Yesterday, my mother sent me this picture from her phone.
These are my sister’s old braces – molded specifically for her infant-toddler-child-girl-woman legs and feet, so we can’t pass them on, only recycle them. Mom couldn’t bear to do it when she was small, so they’ve been in the attic for the past decade, a silent testament. Like the pencil marks on my friend Bean’s kitchen doorway which track the progress of her daughters, now both in their late twenties/early thirties, these are a witness to how much the years have changed the Bug. This is a record of the surgeries to correct the tiny bones, of the structuring forced on her dimpled limbs to enable her feet to lie flat, her ankles to support her weight, her back to stretch out, her body to stand tall. At nineteen and fairly petite, there aren’t dimpled elbows and knees left, and there probably won’t be too much more lengthening of those femurs, but stature from other directions – cognitively, of course, because every teen needs cunning and guile – wisdom – confidence. But what records do we keep of those? How do we know when we’ve become what we’re meant to be?
“running” your own life takes practice
stand up for yourself
don’t let them walk over you
just put your foot downwe’ve “stumbled onto” a solution
you don’t stand a chance
’til you can stand on your own
so take the first steproll on you crazy diamond
“I’m fun-sized, not short,”
she takes this life in her stride
while finding her feet
Yep, that’s my girl.