rush of skydiving might push me beyond it. I jumped out of an airplane at three thousand feet and prayed to God my chute would open. The thrill of the moment was overwhelming and satisfying but ultimately empty. And it was a lot of work for a short-lived rush. Plus, again, there were no relationships to be had in the amateur skydiving community.

  Skiing seemed to be my sport—the best chance for me to both excel athletically and meet people with similar challenges to mine—so the next year, I was back at the mountain taking classes with Davin and improving my skills. At the end of my second ski season, Davin introduced me to Don, a fifty-five-year-old, silver-haired amputee.

  One day after a particularly good run, several of us were sitting in the lodge unwinding when Don said to me, “Hey, we gotta get you on the soccer field. Why don’t you come play soccer with the amputee soccer team?”

  I didn’t even know what he was talking about. “How do amputees play soccer?” I asked.

  “We take our legs off and hop around on our crutches. Come on, it’s a great workout and a lot of fun. We need more girls on the team.”

  I couldn’t really picture what a field full of amputees kicking around a soccer ball would look like, but since I’d made a commitment to throw myself into physical activity, I reluctantly agreed to try. My brothers had played soccer, so I had a cursory understanding of the object of the game. And while I wasn’t burning with desire to kick a ball around, I was itching to spend more time with people who might understand me and the complexity of my life. I so much wanted to belong somewhere.

  On my first day as a soccer player, I woke up at six a.m. and drove the half hour to the indoor soccer field. I walked in and saw about ten artificial legs leaning against the wall outside the field. My heart both leapt in excitement at being among so many other one-legged people, and cinched up in fear at being expected to make my way across a soccer field without my prosthetic.

  “Hey, there she is!” Don said. I felt out of my realm. I looked around and saw a lot of guys, some quite a bit younger than Don; and if there was one group of people I was especially anxious around, it was men my own age. As I slipped off my leg, Don explained the rules for playing on crutches. What he didn’t understand was that I lacked an understanding of even the most basic rules of soccer. All I knew was each team tried to kick the ball into the net. Off sides, fouls, and penalty kicks all meant nothing to me.

  “Don, I don’t really know what you’re talking about,” I offered sheepishly. “I’ve never played soccer before.”

  “Never?” he asked, looking surprised.

  “No, never,” I said, laughing nervously, not sure if he would let me play.

  “Well, there’s always a first, right?” He gave me a brief overview of the game in a kind, fatherly way, and we both decided I would learn as I went.

  I didn’t know soccer could be so vicious. On more than one occasion, I was slammed into the wall as my opponent rammed into me to take possession of the ball. The first time it happened, I stopped dead in my tracks, not understanding why he’d purposely hurt me. The man who had done it, deftly move the ball back to his net while laughing, just like my brothers would have done. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  Rashid, one of my teammates, a cute, curly-haired guy from Lebanon, came over to me.

  “Don’t worry, he didn’t mean anything. Indoor soccer can be a lot more physical than outdoor soccer.” His smooth accent and deep-brown eyes took my mind off my hurt feelings.

  The game ended, and we all left the field to get our legs. Rashid hopped over to mine.

  “Is this yours?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I answered, blushing. He picked up my leg easily and hopped it over to me, his curls bouncing with each hop.

  My leg is private. I don’t let just anyone touch it. In its own way, my prosthesis had become a part of my body—a part of my “self” in a way I couldn’t have named. And there he was, carrying it over to me and handing it to me like a perfect gentleman handing a bouquet of flowers to a proper lady on their first date. The blush I felt in my face must have revealed how my heart was melting when he handed me my leg.

  “Thank you,” I mustered with a throaty whisper.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered with casual confidence, like handing a woman her leg was what a gentleman was supposed to do.

  The team often went out to breakfast after our games, which was the part of being a soccer player I liked best. It was at one of these breakfasts that I learned Rashid had been in the States for five years. He’d come for “some surgeries” and decided to stay. I was all ears during the conversation that morning, waiting to hear what I wanted to know, but Rashid skirted the issue of how he’d lost his leg in Lebanon.

  He did tell us that he’d been playing soccer since he was a boy. “I am so happy to be able to kick a ball around again,” he said, and heads nodded all around our breakfast table.

  Why didn’t he just say it all? I wondered. We all knew the pain. We could all relate. We could all offer support and comfort if only he would open up. I felt frustrated, as I had before, that people were so reluctant to tell their stories. Later, when I heard of how he’d stepped on a land mine during the Lebanese civil war, I knew I had no real basis for understanding the painful part of his tragedy, which involved living through a war and leaving his homeland.

