A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  Lynn pointed out how ludicrous adults’ questions were by giving me an alternative reply: “I’ll tell you all about the worst day of my life if you tell me about the worst day of yours.”

  That stopped me dead in my tracks. My first reaction was complete resistance—there was no way I could say that to anyone. I pictured myself answering people’s questions with her provocative answer instead of engaging in a five-minute conversation with them and I started to giggle nervously.

  Maybe I could do it. Maybe I could really set this limit and claim my boundary. The pit of fear in my stomach told me it wouldn’t feel natural to talk to people that way, but the relief and freedom I felt just thinking about the possible results made it clear that some kind of boundary had to be my next step. I left my session with a promise to Lynn and to myself that I would practice a handful of phrases I could use to set boundaries. I was determined to protect both myself and Luke from other people’s sometimes well-meaning, but often detrimental, curiosity.

  When I decided I wasn’t going to answer any more questions, I felt big and powerful and small and scared all at the same time. While doing the dishes or folding the laundry, I practiced my responses for both children and adults.

  “I’m here at the playground to play with my son. I’m sure your mom or dad can explain.”

  “I’ll tell you about the worst day of my life if you tell me about the worst day of yours.”

  I finally understood that the children didn’t need the gory details. Their own parents knew how much information to give and what language to use with their child far better than I did. I felt like my cells rearranged themselves in the course of one week once I adopted this new persona. There was a seismic shift in my attitude, in my understanding, about where my boundaries lay.

  On the next hot day, I donned my shorts and took Luke to the park, ready to take the kids on. Come on, let me have it. Give me your best shot. I can handle even the most insensitive, asinine question.

  We walked into the park, laid out our blanket, and applied the sunblock just like always. I glanced around me at the other park patrons. Not one whisper. We played in the wading pool. No one came up to us. We walked over to the playground. No one asked a single question. There were a few stares, which was normal and expected, but not one question. I was disappointed until I realized I’d gotten what I asked for: a peaceful trip to the park with my son. Was this a fluke or was I giving off different energy with my new resolve?

  But a few weeks later, I would get to use these new boundaries. Mark and I took Luke to a park together on a Saturday. We were spinning on the roundabout when a boy about five years old ran up to us. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at my leg.

  “I’m at the park with my son right now. You can talk to your parents about it.” I scanned the park, but saw no other adults present. Is this boy here alone?

  “They’re not here. Hey, what IS that thing?” He walked over to me as the roundabout slowed down. I saw his hand reaching out to touch my leg. I could see this child was going to make me work at it.

  I got up and walked a few feet away. “I’m playing with my son right now. Here, I’ll spin,” I said, turning my attention to my family. And I began spinning the roundabout.

  “Is that real? Hey, what happened?” I gave Mark a desperate look. This was the kind of child who might go on relentlessly, each question inspiring a new one. I didn’t want to jump on that merry-go-round, but I’d only practiced a few phrases.

  Mark chimed in, direct and clear, “Stop asking questions.”

  My shoulders relaxed and I breathed. Oh, so that’s how to do it. The boy, realizing I wasn’t going to bite, didn’t leave, but started talking about his new bike. I heard his dad, hailing him from across the park, to come home. We spent the next half hour playing peacefully, just the three of us.

  If I were on a plane falling from the sky and all the air masks dropped from the overhead compartments, I wouldn’t first help everyone else to get their mask on, put on my own, and then finally put on my son’s. If I responded this way, he would be dead by the time I got to him. I realized that every time I answered someone’s questions, I’d been taking care of that person first, then taking care of my need to take care of them, and I’d been leaving Luke out in the cold. This wasn’t just a lesson in how to set my own boundaries; I found a deeper understanding of what it meant for me to be a mother.

  My son comes first.

  24

  ONE MORE TIME

  My dream of having a noisy, swirling house full of six kids was long gone. I knew my body couldn’t take six pregnancies, but I also couldn’t fathom having only one child. It was soon time to think of giving Luke a sibling.

  The parenting books I read cited over and over that the perfect age span between siblings is three years. While that factored into our decision about when to have another baby, the bigger and more compelling reason was that I was thirty-eight. Time was ticking. I understood I would lose some of my physical abilities during the pregnancy that would complicate life for both Luke and me, but I didn’t have all the time in the world. If I was going to have another baby, it was now or never.

  I felt emotionally ready. Since Luke’s arrival in our lives I had grown so much. Of course I feared falling into depression again, but I had truly dealt with the identity issues that had brought me crashing down in first pregnancy, so I had some hope I could stave it off.

  I realized something had completely changed for me in how I thought of myself one hot summer day in June just after I got pregnant. I was getting ready to go to a friend’s retirement party. There were going to be people there I didn’t know. The party was scheduled to start at five o’clock in the evening, which, in Seattle, meant the party would start off hot and quickly turn cool when the sun went down at about nine o’clock. If I wore shorts, I’d undoubtedly be asked “the questions,” and have to fend them off with my new well-practiced boundary statements. If I wore pants, I’d be too warm for the first couple of hours.

