Robot Girl?

Mile Marker 65:

 “It would be cooler if you had TWO robot legs.” 

That was my niece Brianna's first and only reaction to my prosthesis.

I expected her to have probing questions.  I expected to be fumbling for answers I barely understood myself.   It was a relief when, in typical 7-year-old fashion, she declared that my new leg was cool, but not TOO cool!

For all those months I was away in the hospital, Brianna wrote me letters and drew me pictures.  She drew us happily together in our triangle dresses, often surrounded by hearts.   I always had two legs.

Now it’s September.  I passed Mile Marker 65 hiking the school hallways.

My new leg is ON TOUR.

In each classroom, I teach the word prosthesis as the kids ooh and ahh over a machine that comes right out of their favorite movies – Transformers and I Robot. 

Can I see the computer?  They ask.  What happens if the battery runs out?   Can you get electrocuted?  Does it have voice control?  

They’re interested in the cool technology. 

Can you kick?  Jump?  Sit “pretzel-legs?"  (That’s Indian-style for us old-timers.) 

They’re amazed by the way it moves.

Is your foot real?  Is your shoe real?  How do you take a shower?  When you take it off, is there blood?

They're constructing meaning out of something so unusual – so outside the natural order of things – that in their minds it must be fiction.  

My new nickname echoes in the first grade hallway -- ROBOT GIRL!

Mile Marker 70:

It makes me smile.  They're accepting my prosthesis as a part of me, as a part of our school.

But somewhere around Mile Marker 70, I realize that even the youngest children sense the seriousness of what has occurred. 

I keep the conversation light, but I see the kids struggling through the incomprehensible, dark parts of this journey right along with me.  

Were you scared?  They ask.  Did it hurt?  Who saved you?   Their foreheads crease with concern.

How did the doctors cut off your leg?  (Their word choice.)

And my own personal demon....Where’s your leg now?   

They don’t know that these same questions keep me awake late at night.  That I continually ponder and mourn over them in search of answers.  Or maybe they do.

In one class, a little girl weeps quietly at her desk while her classmates launch their questions. I watch the teacher kneel beside her and whisper to her.  As I leave, I ask the teacher if she’s ok.  “She's just sad about what happened to you,” he tells me.

Last weekend, I watched a documentary called September’s Children.  It focused on the students at the school closest to the World Trade Center on 9/11.  But what struck me was not the journey of those students.  It was the strength of the teachers.  How, in the days, weeks, and months following the disaster, they put their own trauma aside.  How, at school, they remained strong, secure, and stable – even when shaken themselves.

On my "tour," I try to strike a gentle balance between honesty and protection.  

To their toughest questions, I answer, “I don’t remember,”   But I really mean I don’t WANT to remember, and I don’t want YOU to remember either.  

Many parts of my journey are too private to share; many are not meant for children's imaginations.

But kids learn by asking questions, so I stay present, assured, and attentive.  I try to take a lesson from those New York teachers:  Sometimes we have to hold it together for a bigger cause.

Later, in quiet moments alone, I ask my own questions.  What if I’d left my house just a little bit earlier?  What if I’d taken a different route?  What if I hadn’t ridden my bike to school at all? 

In fifth grade, I believed that any wrong could be remedied by writing a 500-word composition.  Now I turn to our students and say, WEAR YOUR BIKE HELMET.  It's one little thing, but I say it 500 times.   I can’t change the past, but maybe I can change the future.

As my niece Brianna grows up, I know she’ll have more questions.  But Brianna has a different charge in all this.  She has to remember the day I taught her to ice skate. The times I chased her through the sprinkler park and lifted her over the ocean waves. She's my oldest niece and the only one who will remember me as I was -- before I became Robot Girl.  

And I want her to keep drawing me with two legs.

Mileage so far:  73.34