“Good morning, Colleen.” His voice was like warm chocolate syrup slipping over a scoop of ice cream.
“Good morning, Juan. How are you today?” I often sat in on morning rounds and knew his body was failing. He was clearly dying.
“Oh, you know, my stomach feels better, but my head feels worse. Same old, same old. How are you?” He gazed directly into my eyes as he always did, unnerving me. They held something deep and knowing. I wanted to tell him what I was grappling with, wanted to think he could look into my heart and with his ghostly gaze extract some wisdom and courage that I felt I lacked.
“Oh, I’ve been better,” I said. “But it’s a gorgeous day and I’m here with you. What else could I want?”
“You got that right, sister!” he said with a wave of his hand and Broadway flair, revealing his flamboyant gay side.
We chatted a little more—just small talk—and then I went inside. Talking with Juan grounded me, made me feel just a little better. What would he think if he knew I was pregnant? I imagined he would think life is precious and not to be lightly snuffed out.
I walked pass the small nursing station, which was built directly in the middle of the house so all the residents could have quick access to the staff. Windows lined the walls; when the two morning staff members saw me, they got up in a panic. Alice, the RN, came rushing out.
“Colleen, we need to talk. Mitch was at it again last night.”
“Oh, really? Again? Okay, I’ll talk to him.” This is not what I wanted to hear this morning. Mitch, another resident, was loath to give up his marijuana and tried to secretly smoke in his room. I personally had no issue with pot smoking, but as the manager in charge of resident life, I had to enforce our policies. Illegal drugs were not allowed on our property. Alice filled me in on the details before I set off for my office. I didn’t get far before I saw Kathy, the cook, bent over and digging in the fridge.
“Morning, Kathy.”
“Huh?” Her head popped out of the fridge. “Oh, hi, Colleen. Hey, I’m glad you’re here—smells like we have a dead animal in the basement. You might want to check out the air ducts today.” She gave a little laugh. I could tell she was only too happy to pass this responsibility over to me.
“Oh, you’re kidding. Yeah, I’ll take care of it.” The mounting responsibilities made me want a smoke to decompress.
Just down the short hallway from the kitchen was my office. When I stepped inside, I shut the door, not wanting any more problems to touch me right then. I saw the two green cigarettes sitting on my desk, tempting me. Cherie wouldn’t be in for another hour, so I would force myself to wait. I sat down, put my head in my cupped hands, and pressed my fingers into my closed eyes to stifle the tears. I didn’t feel happy. I didn’t feel sad. I was simply overwhelmed. I’m pregnant. What am I going to do? The decision felt too big. When would I finally say yes to having a child? Did I want a child? My past suggested I didn’t, but at least some small part of my heart was saying yes. How could I say no to this union of Mark and myself? How could I say no to a part of the future we’d planned together? But this was too soon. I wasn’t prepared. We didn’t have a house yet. We hadn’t even thought of buying a house. I was thirty-five years old and had grown up a lot, but in the face of this reality, I felt as emotionally unprepared for this as I had at twenty.
When Cherie arrived at work and came into my office, I held up the two green cigarettes. “I think it’s time we smoke them, don’t you?” My mouth was watering.
“Absolutely. Why wait?” Cherie exuded her usual calm demeanor; she was unflappable. I wished I had some of her calmness to call upon right then.
We went out to the empty smoking porch. I was glad for the quiet. I wanted to smoke what might be my last cigarette in peace. I always told myself the one thing that could make me quit smoking was pregnancy. While I wasn’t ready to fully accept this pregnancy, I also couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening. I knew this had to be my last cigarette until I figured this out.
I wanted to tell Cherie I was pregnant; she and I had worked together for over six months and had developed a sweet friendship. I was bursting to talk this out with her, to hear myself think, to get this volcanic energy out of my body, but I knew I had to wait. This decision required a longer conversation with Mark, so I kept my own counsel. We lit up our green cigarettes, giggling. Between the smoke and our casual conversation, I settled down and realized I could actually get through the day until I could go home to Mark. When I put the cigarette out, I did so sadly, already feeling the ache of the loss.
