And Then For Something That Really Sucked

I spent much of my 2011 blogging time (such as it was) trying to look on the bright side, for the most part, unsuccessfully. Oh, of course, I tried to fool myself into believing that I actually did feel better about lousy things... 2011 ended and I put learning to love things that suck to bed for good. And then something that really sucked happened.

On January 15, I was in my kitchen, with my 7 year old daughter standing on my feet, wiggling to be fed, saying goodbye to my little sister on the phone. As I reached out my arm to put my phone down my daughter pulled me one way, I went the other. Our weight shifted such that we went down in a sudden and great smack against the counter, a la a roll of Pop 'n Fresh biscuits - with almost the same sound too, only louder. As we went down my brain made that motherly nano-second calculation -- daughter's head aiming straight toward hard corner of oven handle, own arm stretched out precariously, bad news, push daughter, lose all balance, underarm smack on counter top, arm flop unnaturally over back of head and dislocate. Daughter fine, ambulance coming for me.

Before the ER doctor came into the room - for literally 3 seconds - to report the results of the x-ray, I knew I would have to miss some work. At least that coming week. And with husband unemployed that was indeed bad news. Ugh. So when we got the results "It's broken. See an orthopedist on Monday", I was already anticipating the deep frugality impact. But what is funny is, I didn't panic. Not even on the inside. I managed to stay calm, and remain calm, throughout this whole ordeal with a kind of acceptance previously unbeknownst to myself. "Yep, this happened, movin' on", has been my de facto motto. Take care of arm and also whatever else I can take care of, what I can't can't be done now or has to be done by someone else.

Let me just make this clear, I did not stress. I'm not talking, I pretended not to stress but really on the inside I'm screaming. No, I just didn't sweat it. Uh... weird. But upon many months of reflection, I have to say, I think a year of trying to learn to love things that sucked might have had some impact, once I stopped trying.

And though it sounds odd to say, I have loved the experience of breaking my arm. I have learned a bunch of stuff about myself and my family, not all of it awesome, but what can ya do? I got a previously impossible and unprecedented amount of time to sit around the house and read - those six weeks of disability went by too fast though. I learned to write with my left hand (I broke my right arm and any movement was verboten). I got to meet and interact with a group of people I otherwise would probably would never have had a chance to meet, those lovely and amazing folk of the physical therapist ilk. And I was forced, during physical therapy, to spend an hour and a quarter, twice a week working on only myself. How often is a mom gonna do that!

So maybe the moral of the story is that within things that suck lie more things that suck, but also many things that undoubtedly do not suck.