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Perfectly Imperfect Lee Woodruff, Random House (page 4 of 8) Page 4 of 8

I see these little blessings in the gift of a friend’s healthy newborn baby, a clean mammogram, or the really, truly satisfying snatches of conversation I have with my father now, when he is having a good day and can clearly remember the parts of his life. People talk a lot about living in the moment, but to do that, to really achieve that, is to be able to fully participate in all the unarticulated goodness that makes up our lives. And of course, that kind of focus isn’t possible every single day. But I try now to give it all my attention when I tiptoe into my children’s bedrooms in the morning and stroke their hair as I wake them for school. I count my blessings for having sisters and girlfriends with whom I can unburden and be as comfortable with as a second skin. It is one of life’s small gifts to be able to ease someone’s pain, to hold their fears for an hour or a day. It is truly miraculous to sit and watch the sun rise and set, or to study the perfection of a colorful spring blossom.

In the second summer after Bob’s injury, I could finally say our lives felt secure. It had been eighteen months since our world, like Dorothy’s farmhouse, had been rocked off its foundations and gently set down somewhere else. We were not in Kansas anymore. But we were in firmer territory in some ways. We knew the fragility of life firsthand — we lived more in the present; I believe we all did. I was aware of the passage of days and weeks, aware of how finite the time was that I got to be a mom and enjoy my kids on this earth before they became full-sized human beings with independent lives.

None of us would ever choose to rupture the veil of innocence that shelters our children. As a parent I would have liked to spare them from the worst of it, but that’s ultimately not realistic. You cannot protect them all of the way. That’s not how life works. And that’s okay. But in the grateful aftermath of our family’s collective sorrow, I tell myself that my kids have learned more from the difficulties and hardships they have witnessed and endured than they ever would have otherwise.

The routes my children constructed to navigate around the fear and loss surrounding their father’s injury have forged their capacity to truly engage in their own lives, to be empathetic and to genuinely care for others. I have no doubt that they can already handle situations far beyond what many of their peers can. They have built up the same capacity that now sustains me, the ability to roll down with the chutes and up with the ladders, to reorient themselves and search for hope in even the most terrifying situations.

This fall I was pulling out of my driveway, distracted by the twins, who were not buckling their seat belts fast enough. Nosing into the driveway with spectacularly bad timing was our letter carrier in her boxy white truck. Looking left when I should have been looking right, I suddenly slammed into the truck’s side with our brand-spanking-new SUV.

After I made sure the girls were all right I hopped out, mad at myself. The mailwoman was already out of the car, shaking with fear and worried, I’m sure, that Suburban Soccer Mom would start screaming at her. A small wiry woman, she was jumping from foot to foot and swearing as she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her breast pocket and lit one.

“It’s my fault,” I said, worried by how distraught she looked. She was already calling her supervisor as we circled around her vehicle. Her old battle-ax of a truck seemed to have suffered only one fresh scrape on the bumper, but my SUV was completely bashed in on the right back side. One of my girls picked up the shattered red taillight housing and handed it to me.

“Damn,” the mailwoman said under her breath, shaking her head and taking a deep drag of the cigarette. “My supervisor says he’s gonna have to come out.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, calmly. “I’m not upset. Everybody is safe. It’s just a car.” She didn’t look completely convinced. “You can’t ruffle me anymore,” I said, and I flashed her a smile and reached for humor to calm and reassure her. “My husband was blown up by a bomb. Now, that’s something to get upset about.”

“What?” she responded, with a physical jolt. “My God ...is...is he dead?”

“No, no,” I assured her, “he’s fine now. But it makes things like busted cars not that important in the big picture.”

“Look at this,” the mailwoman said abruptly, lifting her shirt to show me a road map of scars crossing her abdomen and chest.

“Wow.” I whistled softly. “What happened?”

“When I was five I fell out of a window and survived. And later I got breast cancer.” She gave me a winsome smile, one gold tooth glinting toward the back, and then she took another tug at her cigarette.

“Man!” I said, looking her right in the eyes. “Ain’t life a bitch!” And then, right there on the driveway with the broken red plastic taillight, we both just started to laugh.

What I know Now

When bad things happen, we all dream of rewinding the tape. Every one of us would go back to the minute before the car skidded off the road, would make the appointment for the colonoscopy a year earlier, would stop ourselves from turning our backs for a second as our child was swimming or when the ladder holding Dad started to wobble. But we can’t, and so we do the only thing we can: we take those bad things and turn them into situations we can learn from. It’s human nature to try to pan for gold, to find a positive slant in something so negative, because anything less would feel like defeat. Euphemistically, these tragedies are called “life experiences,” but for better or worse, they are some of our most powerful moments. Thankfully, my own family has come out the other side of our own crisis. First, we survived; then we slowly learned to thrive again. And in the process I have been taught some important lessons about being a caregiver, mother, wife, healer, friend, motivator, and the grateful recipient of oodles of love, goodwill, community support, and prayers.

Excerpted from Perfectly Imperfect by Lee Woodruff Copyright © 2009 by Lee Woodruff. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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