A Tender Adjustment to Help Her Walk
I NEED TO START at the door. A door is a threshold, point of transition, where one thing becomes another.
Across this particular threshold miracles happen, if you believe in miracles. If you don’t, then healing happens. The lame come to walk.
***
The door is solid wood, a fall wreath hanging from it. I’m carrying Little Fawn on my left hip, my right hand free to steady my mom if she wobbles.
“Ball,” the baby says to the wreath. She studies the small plastic pumpkins epoxied to plastic orange and yellow leaves.
“Pumpkin,” I say. Fifteen months old, Little Fawn can’t pronounce two-syllable words, but I keep tossing vocabulary at her.
“Ball,” she says again.
I push open the door. Once, this brick, ranch-style building was a home, and we would have entered a living room. Now, we step inside the foyer of a chiropractic office. Chairs line the walls right and left, and above the chairs hangs a gallery of family portraits. Some are of weddings.
Straight ahead is a window, place where you sign in. There, a few weeks ago, I filled out paperwork for the baby.
She’s fifteen months old and can’t walk. She doesn’t even want to walk. She’s a mad crawler, and she pulls herself up at sofas and chairs and cabinets. She stands for long periods. But when I hold her arms and take steps with her, her legs fly out wildly. The baby can’t control how her legs operate.
***
My husband, Raven, is a researcher. “Babies start walking anywhere from six months to two years,” he said to me last week. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, quietly. “Watch.” I bent over, lifted Little Fawn to her feet, and minced along with her. In three steps—her legs flying wildly in all directions, like a marionette’s—she sat down.
“Give her time,” Raven said.
