Girl in a Cast
Origin stories and tales the body tells
I was born a little broken. The problem was quickly diagnosed and named, so the professionals could easily discuss my brokenness with my parents. “A congenital hip problem,” they were told. A mild birth defect. It explains so much. Or maybe nothing at all.
To illustrate my problem, make a fist with your right hand. Now, cup the top of that fist with your left hand. This represents the hip joint — if you swing your right arm a bit, you’ll get a sense of how the hip bone moves in its joint when you walk, or run, or bend. Now, flatten your left hand atop the fist. If you swing the right arm, the fist slips away from the left hand. The joint doesn’t hold. That’s me. That flat hand atop a fist — that’s the hip I was gifted at birth. I was unfinished.
The hips are the center, the seat of power, the pivotal hinge. The hip is a ball-and-socket synovial joint, synovial essentially meaning lubricated. When the femur swings in its ball joint, as it is meant to, we have locomotion. Our bodies can then power over land, or through water, and stir up all sorts of trouble. If, however, the socket is a sandwich plate, the ball slips with movement and progress is impossible. Mine was a janky body and, without interference, would never walk, run, or bend the way it should. I was going nowhere.
