My infant body was yanked out of my anesthetized mother June 30, 1950. It was a time when most mothers were unconscious when their babies were born. The doctor used some extraordinary measures to extricate me. In doing so damage was done to my shoulder and nerves that direct growth in and around my left shoulder blade and arm. Looking at the internet now, I see this injury at birth is called “winged shoulder”.
I smiled when I read the description, “winged”. In my memory I hear my father's voice. I am sitting on his lap while he rubs my back and tells me how special I am because I have wings. I doubt he knew anything about this disfigurement medically. Those were days when children weren’t labeled with terms that describe an abnormality. There was not talk of autism, ADD, dyslexia, delayed development, etc. The boogey monster that had most parents holding their breath in those days was the actuality of something much more life threatening, Polio.
The “wing” that made me Daddy’s sweet angel, is my left shoulder blade. It is raised such that it is not aligned with its opposite partner. My posture is slumped from the left side view. My hips are twisted putting one hip ahead of the other. My left arm is mechanically unable to extend fully above my head.
My parents practiced Christian Science. If they struggled raising children without the help of medical advice, they never displayed their angst in front of me. But there were instances when I remember a man whom I thought was a family friend. He appeared at my sickbed during my childhood. I struggled with continuing bouts of tonsillitis and painful ear aches. Looking back I assume he was a medical doctor, but I don’t remember having any medicine other than a towel covered hot water bottle applied to my ear and my dad’s special bedside delivery of grape juice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The melting ice cream pinked the dark purple liquid with velvety cool creaminess. It was heavenly.
I went to Sunday school at the First Church of Christ Science, Tacoma, Washington. Its grand pillared white marble entry sat atop curved cement stairs that spilled down to the side walk at the intersection of two major avenues in downtown Tacoma. It was impressive. As children we entered a side door and were sent downstairs to sit at round tables in the low ceiling slung basement. As I grew up, I advanced through the years of Sundays and progressed through the series of round tables. I learned that my real true self was Spiritual. The other interchangeable names for Spirit are Love, Truth, Life, Principle, Mind, and Soul. The sum total of all these capitalized nouns is the full essence of God. Our textbooks were the Bible, King James Version, and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Opening the Bible to the first book, Genesis, the first chapter states that God created man in his own image and likeness. It is from this truth, I was taught, Mary Baker Eddy built her tenets of Christian Science.
My childhood religious instruction told me this: My mortal body is not real. My body is false and does not define me. I am something other than this physical frame. This physical identity is inconsequential and should be denied. This “science” of Christ laid the foundation of my selfhood. If there were times of physical struggle, I’d only have to remember my true identity and my mortal limitations would be swept away. These thoughts rang in my thinking as a lesson from Peter Pan; just think happy thoughts and you can fly. If I still had physical problems, it was me, my own thought. I wasn’t thinking properly. My healing came only when I could properly integrate the facts of Christian Science that I am a perfect reflection of a spiritual God.
Growing up and through my teenage years, Mom sewed most of my clothes. She’d make an adjustment in cutting out the collar and shoulder related pieces, adding additional material so the finished piece would lie properly across my shoulder and neckline. I always joked that I’d never be a cheerleader because I could never raise both my arms over my head into the preverbal “V” for victory stance. I’d only get to the “L” for loser position. I actually don’t notice, to this day, my raised shoulder blade when looking in the mirror, but it is apparent to me when I see myself in a photograph. Looking back I see it in my childhood photos. Yet no one talked about it.
I was in my 20’s when my mother died. She was diagnosed with breast cancer my first year of college. When I entered college I was fiercely determined to find my independence, try on new personas; all with the firm knowledge that my family safety net was firmly in place below me. My parents called me Sunday nights. It was one of those calls when my father, then my mother told me of her diagnosis. She had, in fact, already had surgery and was getting setup to be treated with a harsh primitive form of radiation. I am sure their decision to tell me of her illness after so much had already taken place was their way of protecting me. However, its impact on me was to push me out of the nest. The safety and security of home was gone. My mother’s immortality was now suspect. Neverland didn’t exist. I’d have to grow up and make my own decisions about who I was, what I did, and how I was to fit into the world.
I do not know where my mother’s Christian Science brought her in making the decision for medical procedures, however, the surgery and radiation were her only medical interventions. Her cancer returned several years later. I was graduated from college and married. Again it was another phone call. First my dad uttered the words “your mother” and “only a few months”; then my mother to tell me she was fine. Her voice was strong and positive, but I was knocked flat. The only thing I could think to do was to return to my basics in Christian Science. I picked up the my copy of Science and Health and tried to revive my proper thinking. I tried to enlist my husband in helping me. If I could lead him towards these ideas, I’d reeducate myself. I made an appointment with the Christian Science practitioner who had been helping her. He told me in no uncertain terms that she would be healed. She died within a month. At the memorial service I approached him and he told me how happy he was that she was in a better place. Peter Pan had flown.
