Rebecca Evans
Learning to Crawl
A typical crawl travels left-hand, right-knee, right-hand, left-knee, or, limbs diagonal-shifting in balance with the body. Crawling, our first human gait, motivated by desire, usually a toy. Once mastered, other life-skills flow like little soldiers lined for war—reading, writing, and feeding oneself.
*
In 2002, I knelt beside my ten-month-old, Zach, urging him, Crawl. My head tucked, my hand covering his tiny fist. I’d wrapped a hand towel ‘round his waist and clutched the ends harness-like to help him hold his position. With my thigh, I nudged his left leg forward. In the same movement, I slid his right hand. Zach resisted, his body moved less than an inch. I moaned.
You’re supposed to do this on your own already. I might’ve said this out loud. I know I thought it. I’d been teaching Zach to crawl for four months.
*
In 2013, when they—the VA medical team—evaluated me for abnormal vaginal bleeding, they discovered ovarian and uterine cysts and growths. They noticed lung nodules, kidney stones, and, by the end of the report, they side-noted my dissolving hip. To restore blood supply and slow the decay of my left hip, they drilled six holes through my femur to my acetabulum.
*
Pat, Zach’s Physical Therapist, cheered during crawling training. Come on, Zach, move a little. She spread a dishtowel beneath his knees, offering some glide. Zach, more rigid than before we began, refused to budge. Sweat dripped from the tip of my nose into the terry folds of his shirt. Moving Zach, only eight pounds at ten months, felt an Olympic feat.
*
Along with my hip, lungs, and lady parts, I’d a cervical spine injury, sizzling nerve pain from nape to pinky. My hands numbed. My grip gave way. And, as if my body quit holding onto itself, my left shoulder tore in three: rotator cuff, bicep tendon, and labrum. I felt a tattered rag doll.
*
The crawl’s repetition stimulates and organizes neurons, developing mental control in processes, like comprehension, concentration, and memory. When we crawl as babies, we visually find direction. We are led. We lead ourselves. Our hands guide our way.
*
Poliomyelitis, derived from the Greek grey and marrow, refers to the spinal cord. Before we knew better, they—the world—believed polio an infantile paralysis because those who survived the virus were young. And those who survived suffered temporary or permanent loss of movement.
*
Pat splayed Zach’s fingers repeatedly, his clench returning over and over, returning to what it remembered. I leaned back, and sat on my feet, the glass door on the oven bouncing my reflection. When did I use this last? I thought, realizing my appliances sat vacant since Zach’s birth. I lowered Zach to his belly and slackened the towel supporting him.
*
Eight months before Zach’s birth, my body pressed one-arm/one-leg push-ups with weights on my back. In training, I’d strap a forty-five-pound plate ‘round my waist and count twenty tricep dips. Those at the gym thought me a superhero. I believed myself invincible.
And I was.
Until I wasn’t.
*
HELP Charts state that between six and nine months, the average baby should sit unsupported, and, no later than ten months, should crawl. According to them—the experts—missing these milestones might indicate later developmental difficulties.
*
Pat and I spent twenty minutes three times a week working Zach’s singular skill: crawling.
*
We—my surgical team and me—decided a full hysterectomy took priority. We—same said team—decided we’d monitor my lung growths because a biopsy risked lung-puncturing. We decided on hip surgery before shoulder surgery because I’d need to support my groin on crutches. We decided to slice my neck last because this rehab proved extensive, at least six months of re-learning skills, like ushering a fork to my mouth.
*
Why can’t he get this? I want to say this out loud. On his belly, Zach kicked, flailing his arms. I rolled him to his back. Pat tapped my forearm. Let him do it, she said, and, He can. She pushed her hair, wispy and gray. Her clothes, scented of ginger and lemon balm, different than mine, lavender and vanilla. She, different than me. She doesn’t know more than me. She is not his mom. I stood, steadied myself, watched the two of them work.
*
My surgeon offered hip options.
