Wonky
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it”
-Helen Keller
The *thing* around me was tight and seemed mechanical. It had a small shine in the kitchen light and it grabbed me around my waist, and in between my legs. My baby brain couldn’t comprehend. I was being grasped and squeezed in a way that would “fix me” according to all the tall men in white coats who smelled clean but musky. They used fancy words that I didn’t know, but they must have meant something bad. They always made my mother tear up, and my dad couldn’t even bear to stay in the hospital room with me. Hip dysplasia, I heard that one the most. They pointed to me and flapped their black clipboards around me. I had spent what felt like years in the colorful room. Doctors and nurses floated in and out. There was always my neighbors though. A few other babies all with different ailments that landed them in the same room as me. They babbled and bubbled with boiling excitement. A woman peeked into the door, her red hair spilling over her shoulder. We made eye contact and she grabbed the cart with my tray on it. We turned out the door and screeched on down the hallway. I was sent home with the whole hospital. They took me into the kitchen and laid me on the table. They plugged my hundreds of machines in and I laid there. I laid there until I had stared into the ceiling light enough for me to blink and see the shadow of the dead stink bug. Enough for me to notice the peculiar alignment of cracks on the ceiling growing from the light like vines from a jungle tree. I had laid there for days. Days turned into weeks. My parents dragged the couch into the kitchen so they could sit by me. The cramped space was like a labyrinth. Can’t step there, you’ll unplug the baby! Can’t step there, you’ll smack your head on the cabinet. The easiest way was to throw your shoes into the living room and hurdle the couch. Slowly, the machines lessened, the wires disappeared as well as the couch. I was finally moved into the nursery upstairs. The decorations were collecting dust and the walls weren’t fully painted. Being premature sent all the plans down the drain. Our doorbell rang once. A woman with blonde curly hair in a high ponytail came in and sat on the beige couch. She talked to my parents for what seemed like hours. Tears brimmed and glistened in my mother’s eyes. What could she have said to upset my mother? I went to anger. I screamed in my loudest infant voice, and attacked her knees. I clawed her with my nails and my father grabbed me with his hairy arm. The woman guarded the large brown object next to her. She makes my mother cry then brings in a torture device?? My father held me close to his chest, his scraggles poking me from his chin. She strapped the saddle-like device to me, then pointed to the floor. I followed her finger to the floor and plopped right down. I inspected the device and poked at it. “She needs to wear this brace at all times for at least 6 months. At most, 2 years. Her hips are a little….wonky” said the bland woman from the couch. I couldn’t play much with my brace. I stayed on one floor, and only went upstairs for the bare necessities and was escorted by the nearest parent. I was just out of bed to find my parents. A plane flew over and woke me up. I blinked until my eyes adjusted to take a look at what was ahead of me. The stairs. Too big for me and my mind. Too scary, too dangerous. I wasn’t going to let this leveled stages scare me. I knew one day that I would conquer them and march trumphiantly up and down their torn-carpet platforms. I guess today wasn’t that day. I stood up with the help on the railing and tiptoed on to the first step with success. I had this in the bag. The next step, should be just as easy as the second, seemed to be a troubled one. I tripped over my own toe, and I tumbled down the steps, slamming my brace into one railing, then the next. I sat at the landing until my mother came rushing down the steps. I didn’t cry. I did it. I didn’t let those monstrosities get the best of me. My mother took me back to the doctor. Nothing was wrong with me, of course there wasn’t. Common sense, I didn’t cry. But I finally figured out my brace, my saddle, my throne. I rode it with pride, I sat in it with high esteem. I walked up and down those stairs with pride until the day I got that brace off. I got myself right back into that saddle. I pranced around on a sweaty horse around thousands of spectators. Who would have know a little girl with a disability would be seated on a horse in front of hundreds of strangers?