A Reminder
Brokenness
Gillian Marchenko, author of the recently published memoir Sun Shine Down, muses about the privilege of holding her daughter Polly in her arms…
It’s supposed to rain later today.
My left arm aches.
I broke it in two places, two different times in my childhood, and now sometimes when the weather changes it aches, either up near my shoulder or in my wrist; the places it broke.
The aches remind me of those times; the agony and pain, the fear of being in an emergency room as a child, spending the night for the first time in a hospital, getting attention from classmates and extended family, people signing my cast, ‘Get well soon!’.
Me trying to itch the inside of my cast with a hangar, not being able to swim for half of a summer because I couldn’t get my arm wet. Being a bit doped up on the medication to ease the hurt.
My broken arm became my whole world. How could it not be when the pain was great, instant, and overwhelming?
At the time there was no way of knowing that the pain wasn’t going to be my new normal.
For all I knew I could be in that kind of fear and pain for the rest of my life.
I went to the hospital and got help. The excruciating pain eventually turned into a dull ache and then only, a flimsy itch.
Life went back to normal. I was found splashing around in the kiddie pool within eight weeks.
But a dull ache returns now and then.
And I am reminded that at times in my life, I’ve been broken.
Recently I went to four parent-teacher conferences for my kids in two different schools.
I was prepared to discuss each kid, I thought.
But when I sat down with Polly’s teacher (who has Down syndrome and stars in my recently published memoir, Sun Shine Down), I was surprised to read that she hadn’t met her goals.
After a whole year at school Polly still couldn’t figure out classroom procedures. She struggled with transitions every day.
Polly’s was cute and everyone loved her, but basically she was still just walking around making messes in class.
And the dull ache, the fact that I had a child with a disability started up again.
Polly’s birth shattered me. I teamed up with Jesus and my husband Sergei to put myself back together, but much like that pesky jigsaw puzzle you’ve almost completed, a few pieces were lost in the mix, and now I walk around with empty spaces.
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