After work, I drove home as fast as I could. I couldn’t wait to hug Mark and feel his quiet strength. We decided to get out of the city the next day, which was Saturday, to think about what to do. We took the ferry across Puget Sound to Port Townsend, a quaint artsy community west of Seattle. The ferry ride alone was calming and centering: Mt. Rainier, the sentinel of Seattle, loomed in the background; seagulls followed the ferry, making a ruckus as they screamed for tidbits of food; and the boat rocked gently over the small swells. Port Townsend was calming, too, and its slow-paced small-town charm, turn-of-the-century brick buildings, and whimsically painted Victorian houses seemed to shed the outermost layer of city cares. We bought sandwiches at a local deli and took them to the beach a mile outside of town. I watched parents and their children throwing Frisbees in the wind and making sand castles on the beach. Families gallivanted along the water’s edge, and everyone looked so happy.
Mark and I didn’t talk a lot. We sat together with our private thoughts. I knew that since we’d gotten married, Mark’s default mode was to assume we would have a baby someday. But I also knew he hoped to travel before that happened. If we went forward with this pregnancy, life would change as much for him as it would for me. He would have to adjust to the idea of becoming the breadwinner for a family instead of making money for the next adventure.
As for me, I was both repulsed at the thought of having another abortion, and tempted to go that route again. I thought about the ritual of carrying the two little swaddled bundles around in my pocket that I had done two years earlier. And though much of my burden had abated after that, my choices still weighed heavy on my heart during dark moments. I didn’t want to carry that kind of weight again.
I watched a little girl across the beach start to wail after she fell off a log and skinned her knee. Her mother was so gentle with her, comforting her with a hug and cooing soft words. I want to be a gentle, kind mother, I thought. I saw a ten-year-old boy playing catch with his dad in the field behind us. Mark will make a great dad. The idea of Mark being a father filled my chest with warmth.
After sitting on the beach for an hour, the wind gusting occasionally, I finally mustered the courage to say it. “We’re going to have a baby, aren’t we?” I looked at Mark, trying to gauge how he felt.
“It looks like it, honey. Are you okay with that?” He sounded relaxed. He looked relaxed. Maybe this was going to be good.
“I’m terrified,” I admitted “But I’m okay with it. How about you?” I took his hand.
“This wasn’t what I expected right now, but yeah, I’m good with it.” I saw by his expression, the faith in his eyes, that this was true.
We hugged for a long while, my head against his chest. I felt safe hearing his heartbeat. I reveled in the feeling of warmth that flooded my chest and the spark of excitement that I finally allowed to ignite.
When we got home, I called my mom. “Hi, Mom. Guess what? We’re looking to buy a house.”
“Really? So soon? Are you sure you can afford it?” I could hear the concern in her voice.
“Well … actually, pretty soon this duplex is going to be too small for us.” I paused. Waited. I knew it would sink in if I just gave it time. Silence.
“Oh, Colleen, really? REALLY? Oh, honey! Really?” She was squealing.
“Yeah, Mom, really.”
And then I started to cry. I could finally tell my mom I was pregnant. Finally. My he
art wanted to burst with joy. I had nine nieces and nephews by then, and I had seen Mom hold each one of them.
“Sweetest heart of Jesus,” she said between clenched teeth, so big was her love. Now Mom would whisper the same loving words to my child. It was finally my turn.
17
GETTING BIGGER
Since I’d gotten myself into therapy and started to peel away the layers of grief, I thought I was making good progress toward a happy life. And since I’d forgiven myself for my two abortions, and forgiven Harvey, I felt I was free to think of myself as more than an amputee. I was a woman who could fall in love—and become a mother. They say there are five stages of grief: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. What they don’t say is that with any big, life-altering loss, the layers of grief repeat—and repeat again. For someone who loses something significant, every period of healing is likely to be followed by another loss. Becoming pregnant, and ultimately becoming a mother, was about to throw me into the hardest learning curve I’d encountered since my accident eighteen years earlier. And the stakes were very high. If I didn’t find my way through the darkness that was about to envelop me, there were now others, whose lives were intimately tied to mine, who would be impacted negatively.
