THIS IS US
Dislocation
On our first overseas trip as a family, our bodies fell apart
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When we began dating, Tyler and I did a lot of traveling. We started out small: Our first trip was from Boston to the tip of Cape Cod. Soon we ventured further, to California, to Mexico, to Peru. We broke up once in Key West. But I was too broke to change my ticket, and we got back together before our flight home. We got married in Maine but never took a honeymoon — I was pregnant and vomiting six times a day by then. Our first overseas trip as a family was to England, when our daughter Calla was a year and a half old.
None of us slept on the plane. Calla was too excited by the break in her routine, the tray table, and the pleasure of making her bunny dance for the people behind us. I was excited that we were crossing the Atlantic, that we were traveling again, and that my period was six days late. We’d been trying for five months to get pregnant again.
We arrived in London in the early morning and pushed through that groggy first day, wandering past Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square. Calla dozed in her stroller, but we forced ourselves to stay awake till nightfall, when we were no longer able to form sentences and she was wide awake. We brought her into our bed from the Pack ‘n Play, and she cuddled and squirmed for several more hours. Close to midnight, trying to scoot her off my pillow while rolling over, I felt the bone of my upper arm slide out of its socket.
I’d dislocated my shoulder before. The first time was playing tennis. After that, it came out every few years: once when I threw a piece of gum into a trash can, once holding onto a ceiling strap on a bus that came to a sudden stop, twice while having sex. Sometimes I could get it back in myself; sometimes I ended up at the ER. I did not want to go to the hospital that night in London. I tried to get it back in myself, but I was so tired. I couldn’t remember the movements. The pain scrambled my thoughts. I told Tyler to pull on my arm hard, but I didn’t know in what direction, and it hurt too much and Calla began to scream. I had a vague memory…
