“I’ve never had a bad day,” that’s what Bobby McMullen told me when we caught up after a few years, which for him had meant, another kidney and pancreas transplant, two open heart surgeries, two bouts of cancer, a lost pregnancy and relationship, a marriage and a beautiful daughter. “Really?” I asked. He answered, “Really, […]
Back in Granby, I straightened my legs and locked the braces on Mount Holyoke College’s red rubber track, three miles from our house. “How far do you want to go?” my father asked. “I’d like to do a mile,” I said, “but let’s see.” Years earlier when I’d run on the newly installed track it […]
“Push to the tennis courts and back across the grass,” Sue Hammond, wearing a baseball hat backwards, shorts and t-shirt, told our wheelchair mobility group. Craig, the fit, PT grad student intern, borrowed a chair and led what quickly became a race. Matt Malley, whose curly hair and mustache creeping on his upper lip made […]
The partially subterranean first floor hallway and stairwell of Milliken served as my social reintroduction at a time when a keg of cheap beer and couple of sleeves of Solo cups constituted a party. In the hospital, I’d imagined scooting up those cement steps to my fifth-floor room the way that I’d hopped on one […]
Rehab held the key to my future and we researched facilities like colleges, settling on University Hospital in Boston. The night before my transfer I watched a hockey game on TV. When one guy crashed another into the boards, the thought slipped out, “They could hurt themselves.” The next morning, I waited out an ice […]
“Mr. Waddell, you need to wake up,” the nurse said shaking my arm. Just finally submerged in sleep I had no desire to fight to the surface. “I’m going to give you a cup of water,” the doctor said. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, the smell of curdled milk hung in […]
“This is the moment,” I taunted myself as the saliva rushed into the back of my mouth forcing me to slam my lips shut while my chest heaved in short bursts for air, my stomach convulsed and I stared deep into the blades of grass, “Let’s see what you can do now.” “Next group,” […]
“In or out,” my mother said when I brought snow, winter and our German Shepherd Thor into the trailer on the Hampshire Country School campus. At 5’3½,” the tallest woman on either side of the family, with waist-length, straight, chestnut brown hair and skin that collected freckles in the sun, she barely slowed to accommodate […]
They say that a memoir is how you remember what happened, but I’ve decided to make the experience a little more fluid. As I write, I will reconnect in person, and record on video the people important to my life and each chapter. My mother has already altered one of my long held beliefs—that I […]
This book is called Controlled Fall: Becoming Whole because that’s how I monoski, throwing my upper body down the hill and hoping that the skis rolls on edge, turns and picks me up before I hit the ground. Each turn is a leap of faith and each run a series of controlled falls. When I […]
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