1) Joint replacement.
2) Holes in my femur.
3) Do nothing and it might crumble.
I opted for drilling through my thigh-bone to my femoral head and the body—my body—would hopefully gather blood cells, oxygenate the decay, prevent further damage. Avascular Necrosis: Death of bone tissue due to lack of blood supply. I felt as if my body died, piece by piece, though, clearly, I was still alive.
*
Pat placed Zach on his stomach and rotated him to his side. Put your hand here, Zach, she said. She laid his hand next to his thigh. Spread your fingers. She slid her index under his palm, straightening his crunched fingers. Now push your body up. Up.
She talked to him like a real person.
*
At one point, I maintained eleven-percent body fat and could execute a toe-touch over top a six-foot man, landing in a push-up on the other side.
*
My body broke shortly after leaving a bad marriage—okay, a violent marriage—in 2010. By now, Zach turned nine. By now, he’d have two more brothers. By now, I believed my body—no longer fighting or flighting—relaxed, quit over-producing Adrenaline, Cortisol, and Norepinephrine, hormones protecting my psyche against pain perception. It wasn’t that I broke. More likely, I failed to notice my suffering while living with abuse. Failed to notice my body-pain while fleeing for safety.
Doctors named this post-stress event: The Let-Down Effect.
*
Pat raised Zach the rest of the way, into a sit. He grinned as though he accomplished some great feat. I squeezed my eyes. All this work to sit up, I accidentally said aloud. I sounded hard. I sounded impatient. I was. Hard and impatient. I felt unqualified for this, this Optimistic Therapy.
As a trained coach, I coerced adults into performance. And results. Pat once told me that I—with my athletic background—qualified as the perfect mom for Zach. I lacked her vision. I also lacked her enthusiasm. It’s easy for her, paid to encourage. When her workday finished, she probably soaked in luxurious baths and ate quiet meals without any urgency to keep another human alive.
*
I felt I let my body down, ignoring symptoms during survival, and now, my body was getting me back. Or getting even. Or perhaps getting my attention.
*
Some say crutches were invented in Ancient Egypt, though Emilie Schlick patented the design in 1917. There’s a method to manage a crutch. A right way. A wrong way. I found climbing stairs the most challenging as you put your bad leg forward first, like a terrifying Hokey Pokey.
*
I hated this feeling, feeling as if racing, trying to help Zach measure up against all those charts. I hated even more this other feeling, feeling I’d lagged behind the other runners, the other mommies. No. That’s not accurate. I didn’t feel I’d fallen behind.
I felt I was failing.
*
If you’ve never experienced hole-piercing-bone, think of your worse toothache, one that zings from jaw to brain, coupled with constant dull ache. That was my leg—knee to hip—for weeks. My sons—at the time, 2012, were thirteen, eleven, and five—spiraled, watching me, mommy, shuffle on crutches. Are you worried I’m limited because of crutches? They nodded. Do you know I’m a mamma bear? They nodded. Do you know what that means? Eyes wide, my middle son shrugged. Zach giggled. My youngest climbed onto the good half of my lap. It means I’ll destroy anyone who tries to hurt you. Silence. Do you know what these crutches can do? They shook their little heads, I swear, in unison. Think of me as a Transformer and these are extensions. I swung my crutches ‘round, sweeping the room. Look at my reach! Can you imagine the damage I could cause with these weapons of mass destruction?
It took three more years before everyone slept in their own beds.
*
Pat clapped for Zach. You’re doing a great job with him. It might take another year, maybe more, before he crawls. I think I sighed. She said, We’ll have to see what he decides. Let’s help him push into a sit.
Can’t he take a break? I asked. I couldn’t admit my tiredness—I was tired of this work, tired of this worry.
His muscles are warm, pliable, she said, and, Now’s the best time.
*
After my hip-drill, I re-learned to walk. First with crutches. Then with a cane. Then with the instability of my own disabling body, my gait insecure. Me, uncertain. I felt like I was learning to crawl. I felt like I was starting over.
