Fall from (Lillie) Grace

Ali having her first birthday party in three years, but a month late due to Covid.

Lillie and her ubiquitous crutches, framing her every day.

*Snap* - and just like that, life can change.
 
JM Barry wrote, "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." 
 
How telling that the man who wrote this profound quote also authored a story about the everlasting boy from NeverNever Land. By never needing to grow up, Peter Pan never has to commit to one finite life, and thus never has to compare his life with the one he dreams of living.
 
There is a loss that comes with growing up, whether it is leaving behind our naivete, or coming to terms with how our bodies inevitably betray us.
 
About two months ago, on February 16th, Ali and her friend Piper were the MCs of their elementary school’s talent show. This was a big deal for Ali, a kid diagnosed with anxiety. Therefore, it became a big deal for the family. On top of my teaching and ghost writing, my week unexpectedly became consumed with writing a talent show script with Piper’s dad and rehearsing the girls and script with Piper’s mom.
 
Here we were: the night before the show. I was scrambling to find Ali a jean jacket to match Piper’s, looking through the jungle that was Ali’s closet (she has since purged it). To shake off some anxiety, Ali and her sister Lillie Grace were dancing the Macarena around her room. Lillie Grace is by far the best dancer in the family, having been in dancing classes for 9 of her 12 years, so the Macarena is child’s play for her. As she causally jumped and turned, she collapsed on the ground, writhing in pain.
 
I had not yet found the jean jacket, so frankly, Lillie’s seeming misstep seemed an inconvenience at the time. Her dad offered to run her a hot bath. But rather than getting better she was becoming hysterical.
 
“Should we take her to the emergency room?” I ventured.
“I think she’ll be OK,” Jory said, which was fair, given that this was only the damn Macarena.
 
After the bath, she was still crying in pain. Having found the jacket, I volunteered to take her to the emergency room. Jory went instead. They came home hours later, in the middle of the night, with Lillie on crutches because the X-rays revealed some sort of injury to the knee, for which they gave her oxycodone (!). She would have to see an orthopedist on Tuesday, because no one was available on Friday, and Monday was Presidents’ Day. We still thought this was no big deal.
 
Ali and Piper crushed the talent show. They were funny, and well spoken. It was a watershed moment for Ali, and her teacher even came out to support her. We celebrated her courage that night, having no idea of the courage Lillie Grace would need in the coming weeks.
 
On Tuesday we were ready to get to the bottom of Lillie’s knee problem (sprain? Ligament tear? fracture?) But the orthopedist only said she needed an MRI, which couldn’t be done until Thursday (a week since the fall).
 
After Thursday’s MRI, they would call with the results – on Monday.
 
On Monday, they didn’t call. So, we called. And called. And called. We finally reached someone only to be told that Lillie needed to see a sports orthopedist/specialist. So we called him on Tuesday.
 
Only to find out he was on vacation until the following Monday.
 
On Monday, when poor Lillie finally gets in to see the right doctor, he is alarmed at what he sees, and schedules surgery for three days hence, on Thursday. Three weeks to the day that she fell, Lillie is going to have surgery because her knee is really bad. Much worse than we thought.
 
That day, Jory and I are fighting a cold.
 
But it’s not a cold. Our three-year Novid status collapses with a positive Covid test each. It’s been said there’s never a good time to get Covid. This really was not a good time.
 
Ali and Tyler test negative on Wednesday, while I battle a fever of 102. And Lillie? Like her siblings, she is asymptomatic, so we don’t even test her.
 
The next morning, we live by the “ignorance is bliss” mantra and don’t test Lillie.
 
You can judge, especially since that morning of her surgery, both of her siblings tested positive. Yet if Lillie tested positive, we would feel obliged to say something, and then this surgery that took three weeks to happen would be pushed back another two weeks, and scar tissue would further form and –
(Two days later, Lillie tested positive, earning points for “worse Covid experience ever.”)
 
It gets worse: once they open up her knee, they see that the articular (hard) cartilage has snapped in two, breaking off with it an inch and a half of her femur. (Why didn’t this show up on the MRI?) The surgeon says he’s never seen anything quite like this, but that she was predisposed for it. (File it under the condition called “osteochondritis dessicans”).
 
That little fall? A game changer.
How quickly things can turn.
 
Lillie has three metal screws holding her articular cartilage back in place. As of this writing, she’s still on crutches, unable to put any weight on her leg, because the articular cartilage is what bears our weight. She can do no impact activities for six months. She does half an hour of PT exercises daily, and has PT visits once a week.
 
What does this mean in the long term? We. Don’t. Know.
 
While knee braces are usually a temporary measure, she’s encouraged to use them whenever she does activity in the future. For the rest of her life, she is a candidate for PTSD arthritis in her knee.
 
For now, she’s had to (obviously) stop dancing, shelve the golf lessons, quit PE class, miss out on her class hiking excursion (though thankfully she was able to attend the overnight). It has also taken away her independence.
 
At an age where she is trying to prove her self-sufficiency, Lillie is learning that she has to continually ask for help. (This is not a bad lesson, I tell her, to which she rolls her eyes). She needs assistance to carry her lunch tray, her school project, navigate the crowded halls. In middle school, when you ask for help, some kids deliver, but some actually say “no” to your face and walk away. Some take your crutches and play with them, leaving you stranded and feeling alone. Many find you an inconvenience, and ignore you while you struggle to get to class. The school nurse may drive you across campus, but sometimes forget or be unable to pick you up, so you miss your lunch period as you traipse slowly back across campus.
 
As if Middle School’s not hard enough, how do you deal with the maelstrom of depression, disappointment, helplessness, frustration and fear? Lillie wonders when or if she will ever get back to normal.
 
Life is trying to get her attention, but at 12 she is still wishing none of this has happened, still resisting one of its biggest lessons. It is the lesson of letting the disappointments of life mold us into someone new. Of letting go of Plan A, as JM Barrie writes, and humbly surrendering to what has happened. Acceptance of the ugly “what is” gives us the confidence to turn our suffering into connection with others. Without connection, facing pain and loss renders us isolated and scared, brittle and angry.
 
Trying to inspire her, I send her lists of names with the childhood conditions they had, and how they overcame them by learning new things when they couldn't carry on in their normal life. On this list are Mia Farro (polio), Seal (lupus), George Washington (diptheria), Desmond Tutu (tuberculosis) Jean Michel Basquiat (hit by a car).
 
After this, she focuses on what she CAN do, taking online courses in piano and Spanish every day.
 
Meanwhile, I must focus on what she CANNOT do, daily tidying her room, emptying the dishwasher, carrying and fetching her things for her.
 
Her casual misstep has made us all more aware of how quickly things can change; how fragile we are; how we all need help to become our best selves.
 
And so I end with another quote from J.M. Barrie:
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary