A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  After two abortions, I was finally pregnant, and I wanted to be happy. I wanted to enjoy this experience. But for all the milestones I experienced during pregnancy, I couldn’t let go into the kind of joy I’d watched my sisters and sisters-in-law enjoy with theirs. When I saw my baby’s image on the ultrasound, I wanted to feel connected and excited, but I felt his little budding life as the loss of my independence, my identity—the loss of me. I wasn’t the woman I had spent so many years becoming. And I didn’t know yet that every person’s life is a series of re-visionings and re-makings. I thought I was alone in this upheaval.

  After just a few weeks with the new leg, I did the unimaginable: with tears welling in my eyes, I dug out my crutches from the depths of the closet. The same crutches I’d used in the weeks after the accident. The same crutches I’d used walking around the high school hallways, looking like a freak. The same crutches which had drawn stares, and which made me swear I could feel the disgust rising in people’s bellies. This crappy leg and the crutches, mixed with my weight gain, lack of mobility, and Goddamn it, I even had zits again, made me feel I was back to square one. Who was Colleen? Nothing but a childish beached whale sitting on the couch every night after work and stuffing her face with comfort food.

  18

  MY SAFETY NET

  Our one-bedroom duplex, just half a block from the Puget Sound, was not going to be big enough for three of us. Images of a baby crying in the middle of the night and waking our neighbor were enough reason to ask the question: “Do you think we should talk to a realtor?” I couldn’t believe we were actually considering buying a house. After all, hadn’t Mark and I believed we’d escape the conventional path most couples walked? I felt an internal tug-of-war between wanting to do life differently and wanting to take the traditional route that felt familiar and comfortable. If I was walking into this pregnancy with the huge unknown of how it would affect my leg, I needed to know something was secure. A home of our own would do the trick.

  “Yeah, we can talk to her and see what she says,” Mark said. “But I don’t think we can afford much of a house. We’re still paying off the wedding.” I heard the concern and weight in his voice. Mark analyzed decisions and took a while to do so. I was more intuitive in my decision-making process. If something felt right, I’d often just go for it. Because our marriage was new, we were learning how to mesh our styles.

  “Well, let’s just talk to her,” I said. This was a big step. Aside from saying yes to the pregnancy, buying a house was as big as it got in my world. The only thing I could commit to at this point was talking about it with a realtor.

  Just a few days later, we did talk to her. And in two more days, we were in her Volvo, driving around Seattle neighborhoods looking at charming two- and three-bedroom houses. I only remember one of those houses, the one we decided to buy. All the houses we had viewed before that one “had potential,” we told the realtor, which meant we left each viewing feeling a little grungier than when we had walked in. The house we bought was adorable.

  Exuding charm, it sat on a corner in an older neighborhood. The house itself was almost perfect. The only concern I had was that we would live just three blocks from a busy arterial. On the other hand, three blocks in the other direction was the school where Luke would watch the “ball boys” practice football drills in the fall, and just beyond that was the neighborhood park where he would swing with delight. So, despite the busy street, we decided to put in an offer on the house.

  Due to the housing boom in Seattle, once we made the decision to put in an offer, our realtor swooped us into her office to write it up. Urgency was the tone of our meeting as she scribbled the amount of our down payment and contingencies. As we were signing our names to the multiple documents, she jokingly told us what mortgage meant in French: “death pledge.” I wished she hadn’t told us that. Sweat formed on my brow, and my handwriting became shaky, but we were unflagging in our decision. Soon Mark and I were the proud owners of our first home together.

  I was told to anticipate that our first year of marriage would be hard, but I didn’t expect that I would be reconfiguring my identity at the same time that I was figuring how to meld my life with someone else’s. Most people don’t understand how much marriage can throw a person’s identity up in the air, at least briefly. But for me, not only was I adding “wife” and “homeowner” to my self-perception, but also “disabled” in a way that had never occurred to me before.

