Tonight, I walked around our hardwood floors barefoot.

I mean, I didn’t limp around the house; I legitimately roamed the kitchen without
insole-d tennis shoes, for the first time in over a year. (I know, I just made insole into an adjective.) This is kind of a big deal, and I mean the walking part, not the grammatical invention.

Just a tad over a year ago, we expanded our little family by beautiful Zelda, who(m) I’d been talking about for years.  The moment we walked East Atlanta and I witnessed pretty mopeds littering the side walk, I was pretty convinced that I needed a moped to buzz around the city streets–you can park anywhere! The little 50-cc model goes up to 45, which is the limit in most of the Atlanta neighborhoods, and I really thought it was my time to own one, but these thoughts were mostly in my daydreams as I sat in crazy traffic most days and had a pipe dream of running around the city after-hours on a smaller, easier way to navigate the packed streets and increasing millennial population.

With almost no adult discussion, Nicholas surprised me on my birthday with 2 helmets…I kind of thought they were intended to be bicycle helmets, as I had been talking about more cardio in our life.  After the 3rd package turned out to be googles, it was clear I had something more motorized in my future.

On July 12th, I worked a Gordon Food Service bash at PREP Atlanta and was a sweaty, exhausted mess when I pulled in our drive. But one view of a mint-green moped hanging out in the driveway perked me up. Nicholas had broccoli in the oven and sous vide pork chops brewing in the kitchen and had just finished packing us for my belated birthday weekend in the mountains.

I didn’t even change out of my Gordon polo and dress pants before Nicholas turned the bike over to me and said, “just run her to the end of the alley and back; dinner is almost ready.”  I hit the gas, got to the end of the alley and mentally scoffed at the idea of turning around. People rent these in Europe all the time–I’ll just take her around the neighborhood. I blew through a few blocks, grinning with the wind in my hair, and then started to circle back. I turned the last corner and came up on Drip and Vickery’s–both with packs of people on the patio. I went to brake as I came up on the boccie court, and rolled the gas handle forward instead.

I nailed the cement curb of the boccie court, flew off, and landed on my right knee. I had quite an audience across the street, so initially, it was only my pride that really smarted until I tried to stand. I couldn’t put any weight down, and my knee had shifted a couple of inches to my right. The pain shot through my leg, and I remember thinking that I must have dislocated my knee, and I just needed to get it popped back into place.  (I mean, when I was a kid, I broke my nose a few times–dad would straighten it out with a good pop in place, and when the blood stopped, I carried on as normal.)

When Nicholas came around the corner, I was still a little dazed, thinking about that relocation procedure and trying not to cry. I wasn’t visibly bleeding, so he assumed I was okay and tried to help me up…and then tears came. I couldn’t walk. At all. It was an act of God to get me on the back of the moped to ride the block back to the house and from there it was holy terror to Urgent Care for X-Rays, then to the Emergency Room for more X-Rays.  5 torn ligaments and a shattered tibia later, I was admitted, but “holding” for a room in Grady’s Trauma Center, as Emory couldn’t or wouldn’t do my surgeries.

I’ve never been admitted to the hospital before, never peed in a bed pan, and never felt so helpless in my entire life.  Nicholas was beside himself, which made it even worse, and the only silver lining was that I had an absolute angel who had a Sixth Sense to get in an Uber to trek downtown before we even knew how bad it was.

My Mother-in-Law, let’s just call her mom from now on, has this bizarre intuition that could probably be a career as a See-er. She said she felt a dark cloud all day that Thursday, and couldn’t place her mood; Nicholas texted her that I had an accident and she was in an Uber in under 5 minutes, sure that I was the black cloud she was feeling and needed to be with us. My leg had swelled beyond what my pants could handle, and she was there in time to help cut my pants off of me and hold my hand in between Nicholas.

The trauma unit was a special kind of hell.  I had 4 screws drilled into my ankle and thigh bone to attach a rod to the outside of my leg, forcing it to straighten out after days of holding it in a bent position from pain.  Once the sun went down, it was all night-terrors; I had to sleep with my leg in the air so that the swelling would reduce as quickly as possible for the second surgery. The walls were thin and I could hear the screams of other trauma patients all night long–there were 3 rooms in a row of screamers and no one could seem to quiet them. It was truly terrifying.  In those moments, I realized that I was likely the luckiest in the wing.

