Prozac Monologues by Willa Goodfellow

Author:Willa Goodfellow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Prozac Monologues

Limp: On top of everything else, my hip hurts

Thursday, February 10, 2005

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

I have two jobs these days, one for the congregation of the dread Annual Meeting, the other for the Episcopal bishop of Iowa. Helen and I got back from Costa Rica on Sunday, I whimpered myself to sleep on Monday, and I went to a bishop’s staff meeting on Fat Tuesday, soon to be followed by Ash Wednesday, appropriately enough, given my mood. The Prozac is out of my system, and whatever good it did for me, it is doing no longer.

The staff piled into the bishop’s car to go eat pancakes at the cathedral when somebody asked the question.

The bishop answered for me from the front seat, “That’s what they used to ask Jacob.”

My boss is funny that way. Sometimes he comes across as clueless. But don’t count on it. Right after you roll your eyes, he pierces straight to the heart of the matter.

I said, “As a matter of fact, I am writing a book. I’m on the chapter called ‘Limp,’ and it will end with Jacob.” My boss wasn’t referring to my son. He meant Jacob in the Bible, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham. This Jacob once wrestled with an angel through the night, until the angel touched his thigh and knocked it out of joint. Jacob survived the fight, but he limped ever after.

I came home from Costa Rica with a limp. My hip hurt, which it has off and on for twelve years. Over the years, various people have used various systems of thought to answer the question my coworker asked, “What’s wrong with your leg?” The first time, when it hurt so bad I had to pause and consider my strategy each time I wanted to get in or out of a car, I was making my living by cleaning houses. One of my customers was a physical therapist. Not your typical physical therapist, she uses a system called “Mechanical Link.” Mechanical Link is to regular physical therapy as osteopathic is to regular medicine. The word “regular” indicates a certain power position that “regular” medicine holds, like how citizens of the United States call ourselves “Americans.” I can’t remember how she explained Mechanical Link. But Blue Cross Blue Shield pays for it, so it can’t be too bent. Maybe it’s like Canada. Except Canada is 10 percent bent, and Mechanical Link is a little more bent than Canada. OK, I know some Canadians who insist they are at least 15 percent bent. (But they aren’t.)

This physical therapist and I did not know each other well. We had been testing each other out, each trying to figure out whether the other could tolerate our respective Bent scores. She once left a note that said she hesitated to tell me, in case I thought she was strange, but the house always felt “good” after I cleaned it. I wrote back that it wasn’t strange. But I didn’t tell her what I was doing to make it feel “good.

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