Broken

If managing an active family is like lifting weights, I seem to have gotten crushed under the weight and broken my leg.

Eight weeks straight of being out six nights a week; scratching my head over how to feed my hungry teenage athletes a nutritious dinner; cooking before noon and packing it up to travel or keeping it warm until we can eat at 8:00, etc etc, was a weight I could lift until I couldn’t. 

The first clue that I was buckling came as I found myself lying on the grass under a black walnut tree, having succumbed to exhaustion and fallen asleep on a blanket in the park while waiting out Lizzy’s volleyball practice, like an actual hobo. I came to and gazed up at the blue sky intersected with branches laden with tennis-ball-sized walnut hulls. I vaguely wondered if one would drop and hit me in the forehead, and if so, would it have enough force to concuss me? And if so, how long would I be ordered to rest in the hospital and everyone I know medically ordered to leave me alone?

That, and hearing a voice in my head wistfully saying, “Remember covid?”

Maybe if plague and brain damage seem preferable to one’s lifestyle it’s time to reevaluate.

The metaphorical snap drove me under a blanket one evening with an overwhelming paralysis. I can’t make dinner. I can’t answer any more questions. I can’t coordinate another carpool. I can’t pick up after anyone anymore. I can’t drive anywhere. I can’t answer any more texts.

How hard is it to heat up some dinner or text back a friend? Not hard, unless you’re trying to do it with an untreated broken leg.

hard cider sampling for Maddie’s 21st birthday

Jason gently administered emotional first aid. I thought I should be able to leg press the five hundred pounds I see other people cheerfully lifting. My family thrives on nonstop activity! I work multiple jobs and can’t wait to drive my kids places on my lunch break! My house is clean and I make better dinners than you!

But you don’t go to the gym and lift weights based on what you see other people doing. That’s how you get a broken leg.

Jason held me and brushed away my tears…and cleared our weekend schedule.

Caleb had the courtesy to get a head cold, which cleared up a couple nights while he stayed home and kept his germs to himself. When I was able to get out from under my blanket I did fix dinner that night, and we all sat down together as a household and ate it together, complete with candlelight and conversation and verbalized appreciation for the meal.

What to call that in my broken leg metaphor? A morphine drip?

I wrote a research paper for high school psychology once on the hero complex. Everyone wants to be a hero. It drives us to lift the car off the trapped child, to set up a ladder for the cat stuck in the tree, to keep all the balls in the air all the time, to leg press five hundred pounds.

This weekend is not hero weekend. This weekend is for a sit-down candlelight dinner, for takeout Chinese on the couch while we watch Harry Potter, for late Saturday morning waffles and coffee, for letting the car cool off. 

And for remembering that I’m loved even when I’m broken.