Tucson: The Mother’s Knee

By Cliff Potts
Bay Bay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 7, 2026

This is a serialized installment from the autobiography of Cliff Potts.

An Injury Before Memory

I have no memory of my mother’s knee from Tucson. The injury happened years before I was born. What I know came later, in fragments — partial explanations, offhand remarks, and medical facts gathered long after the event itself.

Sometime after my sister Geri was born in 1950 and before my sister Lauren was born in 1955, my mother rose one morning, twisted slightly, and her knee collapsed completely. The joint failed without warning.

The timeline around those years is not perfectly clear. My parents were married in Boise, Idaho. Geri was born in Chicago. The movement between those places was never fully explained to me.

The Bone Man

The doctor who treated her was described as an old-school orthopedic surgeon — direct and unsentimental. The procedure he proposed was experimental. There were no guarantees.

The knee joint was beyond repair. The solution was fusion: bone to bone, permanently fixed. It worked. From that day forward, my mother lived with a leg that did not bend.

The Cause

Decades later, I learned the underlying cause was tuberculosis. The infection had begun in her lungs and migrated to the joint, gradually destroying it from within. By the time the damage was understood, the knee could not be salvaged.

Years later she was told she could consider a knee replacement. She was also told she was “too young.” She did not pursue it again.

Practical. No drama. Adjustment over complaint.

By the time I was born in 1957, the fusion had healed. The straight leg was simply part of who she was.