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The Candy Apple Red Canes

Today as I was walking with my husband out of the temple, we passed a cheerful gentleman who was walking with the assistance of a candy apple red cane. I nearly blurted, "Hey, I have the exact same cane you do! It's a good one!"

Because, well, I do. I just didn't have it on me.

For three weeks last fall I suffered from pelvic displacement. The hip issue was a result of my growing baby's strain on my body in the last stretch of the third trimester of pregnancy. It started out as nothing more than a little discomfort at the end of the day to woefully staring across my classroom at a stack of papers and wondering if I really, really needed them because it might take me ten minutes to get there and I might just yelp and cry the whole way, too. Imagine that your right leg is chipper and dandy, but when you put any weight at all on your left leg you get jabbed in the side with dozens of unforgiving little needles. That's about what it felt like.

My husband came home from CVS one evening with this thing I used to think of as a granny-stick, and I looked at it and cried. It had a marbled red metallic sheen with a cushioned handle and a hook to attach a keychain.

 I didn't use it for three days. I glared at it from across the room. What a waste of 25 bucks.

I came to. I realized I couldn't stay upright without it. So I kept the tags on it for a day's worth of use (yup, I was still in denial) until Kevin sliced them off when I wasn't looking. We planned our dates around places where I could be dropped off and walk less than 100 steps to get to whatever we were doing. Mostly, we went to the movies. We saw Coco, Wonder, Thor: Ragnarok, and Murder on the Orient Express within two weeks' time.

After a while, the cane wasn't enough, and we resorted to using a kid-sized black wheelchair my brothers bought from the D.I. a couple years back as a prop for a youtube video they made.

At 25, and at eight and a half months pregnant, I had to use a wheelchair or a cane to get places. It sucked.

It went away after my son was born.

But, you know something? Now when I see people with canes, I want to just cheer for them. I want to celebrate that they're walking. I want to praise them for using all they've got to be on their legs and get places. When I see people in wheelchairs wheeling themselves around, I want to tell them they've got a sweet ride. I want them to know that just because they have a tool, is doesn't mean their mobility is any less awesome.

I wish I would have said something about his Candy Apple Red Cane. Mine's in the closet, but I'll need it again someday.

And for the record, I really do like how it looks and it sure has been good to me and it gave me my mobility back.

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