That was this afternoon.
Weather-wise, this afternoon was brutal. It felt like winter was trying to come back. Temperatures were harsh, the winds severe. Everybody was huddled together, swaddled in layers and layers of warm-ups.
At 4:00 PM, the seniors, myself included, were called to the finish line of the track to begin the lap. As normal, the lap would run counter to normal meet running. Non-seniors were instructed to line the infield to cheer for their teammates. A bucket of flowers was waiting for the seniors.
The first hint that my senior lap would not work out quite like I'd imagined it came when my name failed to appear on the list. I had to add myself in, using a Sharpie I scrounged out of my pocket, writing with the sheet of paper pressed against my hand. I was to go last. This presented several problems. First, since I had my splint on, I'd be walking slowly where all the other seniors would be able to actually run. In other words, there was no chance I'd finish anywhere close to anybody else. Second, as it turned out, there were enough flowers for everybody but one person to get one. The one missing out was, of course, the one starting last. Me.
Names were called and people stepped into their laps. They were running. I can't help but imagine that the running would make things feel more triumphant.
When my name was called, I lurched into action. There was a hint of run lurking in my lurching flailing limp, but I tried to control myself. I high-fived a coach or two and made it onto the track.
After about seventy yards, I got to high-five a series of teammates. That was by far the highlight of the experience before I left the straightaway, at which point the infield had cleared out, the first running event was due to start within minutes, athletes were returning to base camp.
I did not, as I had intended from my freshman year, run a complete senior lap. I did not, as I'd been hoping, even limp a full lap frame-free. I made it about halfway around—just far enough for my mother to snap a picture of me, smiling, in my Virginia t-shirt surrounded by teammates starting to spread out towards their events.
It was, in other words, completely anti-climactic.
And yet…
And yet it doesn't matter. I ran discus this afternoon, reading out the distances of the throws. And when somebody throws a personal record and you know it and they know it and it's six, seven, ten or more feet beyond what they've ever managed to accomplish before, that moment, that split second between when you see the distance marked out on the measuring tape and your lips start moving to read the number out loud—that's an incredible moment. Seeing the people you've watched practice and shouted encouragements to for weeks and days and months and years performing incredible feats is marvelous.
And yet the anticlimactic nature of the lap (or partial lap) feels entirely fitting. There was a large part of me which wanted the frame to be a Defining Moment, a moment which would reveal depths of my personality and forge me into a stronger person.
That wasn't how it went at all.
The frame was a piece of metal which held my bones together for four and a half months between the day after Christmas 2012 and the first sputtering breaths of spring in 2013. It simply was. The frame was not a cruel object or a kind object, it was an object. The experience likewise was neither cruel nor kind. It was what it was.
I don't know if I'm proud of myself for surviving the frame. I don't think I am. It isn't that I want to make the frame sound like it's nothing, because that's simply not true. In my case, however, the entire experience was fairly straightforward. Ultimately, while the recovery was a bit longer than anything I'd done before, it was just another surgery. The incisions are already nothing more than scars and I'm still less than a week removed from the removal.
Which, of course, brings me to the question: is there anything I'm proud of about the last four months? And I think the answer here is yes. I think I'm proud of not just rolling over and totally giving up.
And I'm proud that my I can finally say that I have two straight legs.
So. Here we are, at the concluding paragraphs of the story of how my leg met the frame. For a time, the two got along, mostly from necessity. In the end, they went their separate ways. The frame is headed to Ecuador to provide help to people in need there. I wish it the best. My leg is headed to unknown roads and paths and sidewalks.
I won't be able to start moving, really moving immediately. It will take a while. The former pin sites need to calcify and the bone needs to fully harden. I think this takes about a year, start to finish. But, at some point, because of this device, this dearly departed (fine, just departed) device, I will be able to move as I've been unable to before.
At some point, I will be able to move as I've been unable to before. I plan on moving. Actually, scratch that—I plan on moving.
October 15, 2012–May 9, 2013
Minneapolis, Minnesota
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