She found his feet while grabbing an apple. Curious, she knocked a hollow sound through his entire leg. He was silver, empty, stuck. And I am just like this Tin Man.

“Mom…” I turn my head in a momentary lapse of my condition, and I pay for it dearly. My only choice is to become stiff again, using my entire torso like a bad version of Mr. Roboto.  

What did I do? I don’t know. The only thing I can trace back to is one night when I got up to slay the green-faced witches of my little one’s bad dreams, my arm was prickling with the claws of evil flying monkeys. But that hardly seems enough to have me in such a statuesque manner.

“I’d likely pay you three times your normal rate for this,” I said to my chiropractor the next day. 
And with a click then a pop, I was oiled at the joints. God bless that man for not up-charging.

Days later I am not back to normal but I’m getting there. I can look in my blindspot when I drive or under my son’s dresser for the stack of clean clothes I told him to hang in his closet. I remember what a privilege it is to have my bones, muscles, and tendons doing their thing right.

I sigh. “There’s no place like home.” Or the office of a skilled bone-cracker.