  I was worried about how the difficulties of my pregnancy would be central to the development of the foundation of our marriage. During our whirlwind courtship and engagement, our main challenges had been making decisions about the wedding, but those negotiations didn’t prepare either of us for the challenge of dealing with my growing state of despondency as the pregnancy progressed.

  At the height of summer, Mark got a call from his college roommate, Jay. He was in Seattle on business and wanted to meet me and take us to dinner. We met at a restaurant by Green Lake, a popular local gathering place. Sitting on the patio under an umbrella, I drank a “near beer” and sulked while Mark and Jay drank real beer and caught up with each other. When Jay tried to talk to me, I uncharacteristically shut him down.

  It wasn’t like me to be rude, but I couldn’t access the small-talking, chitchatty part of myself. Sure, I resented that I couldn’t languish in the heat of the evening and get a little buzzed, but mostly I resented that my husband seemed so carefree while I carried the weight of my loss of “Colleen” as I’d created her over the years. Mark was about to become a parent just as I was, but he sat with his buddy catching up on old times, unchanged from the days when he and Jay had lived together. I, on the other hand, was being emptied by this pregnancy of everything I thought I was: energetic, mobile, adventurous, and physically spry.

  I was still learning about self-regulating my emotions from Lynn, and that night wasn’t the only night I didn’t do so well. I often felt like a victim of my own feelings. Lynn told me that when we suffer a trauma, a part of us is emotionally stunted at the age at which the trauma occurred. That night at dinner—as well as on many other nights—I had acted like a brooding teenager. Another part of me looked on, urging me to grow up, but that part wasn’t very strong yet. The teenager won out.

  Later at home Mark asked, “Honey, you seemed distant and rude tonight? Was something wrong?”

  “No,” I replied, aware that Mark must have been confused by my behavior. “I just didn’t feel like I belonged. You two were catching up, and I’m just a fat pregnant lady.”

  “But I wanted Jay to get to know you.” I heard a small resentment in his voice and I saw that worse than having missed the opportunity to get to know Jay, I wasn’t contributing to our marriage in the way I had envisioned or hoped. I simply didn’t have the energy and wherewithal to give much of myself to the relationship. In this first year of marriage, Mark and I were putting the foundation of our future into place, brick by brick. I was failing him, myself, and our marriage by adding bricks forged with my sadness and anger. I could sense some of the bricks Mark was adding to our foundation were going to be fired in the oven of his resentment. I only hoped that our love would be strong enough for us to keep building, even if there were a few faulty bricks in the structure.

  Things would get harder before they would get easier, unfortunately. Many nights I came home from work in tears. It was difficult to hold my emotions in check all day, and by the time I got home, I was like a wound-up rubber band flying through the air. I tried to keep these feelings from Mark, knowing I was like a pressure cooker close to blowing my top. One night I came home from work, threw myself onto our bed, and started sobbing. Mark rushed into the room, paused, and then sat on the bed. “Honey, what’s going on?”

  How could I explain to him that the deeper I peeled into the onion of my grief, the more tears there seemed to be? “I’m just so sad. I didn’t expect this. This hurts so much.” Mark lay down next to me.

  “You mean yo
ur leg hurts?” I could tell he was trying to understand and I was frustrated that he didn’t. How could he, of course? But it’s so hard to feel misunderstood and unknown by the person you need most in the world.

  “Not just my leg. It’s everything.” He simply spooned his body around mine. He didn’t tell me it would be okay; he just let me cry. He didn’t shush me. He just squeezed me when another wave of tears surged through my body. Unlike so many other people in my life over the years, Mark didn’t ask me to step up to the plate and push my sadness aside so he could be okay. He just stayed with me in it, even though it was clearly hard for him.

  I was finally safe in someone’s arms, able to express the sadness that I had harbored for so many years. I had always feared that if I gave in to my emotions I’d freefall into a black hole of sadness, but there I was, cradled by the safety net of Mark’s love. Because I had him, I was finally able to utter the words I had been scared to say for eighteen years.