The nurses were either wrapped-out or fresh out of empathy, so struggling with bed pans, wipes, pads and all the other mortifying parts of being bed-ridden were even worse and I’d find myself asking for help and then apologizing for it; They’d forget to give me back a bed pan and leave the room, and then be super annoyed when I mashed the service button for them to come back. They’d fill my water and leave it out of my reach…meanwhile, I’m in soul crushing pain and literally can’t move except when I elevate the bed.

The second surgery repaired my ligaments with cadaver, and “installed” enough metal screws, rods and plates for me to be “bionic Jules” and set off airport alarms.  The pain coming out of surgery was like, well, I’ll be redundant.  It was a special kind of hell. I hallucinated with pain in the days and nights after, and poor Nicholas was alone with me on one of my worst nights.  I was convinced that I was Wonder Woman and I was going to fly off the table, fueled with pain….it was truly awful, and I didn’t have to be the one to watch helplessly.

And then the visitors started…dear friends bringing food that trumped the wilted lettuce and inedible “dinners” that Grady called food. Flowers littered my little room, and while there was no where to sit or spend the night, mom and Nicholas would rotate the schedule to be with me even when I was out cold from meds and pain.

I couldn’t walk for over 3 months, and as we lived in a 3-story town house, I learned to scoot down the stairs on my hiney and borrowed an extra walker from a customer so that I at least had a mode of transportation on a couple floors of the house. It was the heat of the Atlanta summer, and the effort to get ready and get down the stairs to catch an Uber was almost more than I could handle. I’d beg to get out of the house, only to cancel plans half way through the getting ready process because I’d be worn out and in so much pain that I didn’t care about fresh air and lunch anymore.

I was on disability, so I wasn’t supposed to connect with my team, which was insane to me, but the beauty of great relationships is that they usually can transcend the rules, and thank God for the amazing folks I had in my corner who showed up anyway, brought shrimp and grits, and cared enough to risk an extra phone call or house visit.

I learned a lot about relationships, my own expectations of myself and others, and really tried to practice gratitude for the many people in my life who kept showing up, even when it was really hard and inconvenient.  Mom continued to stay with me, bring my coffee to the living room, and “run” the stairs for door deliveries even though her own pain was much worse than mine. (Imagine trying to use a walker with a hot cup of coffee….it’s a real juggling act and never ended well.)

Friends came with goofy t-shirts, a croqueted bag to hang on the front of my walker for incidentals and silly coloring books and bubble wrap to add levity to an otherwise mundane day of pain, naps, and self pity.

Nicholas would come home with his usual “babaloo!?” greeting as he walked in the door and somehow put aside the stress of his day to check in on me, order or cook dinner, and be my safe space to remind me that this is just a chapter, and I would eventually recover. But my cabin fever was real, and I had an incredibly hard time staying positive as I couldn’t see past the pain, immobility and reliance on everyone else to do everything for me, from bringing food, cleaning my kitchen, picking up dry cleaning, and making grocery runs.  It’s quite humbling, as a control freak, to ask for help on nearly everything.

I packed away my cute wedges, heels, and flip flops, as once I was able to start walking, I could only wear the ugliest of shoes and still limped with pain with each step. It’s crazy how much I’d taken for granted the simplest life tasks of being able to get in and out of cars, walk like a “normal” person, and have the strength to run the most ordinary of errands.

I returned to work, attempted to be as normal as possible and jump back into all the work that leading a team can entail, but I felt like everyone expected me to be 100% and I wasn’t even close. My work ethic didn’t cooperate with what I innately knew were my physical limits; I felt like I was mentally drinking from a fire hose to get caught up, and then my body would shut down my best laid plans.

This is all to say that it was an incredibly rough season; I’m so grateful for the friends and family that loved us through this time, and as I come up on my “year anniversary” of multiple surgeries, I’m reflecting on that season, what it built in me, and what I learned about the folks in our corner who were willing to put their plans on hold to helps me/us out. We moved during my continued PT and I still (in theory) have a couple of months left before I’ll be cleared for everything except running. I don’t normally run unless I’m being chased, but I at least want that option, which will come in 1-2 years, according to the doctors.

While I’ll likely never be able to be as active as I once was, I’m grateful that it wasn’t any worse, that I had somehow signed up for disability for the first time with work, and that we had enough outside love and support to see us through a time that felt very dark and endless.

So walking barefoot? That’s a big deal; and while I know it seems ordinary to anyone else, it marks another stage in my progress, and requires a moment to really remember the pain, disappointment, cabin fever, and vulnerability that I felt then and contrast with the gratitude for the life I have one year later.

What a difference a year can make.

PS– Zelda’s name sake is from the 20s, Fitzgerald, and all things flapper.