Reconfiguration

It was the year I was getting divorced, but I didn’t know it then. We were living apart, but there had been good reasons for us each to want our space, yet still try to work things out.

So now it was me, my teenage son, and our two cats. The smaller cat was evasive and seldom present except when being fed, while the larger one was much more magnanimous with his affections.

It was early November, the winter dark really starting to set in when the larger cat, decided for some reason that he preferred an early morning feeding schedule – he began to insist that I get up around four to feed him – food from the evening before or the crunchy bagged food were suddenly not sufficient, and so, in the name of a decent, if somewhat interrupted, night’s sleep I gave in to his demands.

It was on the third day of this new arrangement that he decided, without warning, to dart in front of me as I neared the bottom of the stairs – I half took a huge step to avoid him and half jumped down the last two stairs, but in the predawn dark I misjudged the bottom step and felt my right ankle roll and crumple, along with the rest of me, onto the kitchen hardwoods.

At urgent care they x-rayed my leg and told me I’d broken my ankle in three places and that it would be some months before I’d be fully back on my feet.

It’s a strange thing to suddenly find yourself at the imposition of bad luck, fading agility, and the universe’s dark sense of humor, but soon enough I was back home,  leg propped up, a nice cocktail of Vicodin and Oxycodone for lunch, and a movie put on until I dozed off; my soon to be ex-wife was even being kind and solicitous in a way she hadn’t been in years.

In the end, it was November again before I was more or less back to normal, but I could see when I looked and feel when I walked that something had been reconfigured in the bones and blood vessels of my ankle – I have a bit of limp now; the cat died the following Spring, and the boy and I moved again when our lease was up.

Missteps are to be expected.