The problem began the minute I smoked my last cigarette—the green one I’d shared with Cherie on the porch at work. After Mark’s and my decision to move forward with the pregnancy, morning sickness quickly settled in, the kind that lingers at low levels throughout the day. Having a cigarette crossed my mind many times, but these were thoughts, not true cravings. What I missed wasn’t the cigarette as much as the excuse for a break, the chance to let go of everything and go back to myself. I was surprised the cravings weren’t as much physical as they were emotional. I felt like I had lost a friend. The friend who joined me for my pity parties, the friend I went to when I wanted to hide from my sadness, anger, and fear.
So many decades of denying one’s feelings through the crutch of a bad habit is not easily undone by a couple of years in therapy. I replaced one oral fixation with another: food. The sweeter, the better. Kathy, the cook at work, often left a plate of homemade cookies on the kitchen counter for the residents and staff to snack on. Prior to pregnancy, I’d pass them by in favor of a cigarette. After I quit smoking, I indulged in the cookies with a vengeance, and for the first time since I’d lost my leg, I started gaining weight. Really gaining weight.
Having spent the previous eighteen years watching my weight, I was surprised at how easily I loosened my grip. I didn’t care anymore, but I should have. I wasn’t your run-of-the-mill pregnant woman who could take time off from watching her figure while she grew a baby. I was a pregnant woman whose life only functioned because she had a well-fitting prosthetic leg. I was a woman who would be grounded if her stump outgrew her prosthesis.
My diet had never been good: coffee and a cigarette was my typical breakfast, followed by a scone at my desk later in the morning and then dinner out. But I did limit my sweets. Candy bars were a rarity in my pre-pregnancy life. Milkshakes? Maybe twice a year. And donuts were nearly taboo. Now I was indulging, partly because I was hungry and partly because I’d lost the solace of smoking.
Weight gain is the nemesis for any amputee with a prosthesis that attaches by suction, such as mine does. I knew I was playing with the devil by eating so many sweets. I could feel the pounds adding on, but I rationalized it as “baby weight,” and I kept eating for two.
One morning halfway through my pregnancy, I tried to put on my leg and could barely squeeze in. My stump throbbed from being stuffed into the socket of my prosthetic leg. It felt like a size-nine foot crammed into a size-six shoe. Walking around at work that whole week was barely manageable. Navigating my own home was starting to become difficult. At the grocery store one afternoon, I eyed the scooter carts from the corner of my eye but quickly dismissed them. Those are for old ladies, I thought. I wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Instead, I limped around the store, bearing my weight on the grocery cart, fighting back tears of pain.
I set my mind to try to limit my consumption, but found I didn’t have the willpower. So I had a temporary prosthetic leg made to accommodate my increasingly large stump. Making a good-fitting leg takes up to three months and requires a stable weight. I had neither the luxury to wait three months nor a stable weight. Making the pregnancy leg took longer than we expected.
When I went in for my first fitting and looked at the leg my pros-thetist handed me, I was confused. It took a moment to register what was amiss: he had made the leg for the wrong side of my body. It was at this point that I began to feel myself start to unravel.
I became furious with him and almost threw the leg across the room. He felt horrible, and told me he would rush a new one and get it to me in a week. But I didn’t have a week; I could barely move anymore. I went home and sobbed in Mark’s arms. I had not felt so helpless since the first weeks after my accident. I wanted to disintegrate into a little ball of smoke and let the wind blow me away.
Thus, as my body was making my son’s heart, my own heart was breaking. As I was making his chubby little legs, I was losing my own leg again. And with it, this time, I was also losing my hard-won identity as a capable, disciplined, functioning woman.
