Two Steps at a Time

As I lay in bed last night, I wondered if I was feeling an earth quake.

It felt like the ground was shaking underneath me. My shoulders and my back vibrated, my legs felt as if they were shaking and my arms felt like they were jelly.

When the sensation passed, I lay there for a moment before I realized that my husband had not moved. It had not been an earth quake; it had been my muscles. They had been shaking and quaking and didn’t need the Earth to quirk and shake to move of their own accord. When the body quake started again, I rode it out, trying to feel what I could, to embrace it instead of stiffening myself against it.

To fight it would bring more pain when it was finished.

So I chose to ride it through the second time and the third time. I could feel my muscles shaking into the mattress. I have never felt anything like before; the muscle spasms have always been centralized. One area at a time. Never before has everything shaken at once.

I am reminded of the great SanFansisco Earthquake, and the cracks that ran through the streets afterwards; great open spaces where streets were ripped apart.

I stop to wonder if now, after the body quake, there are cracks on the inside of me.

I dreamt I was in a wheel chair last night.

It was a sleek red metal that shone under the lights. Darkness was around me and I couldn’t see, but I could hear.

I tried pushing forward with my hands along the wheels, tried to move the contraption that held me in it’s arms.

I was jostled from side to side, moved, pushed, kicked.

Finally, someone tipped me out of the wheel chair and I landed hard on the ground. I know I made a sound, a soft sound of dismay and felt people walking on my hands. I could not feel them walking on my legs, though I knew they were.

When I awoke this morning, my legs were a mass of knotted muscle and my first thought upon waking was:

What if I could not walk?

I twirl the phone cord around my finger. I’m daydreaming when my mother’s voice brings me back to the conversation.

“They’re going to have her diagnosed.” My mother says.

“Who?” I know it’s smarter to ask this than to admit I may not have been listening.

“Willow.” She says. “Have you not been listening? They’re taking Willow in to be looked at.”

“What do they think it is?” I ask.

“They’re thinking its Cerebral Palsy.” She says. “She has all the signs. Even Megan thinks that what it might be.”

I felt my gut clench at those words. My niece is just over a year old. “Are they sure?”

“She’s arching backwards like you did as a child,” she says. “She’s having trouble with her flexibility. We can’t know anything for sure yet, but it looks like she may have it.” She says. “What you have.”

“But Megan didn’t have any problems with the birth did she?” A thought pops into my head that maybe, just maybe, they’re wrong, that Willow won’t have to live with this.

“No, there were no problems, but that doesn’t mean anything.” My mother tells me. “You know this.”

“Let me know if you hear anything?” I ask.

“I will,” she says.

We promise to talk later in the week and I hang up the phone feeling worried and restless.  I stare at the phone for a moment, thinking of Willow and how her life is about to change. She is no longer just a baby girl with bright shining eyes. She is a baby girl who has Cerebral Palsy.

Through out the day, I keep thinking of what it was like for me; growing up without knowing anything of what lived inside me. I thought of trying to learn more about my disability in a family that never spoke of things that were different.

I thought of always being told I was different, of always being singled out. I can only hope that she will be strong. It will take courage.

If she doesn’t have enough, I will give her some of mine.