&n
bsp; Maybe I was trying too hard to find common places to commiserate with others. In order to understand what had happened to me, I wanted to talk to people who knew, intimately, what it felt like to lose a literal part of themselves. My soccer friends all seemed to be thriving without a need to talk about their losses. In fact, they seemed to be masters at not talking about it, at subtly evading the issue.

  I wanted to tell my story to someone who could understand, hoping the shared experience would help me find some relief from the sadness I felt. But my friends didn’t want to probe me about my loss any more than they wanted me to probe them about theirs. They didn’t seem to care about the past; they seemed only to care about their next thrill.

  I wasn’t good at soccer, but I was thrilled at the notion that I could play. I stayed on the team for one whole season, reveling in my bond with other amputees, the smell of a dirty locker room, the thrill of a teammate making a goal, the after-game play-by-play at breakfast, and the snap of a towel on my butt that let me know I was a part of a team.

  I was twenty-three, and for the first time in my life, I was able to attach a positive label to myself. In just six years, my self-image had changed so drastically. And although there was still so much angst and grief under the surface, I was able to admit that, ironically, I’d gained something by losing my leg. I never would have pursued these activities if I still had my leg. I never would have questioned what my body could do. A whole new world was opening up to me that begged me to challenge myself in ways I never would have dreamed.

  And then, my world broke open even wider: Davin asked me to join the ski team the following winter, and I accepted. After soccer season was over, I would spend every weekend running gates and learning how to race on one leg. I would live with my hair whipping in the wind behind me.

  10

  BOGUS BASIN

  Competing on the ski team would give me the final push I needed to get me back to school.

  On my first day of actual racing, breathing heavily from my hike up the hill, I glided into my gate. A horizontal bar, waist high, kept me from quickly descending onto the course. The air announced itself in small puffs with each nervous breath I took. From behind me, the crowd hooted and hollered for the skier currently tackling the course. I didn’t dare look at her. I focused on my red-and-black ski boot, reviewing the course in my mind, remembering how I had skied down the hill numerous times the day before, parallel to the course, echoing each turn as if the gates were in front of me. I felt I knew the course, I just hadn’t run it yet. The weather was cold here at Bogus Basin, Idaho, and there was no fresh snow. Many racers had skied the track already, each one etching a deeper groove into the course.

  Davin, who was now my coach, stood behind me. I felt his warm breath on a small exposed area of my neck as he offered words of encouragement, “Okay, relax and take it easy. This is supposed to be fun!” I grasped my outriggers, pumped my leg a few times to warm it up, took some deep breaths, and waited for the gun’s pop to announce my turn.

  As I waited, it was not lost on me that in less than three years, since the abortion and since breaking up with Rob, I had found enough physical strength and emotional independence to believe I might, possibly, be okay. I still lived in the same mother-in-law apartment in Seattle and still worked at my full-time job at the stock brokerage firm, but I had enough sense of self now to feel that my life was going somewhere. I still carried around a boulder of anger at Harvey and, now, at the insurance companies and at the juror who had blamed me for my accident, but whenever I thought about it, I focused on making my body work hard …

  Pop! The gun went off and I was flying down the hill, hair waving behind me. My first race!

  The Seattle contingent of disabled skiers, which I was a part of, had traveled en masse to Bogus Basin for our ski competition. Our small plane had been filled to capacity with physically disabled skiers of every kind: paraplegic, quadriplegic, hemiplegics, amputees (both of the arms and legs), vision impaired, and hearing impaired. Some were a part of my team from Snoqualmie Pass, where I’d first learned to ski with Linda and Becky; the remainder were from other Western Washington ski areas. We’d kept the flight attendants busy on the hour-long flight by quickly gulping our beers and ordering more. We were loud, proud, and obnoxious. As we approached our destination, I sat back in my seat and felt the sense of belonging, at least for the moment, that I was always seeking.

  But traveling with a bunch of folks in wheelchairs brought home the reality of a life I had been spared. Had Harvey’s car hit me with a little more force, my right leg would have been taken from me as well. Had I been hit a few inches higher, I would likely be paralyzed from the waist down. These people I was traveling with required varying degrees of help, from transfers to and from their chairs to carrying their equipment.