  “I can’t do this, honey. This is too hard.” I’d never said that—never admitted that I wanted to give up on myself. Mark just listened. “Why did this happen to me?” He offered no response. I no longer thought in terms of God. I wasn’t asking why God had taken my leg, but I was asking a cosmic question for certain. Why me? Why was this my journey? And Mark simply held me as the question that had been burning in my heart was finally asked aloud.

  I thought I had healed the wounds in my heart when I’d forgiven myself and Harvey. But my pregnancy revealed how many crevices in the wound were still raw. My trauma, as all trauma is, was nuanced, rich, deep, multi-dimensional, and very, very tender. My physical pain nimbly picked at the scab, the thin layer of illusion, until my heart was bleeding with sadness once again. Could I ever find real, long-lasting relief and healing? How? Who could offer that to me? If this kind, loving man beside me could not heal me, who could?

  In August, when I was six months pregnant, Mark and I took a trip down the Oregon coast. Getting through Seattle traffic was easy that day, but the traffic in Olympia, an hour south of Seattle, was at a standstill. We didn’t have air-conditioning in our car, so I rolled down my window. The air was heavy from the heat and the exhaust spewing from the cars ahead. My stump became very uncomfortable. Sitting in the car was almost unbearable. Between grunts, groans, and moans, I shifted my body in the seat, no easy maneuver with my growing belly and clunky prosthetic leg. I felt like a prisoner in my own body, and now I felt captive in my small car. I wanted to throw something. And here is where my final, healing shift began.

  “Aaaaggghhh! I have to get out of this car!” I groaned.

  Mark, already sensing my obvious discomfort, was gentle. “Honey, the next exit is about three miles away. Can you hold on till then?”

  I didn’t want this to be his fault, but I had to direct this roiling energy somewhere, or I might implode. I raised my voice in angry panic. “Three miles? I can’t wait three miles!”

  “I can’t get over for a while, can you hold on?” he asked again cautiously.

  But my leg was burning all the way from the end of my stump to my crotch, and my heart was pounding too fast. We were on our last trip as a couple before the baby was born. I’d wanted this trip to be a good chance for us to connect with each other, but suddenly my irritation and anxiety felt too big for the car—too big for my body. I simply could not get it under control.

  I worried about my baby’s life forming in my cauldron of anger. What was it like for him to begin his life in my hell? Was my boiling blood pulsing through his veins? Was my rage infused in the amniotic fluid surrounding his body? Once he was born and cried his first cry, would his tears echo the tears I’d shed during his gestation, or would they be tears of relief from finally being free from his nine-month prison? This thought was almost too much for me.

  I heard a scream of utter frustration and bitterness erupt from my own throat. And then, “Goddamn it!” I shouted. “Just keep driving. Forget it.”

  “What?” Mark looked at me, perplexed.

  I answered through clenched teeth. “I said forget it.” I didn’t know how to let this frustrated rage go. Like having a vice grip around my heart, I felt constricted by its power.

  And then, in one of those rare but welcome light-bulb moments, like when long division suddenly made sense back in elementary school, I remembered Lynn’s words to me, something she had been repeating for months: “You get to take care of you.” I recalled what we’d been practicing in our sessions. And I shut my eyes. I started to take slow deep breaths the way she’d taught me. Just breathe, Colleen. In. Out. In. Out.

  Breathing was akin to peeling another layer of the onion. Once I focused inward on my breath, I felt the shift. The anger and fear loosened its grip on my heart, which then opened to the sadness. Always under my anger was sadness. At first I felt a flood of regret and shame for my outburst; then I was consumed with sorrow—for hurting Mark, for my physical pain, for being a one-legged pregnant woman. But I had to acknowledge there was a new layer to my feelings this time. Each time my sorrow was cared for, each time space was made for it, new colors of it broke through.

