Recently my beautiful daughter and I were sitting on a bench in a city we do not live in but nonetheless love watching a slow train go by.  I told her I would not do this but I could see someone (not me) jumping on the ladder up to the platform betwixt each huge metal box and climbing one side then down to the other as the cars lumbered by.  I timed them-one Mississippi, two Mississippi and it took 10 seconds for each to travel from one side of the intersection to the other, slow, quiet, heavy-climb up, walk over climb down, jump off.

It only takes a second for a jump to go wrong, not on the hypothetical slow train but in a real basketball scrimmage-up one, shoot, full force of the other girl driving into my daughter’s knee.

Months later the kids tell me they thing we lost the indoor basketball that day.  We all know we lost more than that, coming so close on the heals of my spectacular gesture, ensuing protest and unraveling attendance at the ski ranch, leaving, being told to leave, when the ropes began separating, things falling in pieces, bodies in the murky brown water.

Basketball was supposed to be the rebound sport, but the breakup came too fast and we resorted to RICE, returned to MRIs, visited new ortho docs.

Each thing-the leave-yourself-behind move, the extreme sports, the regular sports, the injuries, just slow moving heavy boxes full of pebbles clicking slowly by-one Mississippi, two Mississippi, all the way down the line….

To rehab.  Not Amy Winehouse rehab-kneehab I coin it-another ordinary rectangular box, up then down, one Mississippi, two Mississippi.

I took M to rehab as soon as I could, wanted as soon as I could to assuage the hurt-fear-loss.  They iced it and I stayed with her or she would have been alone. 

Part One of two…