  Once in Bogus Basin, Linda, Becky, and I were roommates. We shared our room with a woman Becky knew, Theresa, who was a Thalidomide baby: a child born from a mother who took this drug in the 1960s, which caused serious birth defects. Theresa had been born with four seal-like appendages instead of arms and legs. Her vibrant smile and quick wit enchanted me, but her disability riveted me and made me consider my own struggle. During the days we shared a room, I watched her surreptitiously from the corner of my eye as she maneuvered her abbreviated body around the queen-sized bed. Quick, agile, and surprisingly adept, she held her shirt under her flipper-like arm and wriggled her body into it. Even her neck seemed to have muscles mine didn’t. She clearly had accommodated her limited arms and legs years ago. I held the same awe and reverence for her that able-bodied people who had come to know me since my accident often felt for me. What I lived with was nothing compared to what Theresa lived with, but I gained something by watching her: the message that limitations were as much in the mind as in the body.

  Getting dressed in the morning in front of Linda, Becky, and Theresa wasn’t uncomfortable like it was when I was around two-legged friends. Instead of feeling like the freak in the room, I was able to openly watch my roommates put on their prosthetic legs and ask questions about them. But I still wanted so much to broach the subject of anger and pain with someone who might get it, and I didn’t know how. I longed to talk about what I felt like were my false hopes about marriage and children. I didn’t want to appear prying, and I understood that such topics were personal, but I desperately needed to know how these other women were grappling with these issues.

  After one full day of skiing, we all headed back to the lodge. Inside, it was littered with outriggers and artificial legs leaning against the walls. Ski parkas and hats were scattered across the long, picnic-style tables. The vaulted room was stuffy and hot, the windows steamy from all the body heat. I found space at a crowded table with Linda and Becky, anxious as usual to make the kind of connections that were continually elusive to me. These were my people, but I felt separate nonetheless.

  A young, handsome guy with piercing blue eyes in a wheelchair was sitting at the table, too. “Hey, I haven’t met you before. What’s your name?” he said.

  “I’m Colleen. What about you?”

  “I’m Gary, and I’m gonna kill the run tomorrow,” he said, pounding his fist on the table.

  Okay, so he’s had a few, I thought. But I could put the slurring of words aside for a good-looking young man.

  Gary and I quickly discovered we skied on different days up at Snoqualmie and that we were both equally passionate about skiing. We filled the next hour drinking beer and talking of snow conditions, how the course would run the next day, and of new equipment coming onto the market.

  “So, how’d ya lose it?” Gary asked suddenly, his voice quieter.

  “A car accident,” I said, feeling self-conscious but hopeful that I was on the edge of talking to someone honestly about how they really dealt with their daily struggles—their anger, their physical pain. Here was my chance to steer a conversation into the more intimate space I longed to go. But I couldn’t think of what to say next
. So I was silent, afraid the moment would be lost.

  “Rough,” said Gary. He abruptly turned away from me to Davin, as if to avoid further discussion on the topic. “Hey, coach, are you going to get me another beer, or do I hafta run over you?”

  “I’m making a run. Just sit there nice and pretty, Gary.” Other folks yelled their orders to Davin as he walked toward the bar.

  “I expect a good tip, people.” Davin yelled through his dimpled smile.

  I nursed my beer, chastising myself for hoping for more than I was likely to get from a casual conversation, and for choking up in the face of an opportunity for a meeting of the minds with Gary. I decided to skip it for the moment.

  But after a few beers, I was bold enough to ask Gary how he broke his back. “Vietnam,” he said in a clipped tone.

  “Oh, wow, what happened?” I asked naively.

  “Oh, I don’t talk about the war.” Then he turned his torso in his chair and started a conversation with another paraplegic behind him.

  I finished my beer, got up, and crutched out into the cold, dark night. The air bit my face. I felt stupid for asking so bluntly about the war. I should have been more sensitive. I felt embarrassed that I had tried to open up his world a little and had been met with a slammed door. Mostly, in that moment I felt sad for him, sad that this part of his life was so concealed, so hidden, simply not talked about. In fact, I felt sad that so many people didn’t talk about what had happened to them, even to those of us who could best empathize. It would be years later when I would finally understand that not talking about something didn’t mean that someone was running from that thing. I couldn’t see it then, because for me, I was running—or skiing—away from the shadow part of me.

  In spite of some continuing sense of not quite perfectly fitting in anywhere, I was strong enough to move forward. I decided to move to Bellingham and to go back to college the next fall. As a result, I would lose touch with the many of the people with whom I’d spent the past three years. I’d had fun with them and learned from them how to show up, live in the moment, and use my body to its fullest potential. Though I’d never had the opportunity to talk about my deepest feelings with them, I did now understand that what we each went through with our disability was deeply personal, almost too personal to talk about sometimes. Had we talked about the emotions, it may have caused us too much pain. Instead we modeled for each other how to be positive; we buoyed each other in a sea of possibility; we taught one another that our disabilities were only as hard as we made them.