Imperfection
The evening is hot and muggy, and still I can’t resist the samba beat of Fergie’s latest hit flowing through my earbuds. My mind is on a beach dance floor somewhere, and I’m feeling slim and glorious in a white bikini against my tan abs, my hair floating in the breezy sunset. And with one unfortunate glance in the mirror the sunset rudely dissipates. The mom shorts aren’t doing my thighs any favors, and I left my abs somewhere two kids ago. Well, I think, at least I have slim ankles and strong nails.
And I so wonder, not for the first time, why do I make this mental pros and cons list about myself. And when did I start feeling that everything I am and everything I do is just a little bit not enough? And I wonder if it began on the day I was born, quite literally.
Perhaps it did start in that labor room in then-Soviet Ukraine where a delivery mishap left me with a bum arm. Or perhaps it was seven days later, when, as was customary in those maternity wards, my mom unwrapped me fully and saw my flaccid arm for the first time. Something about dislocation, a torn nerve, something about paralysis, they were told. Nothing that modern medicine (sarcastic air quotes) can’t fix, they were assured.
My parents accepted it as a challenge from the universe and so began my orthopedic odyssey. Some doctors suggested that it may(!!) heal on its own, others advised more experimental measures to revive the muscles in my arm. Revive the muscles in my arm they did, maybe a bit overzealously, leaving my arm bent at the elbow.
I pieced together this early history of my affliction from snippets of conversation, backed by a faded x-Ray that my parents guarded like a family heirloom. My happy childhood (not sarcastic!) was punctuated by visits to one promising physical therapist or another, who would examine me, declare that they’d never seen anything quite like it, and naturally conclude that they will have me fixed up in no time. Then they’d send me to get a full blood workup, as if anemia was at the very root of my skeletal deficiency.
Alas, whatever ploys these specialists cooked up to “fix me” never worked.
My parents’ tenacity is the sole reason that my arm is 93% (making this up) functional and that 99% (still making it up) of people never notice anything wrong with it. My dad coached me through a nightly set of strength-building exercises and teased me incessantly, but not unkindly, I’d like to hope, about the likeness of my arm to one attached to a professional panhandler. My mom, always holding me by my left hand, insisted that I carry a little red plastic tote in my right “to keep my arm active!” And still, someone would give my parents a new name of a new specialist, and off we’d go, hoping to find a cure, ready to believe their assurances to “fix it” every time, and stoically accepting that they couldn’t.
It wasn’t all bad, of course. In preschool, the slight crook in one arm helped me learn my left from right, and in fourth grade I was excused from a whole unit of gymnastics, because I just couldn’t turn my shoulder back.
That summer I visited my last specialist. We rode a train for two days to see a masseuse with glassy cataract eyes. For the next few days, an hour at a time, she rubbed flowery oils into my arm and shoulder with her aged hands, until it was time for us to get on a train back home. Her efforts didn’t bare any corrective fruit, but it sure was nice!
And that was it for a long while, until in my twenties, and now in the almighty U.S. of A., I decided to give it one last go. Faded x-Ray in hand, I found myself in an exam room of yet another orthopedic specialist, hoping, despite all the previous defeats, that this honest-looking man could at last truly fix it. Me.
He checked us out — X-ray and I — and said plainly, “You have a perfectly healthy arm. There’s nothing I can do for you.” So I left, and then I cried for a good while.
I want to say that it was my great turning point, an eye-popping moment of clarity, that on that day I accepted me just as imperfect as I am, because I know with absolute certainty that this does not define me! But did it? I can’t help but wonder if the idea that there’s something irreparably wrong with me, something that should, but, not for lack of trying, can’t be fixed has been planted in my subconscious from the start.
It’s also entirely possible that I’ve overthought this to death.
I dance through the end of the song, willing my brain to unsee and under-process. John Legend is next up on my playlist, serenading Chrissy Teigen about her imperfection. The accompanying violins cut like a hundred blades. I turn it off and go to find my daughters. I sneak in a hug, wondering what sort of stupid, unnecessarily defining idea might get lodged in their hearts, far-far out of their reach. I breathe them in and whisper into their hair that they’re perfect, over and over. And I pray to the universe that they accept this truth and that maybe I can be enough for them.
