The Longest Shortest Time

This Longest Shortest Time a Little Longer

Yesterday began with lots of excitement. For days we had been prepping Sasha for the Impending Cast Removal. We had a party planned with her buddies. I spent the weekend making her a Certificate of Strength. Sasha seemed to know what was going on and insisted that I reach back and hold her hand from the front seat the entire drive to the doctor’s office.

The doctor removed the cast easily with scissors. And then we got to see her pretty little baby leg. To touch it. For the first time in 5 weeks.

It had this rough texture from the mesh in the gauze. There were bits of glue stuck to her skin. We held her in the waiting room, waiting for her final x-rays and I just couldn’t wait to get her home and in a tub.

After the x-rays were shot I asked if Sasha could see them.

“Is that the fracture?” my husband Jonathan asked, pointing to a ghostly white line twisting through the translucent image of her tiny bones.

“Yes, that’s it,” the tech said.

Well, maybe that line will always be there, I thought. It’s probably fine.

When we saw the doctor again he told us that line was not fine. That she needed the cast back on for two more weeks. (But the party! The certificate! The promises we made the baby about no more cast!) Sasha looked very confused as the doctor rewrapped her leg and built a splint—same material as a cast but the hard part is only in the back, so I think it’s a little more comfortable.

I felt pretty devastated. But I’ve been trying to be as upbeat as possible with her, telling her that her cast did come off (we have the physical evidence of its corpse lying on her changing table) and in two more weeks her splint will come off, too. She had trouble sleeping last night but during the day she seems pretty much okay with the change of plans.

It’s weird how memory works. Jonathan was saying the other day how he can’t really picture what Sasha looks like when she’s running. Neither can I. And when i imagine her walking, I see her hurried hobble.

My dad stayed over the night before the cast removal to take pictures of the big event (he’s a professional photographer—these are his pictures in this post). For the first time since our early postpartum dark days, we blew up the air mattress that Jonathan, Sasha, and I stayed on for 7 weeks while I was unable to climb stairs. There were milk (or formula?) stains splotched all over the surface. Which is not such an unusual sight to me, since there are milk spots from leaky straw cups all over our floors. But those specific stains triggered this icky feeling in me. Flashes of memories came back, most really foggy. As if those 7 weeks were just one extremely long, horrible sleep-deprived day. Sasha will wind up having her leg bound up for the same amount of time that we lived on the air mattress. And I have to keep reminding myself that one day in the not too distant future, she will be running again—possibly jumping soon too!—and that hobble will be a blur just like the mishaps that caused those milk stains.