  I stood in front of my closet pondering what to do. A year ago, I would have worn the shorts, not only because of the weather, but also because the loss of my leg was so much of who I was and how I identified myself to strangers. It was my one special and unique quality. Although I’d always hated the looks and questions showing my leg invited, I’d appreciated that people would think highly of me when they saw my leg and learned I was so able to do so many things on my own. “Oh, she’s so brave, such a survivor, how admirable,” were whispers I didn’t mind overhearing. Such sentiments helped me identify myself as strong and extraordinary, when deep inside I felt weak and irrelevant.

  Ironically, other people’s admiration also identified me as disabled since my success “in spite” of my disability is what they were commenting on. I’d lived in this quagmire of conflicting needs (to want people to leave me alone while also needing them to recognize and validate me) for too many years.

  That night, while I was trying to decide what to wear, I realized I wanted to be recognized just for being me. On my own, I was enough to be liked. Naturally, I still questioned whether I had enough substance, enough humor, and enough interesting qualities to hold my own without my leg as a conversation piece. But the other irony was that just as I had accepted my limitations over the past three years of being a mother, I had also been through a process of letting go of identifying myself solely as an amputee.

  I wore the pants—not to be secretive, not to avoid the questions per se, but to stand on my own two feet. I didn’t need to be disabled in order to matter. What I’d discovered was that the totality of who I am far outweighs the part of me that’s missing. I neither had to be Super Amputee, nor Poor Colleen. I was disabled, yes, but not unable. I was everything all once: strong and weak, happy and sad, extraordinary and limited in some ways. Just like everyone else.

  For my second pregnancy, my prosthetist Kirk and I decided I should use my peg leg instead of the belted leg I used during my first
pregnancy. He agreed to enlarge the socket as needed to accommodate my increasingly large “baby leg.” The downside to using the peg leg was that I would spend my pregnancy (and probably nine months after my baby’s birth as I lost my baby weight) walking stiff-legged like a pirate. The plus side was that wearing a leg with a suction socket versus one held on by a belt was infinitely easier and, I would come to find out, meant I wouldn’t need to rely on crutches the last few months of the pregnancy.

  Experience is a wise teacher. I approached the second pregnancy with an intimate understanding of the fetus’s development and my limited body’s potential deterioration. During my first pregnancy, the baby felt like an invader, ruining my life. I’d been miserable and then had worried about how each of my decisions and moods affected Luke. He turned out fine, despite the milkshakes, donuts, and weepy days. This second time around I was much more relaxed about what I was doing and what was happening to my body. Even as my body continued to remind me of its imperfections and constraints, I kept an even keel.

  When I was six months pregnant, I started taking Luke to swim lessons at the YMCA twice a week. Being in the water was as good for me as it was fun for Luke. The water displaced the weight of the baby inside me and allowed me to easily maneuver my body. I held Luke’s chubby, soft body in my hands, facedown so he could practice blowing bubbles and kicking. I threw him in the air and caught him as he hit the water. Our belly laughs echoed around the pool.

  One day, after we had showered and changed, we were walking down the hallway to the car. I carried our tote bag, and Luke carried his pool toy. Suddenly, without any warning that might have allowed me to brace myself, I crash-landed on the floor. Luke stood beside me helpless as I lay catawampus on the ground. Pain registered in my hip and in the palms of my hands, which I’d instinctively used to try and catch myself on the way down. I slowly straightened myself out and sat up. Our toiletries and wet towels were scattered across the floor. At once I thought of the baby. My hands immediately rushed to my stomach. Is the baby okay? Tears sprang to my eyes. What just happened? Why had I fallen? I looked down and saw that the metal rod, the bottom half of my peg leg, had broken off from the socket—the metal connection at the bottom of the socket had been worn thin and had simply snapped. Scanning the hallway, I saw the metal rod ten feet away from us across the floor. I looked at Luke, worried he’d be scared. Once he saw I was okay, he’d begun playing with his pool toy.

  Everything was all right. I wasn’t hurt. Luke was calm. The baby was fine.

  “Luke, help Mommy gather our things,” I said calmly.

  “Okay, Mommy. What happened?”

  “My leg broke, honey. I need to get some help.”

  “Are we going home?” he asked.

  “Yeah, buddy, once I find someone to help me.”

  I awkwardly hefted my body off the floor and leaned against the wall for support. I was shaking internally, even though I knew I wasn’t hurt. Ever since the accident, any physical assault to my body elicited this response—I couldn’t help it. But I was learning to separate myself from this reaction. I took a deep breath and talked myself through it. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. I took the towels and toiletries from Luke as he handed me each one and refilled the tote and then placed the metal pylon in the bag, too. I kept breathing through my tears while I scanned the sterile, white hallway for someone to help me.

