Vicissitudes

Today, I am sad. Lonely. He is withholding something, I believe it is medical news that he doesn’t feel ready or able or willing to share and I have a lot of emotions around that. Mostly I feel abandoned, because isn’t this supposed to be a partnership? Forty years this year. So how do you just shut me out like that. Refuse to tell. Do your passive aggressive cave thing, carve out the no-go territory and then act like everything else is just fine. It’s not. I’m all twisted up and tumbling down a dark hole. Can’t take a full breath. I guess I’m scared and angry too. Scared I’ll lose him to whatever he's not saying. Angry he’s leaving me at the mercy of my most dire imaginings. I imagine he’s trying to manage his own feelings and isn’t ready to have to manage mine too. So I’m going along. Acting as if things are normal so as not to escalate. Because what’s the point of blowing up the whole dolly house, which I sort of already did this morning before we managed this afternoon (after his doctor’s appointment about which he shared nothing) to regroup and repair. I carry on and I wait. Holding myself in. Almost casually sharing news of about a president melting down over a general refusing to give him the nuclear codes. In this moment the possible end of the world seems distant and hypothetical. Is he going to be ok? feels much more pressing. Marriage can be hard y’all. 

(Might delete later.)

This being social

I woke thinking of all the social interactions I have ahead of me today, starting with my second to last session with my lovely PT person, as I have apparently met the markers, turns out I am a tad too determined to do what is asked of me and I powered through. After that I am to meet up with my neighbor Jane to walk in the gardens, just a pleasant stroll with my friend to enjoy the cotton candy blossoms arriving on our trees. Then my childhood friend Alison, who lived with us for a few years when we were growing up, and with whom I now sing in choir (except I'm not there this term because of my recent surgery), is stopping by after rehersal to give me my birth certificate, which my brother asked her to bring to me from Jamaica when she was there recently, for Easter. If you followed that sentence, good for you. I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. After Alison and I visit, I'm supposed to sit on a bench at sunset with my other friend Lisa, who's recovering from dental surgery, and who I haven't seen since before my surgery, though she left flowers at my door twice during my recovery, bless her. And finally at 7:30 tonight I'm due to attend the monthly meeting of our co-op's Tenant Committee, of which I am a member along with several of my fellow co-operators. In between I will get in a bit of work, maybe. I have already been up early, editing, and the weather is gorgeous out, so the days of taking my laptop downstairs and working in the courtyard under trees and sky are finally here. Yesterday I sat at an outdoor table and formatted blind endnotes for the manuscript I finished last fall, which is at the publisher, working it's way through the many-months-long book-birthing process. 

Anyway, I woke up thinking of all the social engagements that would be a part of this day and I thought that maybe I would put on make up, make an effort to help out my haircut, but by the time I was showered and dressed, that idea had run its course and I had settled for clean and neat. Earrings and a necklace will have to serve as proof that I tried. My hair is growing in a bit, though, and the color, which had seemed way too dark when I left the salon, now seems okay. It may not actually be a bad cut, it may just need a few weeks to come together. Maybe. Here I am in my daughter's back yard last Friday. My cousins from Orlando spent last week with us, and my girl and her husband had us all over for a cook-out to celebrate three recent family birthdays, except it was a little too soon for cook-out season, definitely still too cold, so we all huddled inside coats and sweaters and soon escaped inside. But just being together for a few hours in this mad surreal world, was soul restoring. 

Birthday girl, lightworker, lifesaver, the next indicated thing

Today is my girl's birthday. She is celebrating it in Paris with her love, and by the looks of it, having a grand time. I love that for her. For them. They've been sharing pictures and videos of their adventures with the fam at the end of each day, and it's been such a treat for us all. The famous attractions and citiscapes are fabulous but it's the pics of the two of them that I swoon over. Here are some of my faves.

She looks happy. And that's really all I need.

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Thank you for the kind comments in response to my low mood yesterday. I'm a lot better today, though the haircut still looks wacky. Later in the day, I realized my vapor of sadness wasn't really, truly about the hair (though it is going to be a challenge making myself show up in the world with this crazy cut). It started really with our son telling us the night before that his firehouse had been the first on the scene at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday evening after the Air Canada Express flight and the airport emergency vehicle crashed on the runway, and those two pilots died. My son and his crew were the first responders who had to cut those poor pilots out of the wreckage, and get the injured survivors to safety. It was a horrific scene, and I went to bed that night thinking about how hard some of my son's workdays are, and those pilots not making it home from their own regular workday, the fragility of our world, and then I couldn't sleep, and I got up at 3 AM and looked in the mirror, I looked so scalped and undefended,  and when I climbed back into bed, and continued to lie awake, staring into the darkness, it just started to feel like so much, too much, and that's when I started to go under. But I'm okay now. I'm a mother. Mothers rally. Parents rally. We have children in the world. And so we do what we can to get back up each day and do the next indicated thing to make this place the best it can be. For them. In this moment, on my daughter's birthday, that lightworker of a girl, and my literal lifesaver of a son, I can think of no worthier cause.

Inflatable thing

I lay in the darkness this morning and felt myself sinking under the waves, felt myself going under, had to fight my way back to the surface, trying to find breath, trying to breathe without the feeling of a thousand tiny knives. It came out of nowhere, and yet was so enticingly familiar, the sinking, the awareness of darkness closing in, the long sad weariness with myself, inviting me to relax into it, like I was an inflatable thing with a slow leak and suddenly, with no warning, I was empty of light and air. 

