Gifted

There is a gift that comes with being disabled. It is not just the bright blue placard that comes directly to my home every two years like a subscription; its wheelchair symbol proclaiming my right to park in those coveted upfront spaces. No need to contact the DMV for a renewal. I'm on a special list; my condition is forever. Although unlimited parking for life seems ideal, it is more of a consolation prize than a gift. My gift is subtle, so elusive I forget that I possess it. Sometimes, I need to fall on my face to remember.

A few weeks ago, I fell on my face, literally. I was using an old, back-up leg with a crack in the plastic socket, which pinched my skin if I moved to quickly, and a knee with all the advanced technology of a door hinge. My regular leg was in the shop being correctly aligned and updated to get rid of the irritating squeaking that had accompanied my every step for the last two years. As I walked across my parents' living room, my door-hinge knee failed to swing my leg out in front of me and I fell into the empty space. My arms were preoccupied with pushing my body away from the corner of the end table, so I half-dived, half-bellyflopped, smacking my chin and right cheekbone onto the tile.

Falling unexpectedly comes with the territory. My first prosthetist regularly scolded me for putting my hands in my pocket, warning me to be ready at any moment to find myself hurtling to the ground. A point that hit home the first time I fell, with a decorative glass jar of M&Ms in my hands, landing in a spray of broken shards and bouncing Christmas-colored candies. Its a reality I have grown accustomed to like the occasional fantom limb pain shooting through my body like an electric jolt causing me to twitch or the longing that comes from seeing other girls in summer dresses and sandals. How wonderful it must be to throw on a slip of fabric and leave your legs bare to bake in the sun or to flip off your shoes and walk with naked feet in dewy grass; to not have to dress a clunky piece of machinery each morning or wrestle a tennis shoe onto a plastic foot as yielding and natural as Barbie's toeless feet. Falling has become as common as finding a child beside me trying to mimic the pitching motion of my gait, like a ship rocking in the beginnings of a storm, and the stiffness of my ankle. They study me carefully, unaware that I am watching, and then try to adjust their own living limbs to match. After a bit, they give up. Their supple tendons, flexible muscles, and complex skeletal networks are too specialized and competent to mime the simplicity of my titanium pipe and springs.

I fell, not for the first or last time, and I cried like a three-year-old as soon as I hit the ground. The mixture of pain and embarrassment triggered that child-like response, lurking close beneath the facade of being an untouchable adult. Before I could pull myself up, my husband was there, kneeling on the ground, sliding his body beneath mine, and creating a human chair of his legs and chest for me to lean against. He stroked my forehead and examined my face, saying all the while that everything was okay and urging me to rest there for a moment. I don't know how he got there so fast from his spot across the room on the couch. He reacted with instinctual speed. It was then, as my dad told my mom to get some frozen peas from the freezer and my husband stayed on the floor with me, that I remembered the gift that comes with being disabled. It is like an extra sense. Disability never lets you forget your vulnerability, your need for helping hands and your gratitude when you find you are loved regardless of your shipwreck walk, constant crashes to earth, and inability to walk barefoot or curl up cross-legged. Other flaws can be hidden, disguised, or ignored, but it only takes a flight of stairs, a close-fitting pair of jeans, or misstep to destroy my delusions of one day being perfectly independent, beyond reproach or humility. With each step, my gift buried just beneath my consciousness whispers that I am human – frail, breakable, and clumsy. But I am also reminded – as I reach out an arm for support, climb theater steps for an audition, walk into a classroom full of children with their embarrassingly innocent questions – that I am brave, perseverant, and in essence something more than my body could ever contain.

As I leaned against my husband with icy veggies clutched over a fast forming bump, I thought of the day, years ago, when I allowed Paul to carry me down the shore and into the ocean. It was the first time, since my amputation at age fifteen, that I had felt the rhythm of the waves buoying up my body and the salt water splashing against my face. He had to lift me off my beach towel, where I usually spent summers reading a book in the hot sun pretending the ocean beyond my reach wasn't beckoning, and carried me past people starring at my scared remains of a leg. Unlike a pool, where the water is a few hops from the lawn chair where I leave my prosthetic leg, the ocean water is separated from my towel by a stretch of sand and shallows. It was embarrassing to leave the safety of my jean-clad prosthesis and to reveal my vulnerability to a beach-full of strangers. But that moment passed quickly and I had an army of brothers dancing around me, daring anyone to make a comment or ask a question. Then, I was in the ocean, clinging to Paul's shoulders to steady myself in the ebb and flow, squinting at the too-close blur of his smile in bubble of bright sun coming from water and sky. The memory is so distant and faded I can hardly remember the living pulse of those deep waters swirling against my skin. Perhaps, it is time again to relinquish the cocoon of almost-passing to be lifted into willing arms and transported into the sea, to accept the gift of love given to one as imperfect and broken as I am.