I sit in bed, reading...putting off a start to the day. My phone buzzes. Peter has sent a family text with this photo, taken three years ago. My heart cinches and I can't take my eyes off it, no I can't take my eyes off her.
So I get in the bathtub. Over and over, the photo rolls in my head. Looking at my leg in the water, I am beyond tears. I used to cry, racked with sobs of loss, grief that seemed bottomless. But now my amputation is felt as more practical, it had to happen, and these days I see my little leg as sweet and even cute. I am driving myself to favorite bakeries and around. And yesterday a guy passed me and kindly asked, "So you have a bum ankle too?" I laughed and answered with a dash of wry, "Oh it's a little more than that."
For sure, I am moving along, forward, and loving each new step out and about. And yet, this photo doesn't leave me for awhile. It reminds me of those Before and After photos, the ones in Vogue and Better Homes and Gardens. We ooh and aah at the After photo, with the Before one something that we happily have left in the past. Pretty new kitchens next to old dated ones, you know the type. We get this sense of progress, of moving to something better.
But we all have these other sorts of photos pop up, the ones that make our hearts skip a beat. The ones that scream...this Before was better, this After, well not so much. We look at something or someone who is not with us anymore - what we loved dearly with all our hearts and souls - what we desired until the very end of time.
We want badly to crawl through that veil of time, sit in our photos for awhile. Yes, I want to walk with those two legs, quickly into that shop. I want to wear those red boots, to feel common and normal again. In the bathtub, I slide deeper into the water, drowning in all that desire to be back somewhere. That woman looks so comfortable, so content, so assured...
...but I will never have two legs again, be in the same body again, no time machine can make it so. I am me, with my fancy robot leg. You are you, with your life organized as it is today. We open our eyes and wake up to whatever is, not always our dream come true. We wake up to our lives disordered sometimes, sort of torn at the edges, dusty in the creases.
It is then that we take a deep breath and stay in bed for awhile, getting up to greet our day when we are able, speaking oh so kindly to ourselves. This all might take more time or an extra cup of coffee or three or more, trust and patience, for sure. Because it takes courage and energy and strength to look at some things, to hold our gaze, to look at stitches for the first time.
But we will and we do, in short glimpses if we must, but we dare to look at After...and over time, sweet time, it soothes and mends us. We come back together, seeing ourselves in a new and yes, very beautiful way again...for me, a woman who still smiles and will wear red boots again.
Yes, I am her and she is me...and we will wear red boots again.
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