  Another mom and her young child from our swim class, freshly showered, were walking down the hall toward us. With watery, somewhat-embarrassed eyes, I caught her attention.

  “Excuse me,” I called. “My leg just broke. Can I get a hand?”

  She looked down at my leg and I saw understanding register in her eyes. “Oh, of course. What can I do?”

  I showed her how to hold her arm so she could support me as I hopped the two hundred feet down the rest of the hallway and into the parking lot to my car. She offered to carry my bag.

  “I really appreciate your help,” I said through my labored breath. Sweat was dripping down my brow by now because of the effort of jumping on one leg.

  “Well, I think you’re doing great. Is there anything else I can do?” We had arrived at the car.

  “No, thanks, that was very helpful. Thank you.” With shaky hands, I managed to get Luke secured into his car seat. I hopped around to my side of the car and slipped into my seat. After buckling myself in, I took a deep breath. It’s okay, you’re fine. You can do this.

  On the drive home, I reminded myself to keep breathing and focus on the road. Luke started talking about Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, his current favorite movie, which distracted me from my body’s trembling. When we arrived home, I had to hop fifty more feet to the house, using the fence for support with one hand, supporting the baby in my belly with my other hand. In my younger Super Girl days, hopping up and down a flight of thirteen steps would have been a breeze. But now, after three years of relative inactivity—and being six months pregnant—I was exhausted by the effort. I fell onto the couch, and finally, a sob heaved out of me. I felt momentarily overwhelmed with what I’d just been through. But in only a few minutes, a realization crept into my heart and a slight smile onto my lips: I got through it. My leg had broken and fallen off my pregnant body in a public place while my little son stood beside me. And I got through it. I was handling everything I needed to handle.

  Pregnancy for me was different than it was for other women. While some women jogged up until two weeks before they gave birth, I was taking care of a toddler while using a peg leg and increasingly losing physical ability with every pound I gained. That was just who I was. I sat on the couch, filled with the warmth of acceptance. I finally really understood that I had a choice in how I responded to each moment of my life. I didn’t love my situation, but I acknowledged it as my own. My body might have been falling apart, but I was glad to know my spirit wasn’t.

  I settled Luke on the couch with a snack and a movie and then called Mark to tell him what happened.

  “Do you need me to come home?” he said with some urgency.

  Surprising myself, I said, “No, I’m fine, really, just a little bruised. I just needed to hear your voice, that’s all.” Hearing his velvety voice grounded me. “I’ll call Kirk and make an appointment for tomorrow. Do you think you could take a few hours off work to come with me?” Technically, I could have crutched from the house to the car and from the car to the office, but with a toddler and my overstuffed mommy purse, it would be challenging on crutches. I didn’t have anything to prove. I knew when to ask for help.

  “Of course. Just let me know when.”

  Many men feel at a loss when their wives are pregnant and miserable. Not Mark. He was always there for me, ready to do what he could to make things easier. And my growing acceptance of my disability seemed to shift Mark’s emotional response to me, and to help him relax into the experience of getting ready for a new baby, too. I was so grateful that instead of shoving him away with my anger, as I had during the first pregnancy, I was allowing him to support me, physically and emotionally.

  By the eighth month of pregnancy, I was using my body in a very limited fashion: within the house and around the neighborhood. Looking after a toddler meant I sat on the floor a lot, which I’ve never liked. Getting back to standing was hard, especially as the baby grew. I would discover later that floor-sitting during pregnancy, when my pelvic region was shifting and changing, was the beginning of tendonitis in my sacrum, or “butt bone.” But the domain of dinosaurs and superheroes is on the floor, so down I went. Life was slow until the baby arrived, and I was accepting. I had learned from my herbal medicine teacher to always ask of my pain, “What’s right about this?” I posed the same question to my situation. Slowing down meant I was able to savor my moments with Luke. Slowing down meant I was able to honor my body. Slowing down meant I was able to protect my baby.

  Mark and I consulted with a midwife and felt confident in having a home birth for my second delivery. When th
e day came, my sister Mary Beth and her eleven-year-old daughter, Mora, arrived in the wee hours of the morning to help out. While they tended to the chores, I labored through each contraction, fearful this birthing experience would be similar to the last: long and arduous. The midwife had assured me that labor would be quicker the second time around, but I had my doubts. She turned out to be right. This labor was half as long as Luke’s.

  I didn’t want to be on my back again for the actual birth, so we rented a birthing tub, which was like a large heated kiddie pool. I was in the tub when I was ready to push, Mark behind me once again, helping my body move into each contraction. I started to cry, scared the pushing phase would last three hours as it had with Luke. But the baby wanted to come out. In just eighteen minutes, I pushed out my baby girl, Tessa.

  She was tiny and pink, and when the midwife handed her to me I gasped at the blast of her red hair. Mark stood beside me once we’d swaddled her in a blanket, and the midwife invited Luke to come meet his baby sister. I watched him tentatively reach out to stroke her cheek. My little family.