I was 30 when my daughter was born. I began jogging. At first I was just trying to keep myself moving a bit faster than a walk for ten minutes. I hoped to knock off some baby weight. After a few months I found myself able to run a mile or two. I was also discovering through this activity I was finding myself, my singular self that wasn’t defined by my role of mother, wife, and employee.
I returned to work and found a circle of friends that also enjoyed time on the road. Lunch time and afterwork lent itself to putting in some miles. Years passed, my group of fellow joggers grew and together we wore out hundreds of shoes and told zillions of stories as we ran mile after mile. We laughed, cried, cheered each other on and found strength in not only our common bond, but also our own bodies.
The time on the road began to wear down some of my Christian Science ideas. My body wasn’t just a throw away, it was capable. Air rushed into my lungs. Inhaling and exhaling kept time with my beating heart. I was finding a rhythm, syncopating the work between mind and body. I never considered myself an athlete, but my 9 to 10 minutes per mile pace was respectable. My goals stretched from 5 miles to 15 to a full marathon, 26.2 miles. I started really believing the internal teamwork of my own mental perseverance and physical abilities.
My mortal body reflected a real purpose. It carried my being, it hugged my children, it worked hard to prove to me that in fact, it was me. Yes, it carried and fed my babies, but these seemed like givens. It was supposed to do that. Running was optional. I was the one that tuned this body up. I was the one directing and controlling. I was the one that felt the reward of my hard work, not the biological imperatives of a uterus and a couple of breasts. I loved my new found abilities, I loved my time out in the fresh air, working this machine, sweating out the angst and anger that would work its way in from my work-a-day world.
In my early 40’s a doctor took some X-rays to review some issues I was having with back pain. He told me I was deformed, disabled, disfigured. I was devastated. Not until that day did I ever consider myself “label-able”. I was just hitting my stride, literally, and now discovered I was ill-formed. This body that I was finally discovering, developing, and trusting wasn't “normal”. Of course, I knew all of this, but my beginning belief that this body was not real, and then my discovery of the workings of this body kept me from focusing on my slumped shoulder and humped back.
I continued running, but now began to doubt. My skeletal frame was misaligned. I was warned if I continued to stress my back, knees and hips I would surely suffer early problems with arthritis. My joints, while formed normally, were off kilter due to my unsymmetrical back structure from the shoulders down. Yet I continued to run, denying or deciding to ignore the medical advice. But I began having more and more issues with my back, then my knees, and stress fractures in and around my ankles.
At 49 I ran smack into another physical problem. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Surgery, chemo and radiation put a stop to my career as a runner. I tried to resume, but with the time lost to treatments and recovery my support group disbanded, I lost my stamina, and began to loose my confidence in my physicality. I worked to regain some running distance, but relegated myself to walking. Severe back pain surfaced and while looking for degenerative disc problems, they discovered a mass. Breast cancer returned, or really never left. It had attached itself to my bones.
I have survived as a terminal breast cancer patient currently thirteen years. And I find myself dealing with my now 66 year old body. This old hulk has held me all these years, had its heyday and I ran it into the ground. I’ve never admired it. I’ve never appreciated it. I just never liked it. In my early years I denied its existence, in my middle years I discovered its power, felt it’s flight and then it turned on me.
I could list my ailments, but again they are a set of confining labels. I am continually tempted to lay them out in front of me and define myself by my limitations one by one. My early indoctrination of my spiritual being floats to the surface. I read, study, and write to try to expand my consciousness. However, physical limitations are real and many times very painful.
I know people age and come face to face with their infirmities. My body carries the sum total of all my life experience. It should be celebrated as it has been through a ton of strife; endured structural goof-ups, cancer and associated bouts of poisoning, radiation, surgeries, broken bones, etc. It has been so tolerant and so forgiving, and, while a bit stiff and over stuffed, has given me one wonderful life vehicle.
A valiant survivor this, my warrior carriage, yet I don’t love and care for it. I still deny that it is, in fact, the physical representation of me. It embarrasses me. My lumpy middle, my slumped back, my overly wrinkled face, my slow gait and various joint weaknesses have become the foci of my complaints. It is how I am presented in the world. I feel I need to make excuses for this body. I end up with labels: arthritic, malformed, diseased, weak. While these may define parts of me physically, they should not define me.
My work now is to learn to know and love this body that carries the medallions of courage I have mustered through my life. All my aches and pains are loving reminders of the gifts given to me at birth. That I am. That I love. That I have been given this rare accident of conscious awareness to exist in this world, this universe. That I reflect the full set of gifts bestowed with my creation: Spirit, Life, Love,Truth, Principle, Mind, Soul.
I love the fact that I am present and can be present. I must rediscover my Peter Pan thoughts to believe in my “I am”, to know that who I am shines within and without my physical presentation.
Think these good thoughts and fly as Daddy’s sweet winged angel. Fly.
