{"id":4836,"date":"2016-12-02T11:23:38","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T18:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/?p=4836"},"modified":"2016-12-02T11:23:38","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T18:23:38","slug":"broken-bones-dreams-things-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annleemiller.com\/2016\/12\/broken-bones-dreams-things-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Bones and Dreams and Other Things"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1209207_666527440024612_1046060365_n\"

Our Lady of the Hills today–timeless.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Florida to North Carolina trek took sixteen hours\u2014one for each year I\u2019d been alive\u2014or long enough to read Go Ask Alice<\/em>, Love Story<\/em>, and a Mad Magazine<\/em> cover to cover. I packed my K-Mart steamer trunk with enough T-shirts, shampoo, and books for a summer at Our Lady of the Hills Camp, climbed onto a Greyhound bus, and didn\u2019t look back.<\/p>\n

Camp wasn\u2019t boarding school, but some dreams were never going to happen\u2014like my three summers\u2019 running crush on Eddie Falcone. But camp, I decided, was better than boarding school. No homework. And, hey, I could count on a least one Eddie sighting a day.<\/p>\n

I unfolded from the bus seat, climbed down the steps into my third year at camp.<\/p>\n

The summer blurred by under a canopy of Carolina blue sky and white lace clouds: I slammed my body against the forgiving mat of the trampoline. I stretched out prone on musty canvas with a twenty-two snugged into my shoulder and aimed at targets I rarely nailed. I cajoled girls to hike to the most beautiful waterfall we\u2019d ever see. I corralled them for kickball and hitting the canteen for Cokes.<\/p>\n

And somehow, along the way, I was metamorphosing from a counselor-in-training into a counselor. Some of my skills, however, needed work.<\/p>\n

Before camp I\u2019d only ridden a horse once\u2014a tethered ride around a Miami backyard at a fifth birthday party. But the I-love-horses chink of my Y chromosome survived. Over three summers of camp I mastered posting in an English saddle, a skill that made my nose tip up just a little higher than it used to. But I\u2019d barely tried cantering or galloping\u2014until today.<\/p>\n

\"Me

Me at 17<\/p><\/div>\n

The sun deepened to goldenrod and sunk toward the mountains as campers practiced their skits in front of the cabins for evening activity. I and the other C.I.T.s climbed onto horses. I followed Diane, living her first twin-less summer, into the field atop a shiny, black-coated gelding named Smokey. Buttercup strolled behind me carrying Beth.<\/p>\n

Diane goaded her horse into a smooth canter and Smokey followed.<\/p>\n

Trees flew past the corners of my eyes, dark in the honey-yellow light.<\/p>\n

Mountain air slapped my cheeks.<\/p>\n

My knees gripped Smokey\u2019s flanks and every time his feet hit the ground I jarred loose from his withers.<\/p>\n

Next time I\u2019d stick to trotting.<\/p>\n

He careened around the corner of the field, unseating me even further. He ducked his head\u2014a nasty quirk I\u2019d been warned he loved to do.<\/p>\n

My body flung forward into the dew-heavy sunset.<\/p>\n

I smacked hard against Carolina clay.<\/p>\n

Smokey jogged to the center of the field, his nose high and proud.<\/p>\n

I lay winded on the grass, adrenalin mainlining though my body, my ankle limp beneath one bell bottomed pants leg.<\/p>\n

Amid exclamations, \u201cThank God you didn\u2019t get kicked or trampled,\u201d \u201cWhere does it hurt?\u201d and \u201cLie still,\u201d a car drove across the field and parked.<\/p>\n

\"Eddie

Rebel, Eddie Falcone, a turtle<\/p><\/div>\n

Eddie Falcone stepped out.<\/p>\n

All my religious training culminated in that moment.<\/p>\n

There is a God and He really is kind. I would never doubt again.<\/p>\n

After a stop at the infirmary where I was iced, ibuprofened, and splinted in an inflatable boot, Eddie tucked me into his car for the ride to the emergency room.<\/p>\n

The sky had deepened to eggplant by the time we weaved our way through the woods.<\/p>\n

If I had known that fifteen minute car ride would be the pinnacle of my relationship with Eddie, I wouldn\u2019t have squandered it tracking the heartbeat of pain throbbing in my leg.<\/p>\n

Between jaunts of silence, I apologized for taking up his evening. Twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry about it. I didn\u2019t have anything else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

How could you not like a guy like that?<\/p>\n

The car went back to quiet. Eddie was not the talkative Falcone.<\/p>\n

Too soon and not soon enough we arrived at the Pardee Hospital ER where my ankle was pronounced broken in three places.<\/p>\n

After the doctor told Mom I\u2019d need surgery to insert a pin tomorrow, he handed me the phone.<\/p>\n

I said I was fine, she didn\u2019t need to come from Florida to hold my hand. No way was I going home a month early if I could help it.<\/p>\n

Mom, an R.N. in intensive care, was an easy sell. \u201cOkay, honey. I love you. Talk to you after the surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eddie left me with a few words and a face that said he felt all kind of awful for me.<\/p>\n

I breathed a contented sigh as the mega pain killers and Eddie\u2019s compassion kicked in.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t need to be concerned.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember much till I woke up the next day after surgery with flowers from the camp beside my bed.<\/p>\n

\"Arts

Arts and Crafts on the lower level<\/p><\/div>\n

A couple boring days later I went \u201chome\u201d to camp on crutches with a high-tech, waterproof cast\u2014made of fiberglass like Dad used to coat the hull of the Annie Lee<\/em>. Who knew Hendersonville squirreled away fifty camps in her hills and had become an epicenter for broken limbs? I couldn\u2019t have picked a better place to break a bone.<\/p>\n

The rest of the summer unspooled with me hobbling around camp, inhaling the scent of mountain laurel that grew beside the pool and slipping into the summer-cold water every chance I got.<\/p>\n

I painted ceramic mugs with my cabin, our voices drifting out the screens beneath the lodge. We moon-bathed and shared secrets on the flat rock of the camp\u2019s makeshift golf course. We sailed sunfish in puffs of air on Madonna Lake. And we cried our way through Where Have All<\/em> the Flowers Gone<\/em> at the final campfire of the summer.<\/p>\n

\"Someone

Someone cooler than Eddie Falcone: Jim Miller<\/p><\/div>\n

I crutched up the aisle of the Greyhound bus and rode to a new town, new high school, and still-new stepdad.<\/p>\n

Starting eleventh grade with a broken leg, neon orange jeans, and one Kelly green Converse earned me bounteous offers to carry my books and enough notoriety to win vice president of the senior class and a berth on the homecoming court.<\/p>\n

As with most hard knocks in life, I didn\u2019t have to look far to see God\u2019s kindnesses.<\/p>\n

And if my boarding school dream got divinely upgraded, then maybe one day I\u2019d splat in the sunset in front of somebody cooler than Eddie Falcone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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