I was.
*
The commando crawl, the well-known tummy crawl often depicted in military movies, often with some Commanding Officer shouting, Keep your ass down, because it’s rough to scoot tits-down in wet mud pulling your weight with only your elbows all the while hoisting a gun in the crook of your arms. We practiced this crawl in training, all in fun. I remember the obstacle course at Lackland AFB during Basic. I heaved myself with my forearms and pressed my hipbones into dirt, legs straight, dragging behind me. Tug, tug, wiggle, wiggle. More difficult when swallowing sand. The TI yelled, Ladies, your butts are high. And, This is no place to show your derrieres. And, No one cares about that tush, especially if it’s shot to hell. It was just as tough not to laugh as it was to crawl. I never used that crawl-skill. Not once. Not in field. Not in desert.
Not in the center of war.
*
I turned old at 47, walking with my cane a year following hip surgery, and sometimes, still, today. I quit teaching fitness and spent the next two years rehabbing my body. I still am. Old and rehabbing. I no longer hold most yoga poses, my spine and shoulder and hip unable to withstand the weight of my scarred flesh.
*
I sat Zach on the carpet and reluctantly mimicked Pat’s gestures. It took three attempts before I got it right, before Zach helped me position him into a sit.
*
My grandmother once told me she believed I contracted Polio. At eighteen months, I’d yet to crawl or walk. Later, she confessed that my mother refused to hold me. Grandma told me I looked like my father, the man who cheated on my mother with her best friend when I was six months old. My mother, heart-broken, or perhaps simply broken, left me in my crib. All day. With little motivation to move—no toys in the confines of my bed, no instinct to push my little body, to reach with my right or left hand for something, anything—I stayed in a sit.
I stayed still.
*
The oldest evidence for walking on two legs appeared around six million years ago when the earliest humans, Sahelanthropus, turned bipedal as an act of survival. Maybe walking matures naturally when we need to survive. Maybe we restrict our gait, especially if we’ve not learned to properly crawl. Where does running or fleeing fit into human evolution?
*
My lower right leg, paralyzed from knee to big toe, swings out to avoid banging my dangling foot. You’d probably not notice this unless I told you or you observed me clear a stair. I wear a brace. It’s bulky and doesn’t fit into most of my shoes. Without the brace, I lose my balance. My paralysis, not from childhood Polio—which I never had—originated from my cervical spine injury. Interesting, the way nerves route from neck to toe and back again. The way so many things go right in the human body. The way we harbor frustration when one small thing goes wrong.
*
What if, like the doctors predict, Zach never crawls? What if I’m required to manipulate his limbs when he’s thirty? 170 pounds? A grown man?
*
I park in handicapped spaces, a placard draped on my rearview. A reminder I’m not to walk on concrete much. Or ride a bike. Or hike. I hide my leg brace beneath wide-legged trousers. I enter my car with a side-sit, swiveling my legs beneath the dash. I’ve adapted movement to appear normal.
One-time, downtown Boise, I swung myself into my car and a policeman approached, tapped my window, You all right to drive? I explained I’d nothing to drink.
Well, you entered your car sort of funny.
I pointed to my handicap sign. I’m a Disabled Veteran, I said.
He saluted. Thank you for your service.
Right.
*
Zach smiled, his two bottom teeth showing through his wet grin. He waved his hands in the air, as if proud. Good job, I said. I tried to sound hopeful. I tried harder to feel hopeful. I lifted him, held him, his face squished into my chest, his hair damp, his lashes, dark and heavy, cascading mid-cheek, contrasting his pale skin. Despite his disabilities, he looked like a regular baby.
*
I learned to walk. I never learned to crawl. At least not as a toddler. I learned to walk before I turned two. And over and over, as an adult. I’m still learning. I limp. I modify to bring less harm to my damaged-self. I’m learning to believe I’m that brave Transformer I once portrayed to my sons. To believe that my repairs and rebuilding built me strong.
