In a beautiful verdant  Costa Rican cloud forest in December of 2017, my love and I went for a hike.

I forged ahead as I usually do when my beloved hears a bird.

I think, oh, that bird is making such a beautiful sound, and then I’m over it and move on.

But this trip was for my husband. A bird-lovers paradise for a birder on his 50th birthday. He needed to identify it, watch it, and record it meticulously in his lifer list.

So, I, the impatient one, headed up a ridge, probably (definately) took up too much height in my step, securing my right foot into a tree root…

when there was a pop and a buckle.

I screamed so I must have scared all the birds away.

I could put no weight on my right leg whatsoever. It was bent at a weird angle and I could not straighten it. Pain radiated down my calf into my shin. Even though I knew that from past experience, the pain would go away and I’d regain mobility, once I worked up the nerve to straighten my leg and get the ligament back into place.

But I was in pain and scared. And I was on a trail in a cloud forest in Costa Rica.

Come on! My beloved coached me. You can do it! Pop it back in like you always do. You’ve done it before—-

But it fucking HURTS!!

I screamed at him. And he ignored my screams and my pleads to just leave me in the jungle and I could crawl back to the lodge where we were staying about a mile away before sundown. And he propped me up. And I put my weight on it, felt just where the ligament was stuck on the outside of my knee, grit my teeth and with a scream, POPPED it back into place.

I hobbled out of the jungle and sat on a bench just outside our villa retreat, soothing myself to the sound of the brook that flowed through the resort and into the trout pools that provided our dinner each night.

I was relieved to not be in pain. My knee had been giving way like this for five years now. After the new year, I promised to have it looked at. 

But then the new year gave me a new challenge and I put off getting my knee checked out. One more time. 

Back in civilization:

It was a Wednesday in early April and my favorite time of the week when my favorite instructor at the gym taught a quick yoga class at noon.

The night before was Jonah’s first with our family. In his unpacking he came bearing a gift, some chocolates, plus a card expressing gratitude and happiness for us welcoming him into our family, for expressing that with us, he felt like he had finally found the family he thought he would never in his life hope to have.

And I was also happy to have him at home with us. But the mental and physical preparation it took to prepare to move him in, coupled with a trip back to see the family for holiday bookended with a 12 hour car ride, then followed by a day of going up and down flights of stairs to move Jonah out of one house and into another, I needed some me time.

Ever tried yoga?

The first time I took a yoga class was back in 1993 out in California by a sunny blond instructor named Sunshine. I swear it, that was her name.

I’ve been doing it on and off ever since. Every class, almost every class, has resulted in leaving me in a state of bliss.

And I was really looking forward to that Wednesday class. I needed some bliss. I had a lot of work ahead of me.

In the month to come, I would be contacting and meeting with social workers, lawyers and school counselors. With Jonah we had to somehow locate his parent’s divorce papers to see what he was entitled to and if it was met. We had to get him a healthcare plan. After he had emailed two dozen teachers and staff in his high school saying he did not feel safe in his father’s house before he either left or was thrown out on his 18th birthday, we had to figure out how to attain his records from Child Protective Services, to see if any teachers filed a report with CPS.

And he had no health insurance.

There were lists upon lists floating in my head.

But in yoga, there is just the breath.

Return to the breath.

No interacting with lists.

Just let them be. Put them in a cloud and float them away.

About 10 minutes into the class, a woman came in. Late. Dragging with her a heat lamp. Smelling of stale cigarettes.

Annoyed, I got out of warrior one and was about to move my mat to the other side of the room when

There was a pop. And a buckle.

At first everyone in the class thought my hopping toward the exit was hilarious and the calm in the room was broken by nervous laughing.

I made it out of the yoga studio onto the main floor of the fitness center, to the dismay of my poor yoga teacher, who kept trying to check on me, as I writhed in pain on a mat.

Come on, I tried to will myself, just pop it back in. Straighten out your leg!

If I knew someone who could hold my hand, I would have had the strength to do it.

But I looked around and there was no one I knew there at the gym that day.

And after about a month of listening to Jonah’s accounts of abuse and neglect, my mind and my body just reached their breaking point.

I lay on the gym floor and cried for help. A personal trainer, who months later would tell me how well I was recovering, as I worked through my PT exercises, said to sit tight. He was calling an ambulance.

Eventually, help came in the form of two EMT guys.  I was able to get up on my own performing a one-legged downward dog.

I’ll show them! I thought.

They said they were very impressed.

I took what I hope will be my only ambulance ride. All along I thought, no, I haven’t got time for this. I have a new kid to take care of, we have lists, we have to get things figured out before college starts. I have no time to be broken.

In the days after I hurt myself, I told him, maybe this was meant to be. My family took him in to help him out, and in turn, he was helping me out. He stepped up by doing more chores. He helped with dishes and swept up after dinner.

Two days into my leg not moving, he met my friend in the driveway as she and he brought in groceries she picked up for me.

Aside, I told here how badly I felt, that I hurt myself like this at a time when I was supposed to be the one helping him.

“Hey,” she assured me, nodding to Jonah as he put some produce in the fridge as I lay on the couch. “He wanted to be part of a family. This is what family does for each other.”

Three days later, I did manage to pop my leg back into place. But I knew that this was not going away on its own.

A visit to an orthopedic surgeon and an MRI later, it was determined that not only was my ACL torn, it was completely gone. I would need a complete ACL reconstruction. Plus a miniscus repair to top it off.

I would need surgery. And about six months of recovery.

I got the news on a weekday morning over the phone.

For some reason, Jonah was not in school, so it was just me and him at home.

He came down from his room and saw I was on the phone getting some pretty bad news. He waited for me to get off, patiently, leaning on his forearms on a kitchen chair.

By the look on my face, he must have known something was up.

Now, I know putting this in perspective, this should be the worst thing to ever happen to me. I’ve had friends who have fought cancer, who died from cancer. This was nothing.

But, to me it was something.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

“I will be. I am just a little scared, and I’m in for a long recovery and I am afraid of being in pain, I guess.”

Then, he straightened up.

“You look like you can use a hug.”

And, you know, at that very minute, I really did need a hug.  If he were not home, I would have had to deal with that phone call in an empty house, my son and husband hours off from the end of their day.

And he came over to where I was standing by the fridge and he gave me a very big long hug.

Thanks, kid, thank you for that.

This is the next installation in an ongoing series.

This is based on a true story.

Names have been changed.

To start from the beginning of the series, click here.