  This pregnancy brought its own joy, but it also held unique challenges. I was confronted once again with the limits of my body. How could this not make me sad? I had to face the reality that losing my leg those many years ago continued to adversely affect my life at every new stage I entered. Who would not grieve over this? Sadness washed over me in the car for all the pain, anger, and inconvenience of my pregnancy, and how those negative feelings tainted the joy I wanted to feel. But I felt a difference from the sadness I’d felt earlier in the peeling of the onion. Today, in this car, I would be gentle with my anger and grief if only for this moment.

  I tried to patch things up with Mark by apologizing through my tears, but I knew some damage had been done. If I didn’t learn how to be in a healthy relationship with my sadness, I was going to slowly break his trust in me. He was like a volcanologist, studying my mood and tone, trying to determine when I’d explode again, but I was too unpredictable for his untrained eye. I didn’t want this for him; I was going to need to take my healing seriously.

  The ocean worked her magic. Being close to the water that took my father’s life so many years ago was like being in church. As the crashing waves ebbed back into the ocean, my sadness followed—coming and going at will.

  One afternoon, Mark took a run on the beach. As I sat on a log watching him, he took my breath away. Because he was wearing shorts, I could see the muscles in his legs flex and soften, flex and soften. I marveled at the beauty of the human leg: the muscular thigh, the adaptable knee, the curvaceous calf, the flexible ankle, and the precious foot. He glided over the sand so easily. My throat constricted, and I heard myself moan. He was so beautiful. I wanted to enter his body and be him as he ran over the sand.

  Mark finished his run and sat next to me on the log. I decided to open up to him, hoping my honesty would help stitch together the rift my anger had created.

  “Honey,” I asked nervously, “what kind of mother am I going to be if I can’t run on the beach with our kids? I want to take our kids backpacking, but I can hardly walk through the grocery store.”

  Mark took my hand. “Colleen, things will get better. You will come through this. I know this isn’t the pregnancy you hoped for, but you’re doing a great job.”

  “I wish I could run with you. It’s going to be so hard to not be able to run with our children.” Here was the crux of my fear. What if I never regained my mobility? Was I going to disable everyone’s life in my family? Keeping company with the ocean had led me into the center of my greatest worry: Would I hurt those I loved most with my inability to be other than what I was? Would I be an insufficient mother and harm my own child?

  “Honey, stop right there. We need to take this a step at a time. What you’re doing right now is the most important thing: you are creating a human being.” The baby punctuated his point with a strong kick. And again, I
closed my eyes and breathed in and out, working very hard to stay in the moment—this moment with my little family.

  Back home, when we decorated the baby’s room, I felt like I did when Mark and I were falling in love: full of anticipation to get to know the person who would inhabit this room, our world, my heart. I felt like I was living an emotional game of ping-pong—anger and sadness on one side of the net, excitement and joy on the other—but I was beginning to breathe through all of it.

  In spite of all the years that I tried to control my environment and my activities, this baby was already becoming a teacher. I was learning that I couldn’t control everything. I had been putting my efforts in the wrong place. Instead of controlling my outer world, I was learning that it was my inner world that I could—and should—control.

  19

  A PART OF GOD

  I was two weeks late. I had quit work a week before my due date, desperately wanting my pregnancy to be over and to take the next step into the world of motherhood. My days were spent alone watching movies and futzing around the house in the afternoon waiting for Mark to come home. The “nesting” was complete; I just needed my little baby. For as much angst as I had about the next phase of life, I was even more excited, and being excited felt good.

  During the five years before Mark and I married, I’d studied medicinal herbology. Now, the garden in my new backyard provided many of the herbs I used; others I gathered in local parks. Homemade tinctures and salves were prepared and waiting both for labor and post-labor pain and discomfort. I wasn’t a medical practitioner by any stretch, but common sense led me to believe that delivering a baby did not necessarily warrant medical intervention. Women, even women with disabilities, had been having babies long before modern medicine came along. In spite of all the ways my body had betrayed me over the years, I somehow hoped that it could get me through labor without making it a medical ordeal. Wherever this faith came from, I took comfort in it.