When I took up my writer-in-residence position at Villa Gardens Health Center after I broke my hip, I knew there would be surprises, but I never could have imagined this one.
“Mom, is that you? What are you doing here?” I asked during a surprising visit from my mother.
“Where else would I be? My daughter fell and broke her hip. She needs some help from the experts,” said Mom.
I remembered well when my mother was the one on the gurney and I was walking beside her in the Huntington Hospital emergency room after she broke her hip.
But she looked so vibrant and fresh and healthy now – especially for a woman who’s been dead for eight years.
Standing just beside my mother, only much shorter than I remembered her, was her mother.
“Grandma Sarah, is that you?” I asked.
“Oh, Madela, what are you doing here? This is no place for a young woman.”
Actually, I’m not so young anymore. In fact, both my mother and grandmother looked younger than I did at the moment.
Looking at my grandma, I saw my Russian cheekbones and then a softer version of them on my mother’s face.
“Let’s talk food,” my mother sighed. “Oy, what a fit you gave me trying to get you to eat when you were growing up. You didn’t do much better as an adult, either, but the nonsense stops now. You have to eat and be strong so you can do your exercises and heal.
“Are you thinking mashed potatoes?” I asked.
It’s funny how you see people you love through their food. Grandma Sarah was black-and-white cookies and a glass of milk on her kitchen windowsill in the Bronx. Mom was soupy, mashed potatoes served in a bowl with a round spoon.
Just thinking about them made me feel better.
“Let’s talk about your exercises,” Mom said.
“You need to be working harder. No protecting the injured hip. You heard the PT: Heel-toe, now you can go.’”
I felt a little skittish standing next to my mother, who had survived three different hip breaks and lived to be 101. I remembered that she had trouble during her physical therapies, keeping her heel on the ground.
“Heel-toe, then go,” she replied firmly.
Grandma never even had that opportunity because in her day, the hip fracture was treated with traction in a hospital. Even now, tears sting as I picture her in that bed.
My two ancestral hip healing pioneers stepped back after that first night. I didn’t see them again, but I could feel their presence.
Today, as I get ready to leave rehab and head home, I hear their voices In unison with my own: Heel-toe. Heel-toe.
“Here I go…”