I’m not sure I’m buying it.
*
Zach did learn to crawl. And walk. Today, he’s endured thirty-six procedures, including his heart, his eyes, his feet. Today, he holds a green belt in Kajukenbo. Today, he runs (his own way). He climbs (his own style). He jumps (his air-jog). He bowls (his extravagant bow-curtsy-throw at the end of each roll). He’s mastered these skills, all on his terms.
*
After my ovaries-uterus-hip-shoulder-neck surgeries, I spent the next eight years unsuffering my physical ailments, unwhining my internal complaints, my new limits.
Can I get your foot brace for you? Zach asks me today. I have two braces. Both styles cut into my ankle. I trip when I don’t wear them. If I catch myself with my hands when falling—the natural human response—I risk jacking my cervical spine, creating more injury. Sure, I say. And, Thanks. He needs breaks from short walks. He needs pauses and stretches throughout his day. He set reminders on his phone to care for himself. He never complains.
Pat got it wrong.
I wasn’t the perfect mom for Zach. He was—and is—the perfect son for me.
*
A few weeks ago, I parked in handicap as usual. As I stepped from my car, a female security guard walked towards me, and said, You’re going to take a space that someone with a wheelchair might need? I lowered my eyes, my face flushed. I wanted to explain to her how I’ve modified my movement. Wanted to tell her that, like my son, I look much better than I feel. Wanted to point out that not all disabilities are visible. Then I wanted to shake her, shake her hard, even slap her as if to wake her. Who was she to decide that I’m not disabled enough? Did she even care that I never learned to crawl or that someone like Zach had learned crawling and then walking over the course of three years and a series of four casts and numerous surgeries?
I avoided eye contact.
Instead, I shrugged and limped the short block to my meeting and that night, I pulled Zach close, knowing he’d endured more than me. He’d carry this expectation that he should be fine because he looks almost-fine. And I’ll wonder if any of us are ever really fine. Wonder what defines normal or healthy or special. I’ll hope—more than hope—that my body holds together, despite its dismantling. Hope that it adheres somehow, some way, to provide a body-shield, mamma-bear protection for my boy, this boy, my greatest teacher.
“‘Learning to Crawl’ was born as a montage, a collection of interlacing scenes between my disabled (now adult) son, Zach, and me, as we both learn, in our own ways, how to navigate this world. My fascination with the human body and the way it heals and weaves through and around disabilities became a driving force, along with the idea that we are all simply ‘crawling’ through this thing called life. Hidden beneath these vignettes lives the idea that our limitations, our hidden disabilities, are often ancestral, familial, and gifted to us from our time in service, or, sometimes, from the world at large.” —Rebecca Evans
Rebecca Evans is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who writes the difficult, the heart-full, the guidebooks for survivors. Her debut memoir in verse, Tangled by Blood, bridges motherhood and betrayal, untangling wounds and restorying what it means to be a mother. She’s a memoirist, essayist, and poet, infusing her love of empowerment with craft. She teaches high school teens in the Juvie system through journaling and visual art. Rebecca is also a disabled veteran and shares space with four Newfoundlands and her sons. She has hosted two television series, Idaho Living and Our Voice, and currently co-hosts Radio Boise’s Writer to Writer show on Stray Theater. She does her best writing in a hidden cove beneath her stairway.
Her poems and essays have appeared in Brevity, Narratively, The Rumpus, Hypertext Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, The Limberlost Review, and more, along with a handful of anthologies. She’s earned two MFAs, one in creative nonfiction, the other in poetry, University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. She’s co-edited an anthology of poems, When There Are Nine, a tribute to the life and achievements of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Moon Tide Press, 2022). Along with her full-length poetry collection, Tangled by Blood (Moon Tide Press. 2023), she has a collection-length poem, Safe Handling, (Moon Tide Press, 2024) available.