There\u2019s a famous scene from \u201cMonty Python and the Holy Grail\u201d that almost everybody knows. It\u2019s plague season, and Eric Idle wanders through the village streets yelling, \u201cBring out your dead!\u201d People toss bodies on the wagon like it\u2019s recycling day.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s that one guy who just can\u2019t get with the program. He\u2019s on the wagon of death, and he lifts up his head like a baby bird and croaks, \u201cI\u2019m not dead yet!\u201d<\/p>\n

This is me.<\/p>\n

I sit in the exam room of my general practitioner, whom I haven\u2019t seen since before my twins were born. They are almost four. But now, here I am, watching her strap a boot to my foot. It looks like an animal trap or the medical version of a Birkenstock, and it makes me walk like a zombie.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

She helps me off the table and hands me orders for an x-ray across town.<\/p>\n

She wants to know why it took me a month to come see her after the injury. But \u201cthe injury\u201d is one of those fluke things that happen when all you have time to think is \u201cI\u2019m an idiot\u201d in that deep, slow-motion voice before it\u2019s all over and done.<\/p>\n

I dropped my son\u2019s wheelchair on my foot, across all the tiny bones that look as thin as wishbones when you point your toes. I was unloading the wheelchair from the van \u2013 something I\u2019ve done\u00a0successfully a thousand times. Until this one time.<\/p>\n

So, I hobbled around for a month, not telling my husband and not telling my son\u2019s physical therapist, who gave me the side-eye when I limped in.<\/p>\n

Time heals all wounds. That\u2019s what they say when you get your feelings hurt or have a throw down over the dinner table during the holidays. But time, in this instance, is not going to cut it. There is no magicking my way out of this one, no Harry Potter knitting of bones that can make me whole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s got time for this?\u201d I think, as I look down at my Frankenfoot in the parking lot.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never been really and truly incapacitated as a parent. The closest I come to incapacitation are when the migraines come on slow and hard and make my eyeballs feel like they\u2019re rattling around in their sockets like gravel in a tailpipe. On those days, I blink and grind away at the hours. I move very slowly, like the house is set with tripwire. But still, I \u201ccarry on carry on\u201d as Queen would say.<\/p>\n

You vow \u201cin sickness and in health\u201d and \u201cuntil death do us part\u201d when you wed, but really, no truer words could be spoken about parenthood. You\u2019re a mom when you\u2019re vomiting and a mom when you\u2019re not. You\u2019re a mom with and without the flu, with and without the broken foot or the migraine or the stomach bug. You can\u2019t unpeel that label.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s different, though, when your kid can\u2019t fend for himself as easily as his peers. My son\u2019s not great in the wheelchair. If I\u2019m not there, he\u2019ll get himself stuck in a corner like a wind-up toy bumping against walls with nowhere to go. If I\u2019m not there, he can\u2019t get himself into a chair or the van or onto the toilet or out the door. If I\u2019m not there\u2026.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thing I can\u2019t explain to the doctor when she asks why it took me a month to get my foot checked out. How do you explain that your immobility could bring the family to a crashing halt? How do you explain that perambulation is a great freedom and a great responsibility that no one in my house takes lightly?<\/p>\n

Eventually, bodies break down, and so I am wearing the Frankenboot, and it looks so much worse than if I\u2019d just let it go. But I am shambling along, and my son is rolling along, and we are on the move. For now, that\u2019s enough for us to haul ourselves off the wagon and carry on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a famous scene from \u201cMonty Python and the Holy Grail\u201d that almost everybody knows. It\u2019s plague season, and Eric Idle wanders through the village streets yelling, \u201cBring out your dead!\u201d People toss bodies on the wagon like it\u2019s recycling day. And then there\u2019s that one guy who just can\u2019t get with the program. He\u2019s on the wagon of death, and he lifts up his head like a baby bird and croaks, \u201cI\u2019m not dead …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[21,86,23,11,26],"tags":[28,97,144,46,74,209,55,136,54,17,84,100,15,37,52],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mom-gene.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/converse-2069209_1920.jpg?fit=1920%2C1158&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8ca5p-14m","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4114"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4750,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4114\/revisions\/4750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}