Every four or five years I had replaced my prosthetic leg, and the process was always difficult. I’d never been able to squelch the anger that threatened to erupt when I had to change legs. Everything feels different on a new leg—not just walking, but also sitting on a toilet, getting in and out of a car, and the way my clothes fit around my hips. Each new leg had the latest technology, so there was always an incentive to set aside my distaste for the adjustment period and to accommodate the improvements.
But the pregnancy leg was different than the other legs I’d had. This leg was archaic. With nothing more than a bucket for a socket, the new leg fit too loosely over my flesh and fastened onto my body with a six-inch-wide black neoprene belt that wrapped around my baby bump to hold it in place. There was no suction, so now my stump felt like a size-nine foot sloshing around inside a size-twelve shoe. I knew this was the only answer to my weight-gain problem, but I immediately hated this leg with the same intensity I envied every skinny pregnant woman I encountered.
Every morning after my shower, I reluctantly slipped my stump into the leg’s socket and tightly wrapped the neoprene belt around my increasingly large belly. I worried about my baby as I cinched the belt tightly around him. I worried my belly would swell beyond the size of the belt and then I wouldn’t have any leg to wear. I started wearing the pregnancy leg in July, just as Seattle entered summer; the black neoprene belt, besides feeling like a corset, increased my rising body temperature.
One July evening, feeling heavy and low, I took my old prosthetic leg to the basement to “retire” it. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, holding the leg I had worn during the previous five years of activity and adventure. I took some markers and drew symbols on it depicting the many experiences I had during the five years I wore it: kayak trips, hiking trips, my solo trip to Mexico. Then I gave way to my grief—one more layer of grief as the onion lost another layer. Pregnancy was taking all these things—and with them, my identity—from me. I felt like such a failure. Of all people, I should have done everything possible to keep my weight down. I was giving up more than just my leg; I was giving up a way of life that I’d worked very hard to establish. Instead of sitting in my kayak paddling between islands, I was now sitting most evenings on my couch watching TV. Instead of walking through the woods, I was barely able to walk down the interminably long aisles in the grocery store. Sadness enveloped me. Was I giving up my freedom, my active lifestyle, and my joyful connections with nature for good? I didn’t know how to be truly disabled, as in un-able to live my life as I’d established it. I’d learned over the years how to adapt activities so I could still do them, but I didn’t know how to live with not being able to do those activities at all. Who would I be n
ow that walking was painful in this new way? I’d been through so many iterations of legs over the years and had encountered easily a hundred different kinds of pain, but nothing like the pain of walking in the pregnancy leg. Instead of my stump being securely held, it slid around, causing skin breakdown and sores. How would I be the self who could walk a rugged trail or ski down a mountain when I was rubbed so raw and wobbling so awkwardly?
The more physically limited I became, the more I wanted to hide my feelings in something chemical, so conditioned was I. Sugar had replaced cigarettes, and I felt caught on a merry-go-round whenever I consumed the very thing that was causing my excessive weight gain in the first place. I didn’t realize it wasn’t the cigarettes or the sugar that were causing my pain. It was the feelings I was so desperately trying not to feel. I was lost in a deep void of grief. Even my armor couldn’t protect me from this.
As I sat holding my leg in the basement, Mark came to the top of the stairs. “You okay?” he said.
I snapped at him, “What does it look like? I’m a useless, one-legged woman.”
“Do you want company?”
“No!” I screamed. I was embarrassed, both at my sniveling and my little ritual. I couldn’t see his green eyes from where I sat, but I knew I’d hurt him.
“I’ll be up here if you want to talk,” he said and then walked back upstairs and away from the doorway.
I put my head in my hands, convinced that besides becoming useless, I’d also just shown myself to be a pathetic bitch—Mark would become afraid to reach out toward me if I didn’t get hold of myself. We had only been married for about a year, and he had never seen me like this. He only knew the confident, capable Colleen. Neither one of us had expected me to change so much with the pregnancy. Neither one of us knew quite what to do with me. I wrapped the leg in a blanket, put it on a shelf, ascended the basement stairs, and descended deeper into a lonely, dark place of helplessness.
A Leg to Stand On Page 14
