Prosthesis

Rumination on a theme

pros-thee-sis (n.) a putting to, addition, equivalent to prós to + thésis a placing

The word prosthesis originates in the Greek, pros meaning “in addition or toward,” and thesis meaning “a placing” or “setting.” As in, adding in place. In place of. In the ancient Greek, it was the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word, for example, especial elevates special from affectionate to exceptional.

We think of the word these days most commonly as a medical term which is to say artificial body part. Due to language users during The Renaissance who fancied the term during an era of rapid growth in the field of medical science, they borrowed the term wholesale from classical languages.

These days we continue to think of prosthetics more or less in the context of employing a device within a spectrum of specialties: orthopedic, dental, auditory, and cosmetic.

Formalities aside, the cruder language of my youth found it far more satisfying to say wooden leg, fake leg, peg leg. It was part of Dad. It was Dad.

That is, until the day I bumped into it on the stairwell landing under full cloak of darkness. We’d been watching television with Dad, and I had to pee, so during commercial break, I ran upstairs to use the toilet. The instant I hit the top step, a figure stopped me cold. Call it a face-off, me staring at a shadow in the dark, trying to make sense of who stood before me, globes of television light hindering my vision. Whatever it was was blacker than the black of the hallway surrounding it, a hole swallowing light.

This thing smacked of a sinister energy, ready to pounce, send me reeling down the stairs or worse, opening a new, secret terror no one would believe when I reported it.

Still struggling to adjust my eyes in the darkness, it morphed into the shape of Dad’s leg without Dad in it. Rubbing my eyes didn’t help. It became Dad’s leg, animated and sentient, worse, it reeked of maleficence. But I’d just seen Dad downstairs, in his recliner, laughing at Archie Bunker. The only explanation I entertained was that the darkness I sensed living in him had transmogrified into a sinister force bent on terrorizing me. The leg stood bolt upright, not slumped as when I’d seen it propped against Dad’s dresser. It squared off with me, threatening and mean. Words failed me, as did screams. The horror, lasting a few shallow breaths, gripped me with a sucking fear that consumed me. I waited for it to speak. Just then, the headlights of a passing vehicle swept through a window briefly illuminating the space, and I realized it was the box Tammi and I had abandoned earlier in the day while playing school. A big empty box, harmless and mute.

A wave of relief cascaded through me as I ran on to the bathroom, then skipped back downstairs to join the others in the flickering light of the television.

That was nearly 60 years ago, but the memory revisits often. I ask myself why and how my 6-year-old brain collapsed into this nightmare scenario. Though I didn’t know then, I know now my life was an arena of opposing worldviews: Mom’s religious zealotry, Dad’s anger and carnality. Why did I default into darkness? What power did Dad’s leg possess over my imagination? Demons existed. I knew this from church. They took all shapes and sizes. But I was good, innocent. Wasn’t I? That night I dismissed the absurdity of the moment, but I never lost it. I shamed myself for being capable of thinking of my own father capable of inciting such fear.

My asymmetrical father, not fully flesh, part mechanism, incomplete, grotesque a la Flannery O’Connor. No different than Mr. Shiftlet, Joy Hulga or Manly Pointer. He rejected Mom’s God, according to Mom. He endured a marriage far afield what he’d imagined. Who did he see in the mirror? Whomever reflected back to him was a vessel of anger, silence, and resentment. Not nearly vast enough to contain it all, he tamped and packed and suppressed what he could, a powder keg.

Silence is his story. He lived it, limped it, he tried to pass it on.