Mom, have you gone back to therapy after surgery yet?

No, I feel like I have nothing to talk about. 

Well, don’t wait till you’re in crisis. The real work happens when you’re not just trying to stem the bleeding. 

I reached for my phone in the dark and messaged my therapist that I was ready to start back, Mondays were still good and could I schedule an appointment. I put the phone down and concentrated on trying to breathe. 

What tipped me over? It might seem like the shallowest thing. Mere vanity even. My hair. I hadn’t had it cut since before my surgery. It grew willy nilly, curls popping out, refusing to be tucked in, except the top , which got straight and thin and wispy the longer it grew, only being tamed with curling foam that laid it down. I took the scissors to the rest, snipping off wayward coils to achieve a uniform shape, till the whole thing was wildly uneven. The woman I trust to cut and color this head full of different textures isn’t back in town till late April. I decided I couldn’t wait. I went to someone else yesterday for a repair job. It was a disaster. I’m scalped at the back and sides yet the top is still too long. She didn’t understand that the back and sides lie flat against my head when its too short and the top doesn’t curl till it’s shorter. So now I look even crazier. And I had her color it too because I was tired of the gray, but she went too dark so now I look wan and jaundiced against my patchy too dark hair with scalp peeking out all over. I look as if I just underwent a fairly aggressive round of chemo, which is to say when people see me, they're going to ask with concern, "Are you okayy??" 

It’s hard enough being inside this body on a good day. It’s harder after several weeks of poor sleep because I have to lie on my back because the hip is still healing inside, and sleeping on my back is uncomfortable as hell, my whole body aches by morning (except the hip) and I know, I know, I have no good reason to feel so low, I have so many blessings in my life, I know I do, but I get so tired of myself sometimes, I have a hard enough time showing up in the world, and this new scalped chic was just about the last straw. 

Every time I think I might stop writing here because this crazy world, I realize I’m literally insane and I need to write out my insanity and this place is therapy and don’t mind me I’m just here trying to keep on.  

__________

The kids are in Paris for her birthday. Here they are inside the Louvre. She’s walking fine on her braced ankle. They look like art themselves. See? Blessings. 

Every body is healing

First, the Costa Rica update: My girl was having a wonderful time, then her husband and I received this text on the day before she was to return to New York: 

What we couldn't see was that as she was texting, she was crumpled on the beach, unable to move, her ankle throbbing and ballooning. A woman photographer came over to her and held her hand and talked to her soothingly while the surfing instructor went to find a rescue vehicle. Then some men on the beach helped carry our girl to the vehicle and helped settle her inside, after which the instructor drove into town in search of a medical clinic. The first two were closed. Finally they found a pharmacy staffed by a "lovely woman doctor," according to my daughter. The doctor spoke no English, but there was a woman there who translated the Spanish, and my daughter understood that though her ankle was very painful and she could put no weight on it, no bones were broken. 

Then the doctor brought out a syringe to inject something into the swollen joint and my girl, who is needle phobic, began to hyperventilate and cry. An older Black woman who was shopping in the pharmacy heard her distress. She came over to my daughter and hugged her and stroked her head and tried to comfort her. "She began rubbing my heart," my daughter told us later, unperturbed, because the woman's actions did help to calm her as the doctor administered multiple shots to her ankle and foot. "Honestly, Mom," my daughter said afterward, her voice bright, despite the ordeal she had just been through, "I felt as if I was surrounded by angels the entire time."  

"What did the doctor inject you with?" I inquired.

My daughter, who was back in her hotel room FaceTiming with her husband and me by then, burst out laughing. "I didn't ask," she admitted. "I wasn't even curious. I guess I was just trusting the universe."

I hyperventilated a bit myself at that point, but what could I do? My husband said later the injections were probably a steroid to keep the swelling down.

For the rest of her final day at the beach in Costa Rica she iced and elevated the ankle, ordered room service for dinner, and got around in a wheelchair the hotel provided. She said everyone, to the last person, could not have been kinder and more helpful to her. The next morning, someone at the hotel made her breakfast to go for the hour and a half trip back to the airport, where she would be met by a wheelchair. While she was in the car, I was having my PT session in New York. I called my daughter so that my wonderful physical therapist, Deidre, could give her a few tips for the plane: wriggle your toes, do ankle pumps to the degree your pain will allow, move the leg back and forth from the knee, and ice the ankle if you can. 

Her brother met her at JFK, along with her sister in law and her husband. Her brother brought her crutches and showed her how to use them. On their way to his car, our girl sent her dad and me a picture of her brother pushing her in a wheelchair, big smiles on all their faces and I thought: She's still surrounded by angels. That was the moment when I finally exhaled. 

The next day, our intrepid traveler summed up her Costa Rica experience in a text she sent me: "I had an adventure. And I remembered that I trust that the world. Doesn't stop bad things from happening but I'm surrounded by good energy to bring me through those times." 

May this forever be her truth.

She went for an X-ray to confirm nothing was broken and is now doing PT, recovering slowly. She and her husband are supposed to travel to Paris at the end of the month for her birthday, and her PT person thinks she will be able to make the trip. In the midst of it all, she had a job interview yesterday for an internal transfer at her company, and was up till 3AM the night before finishing a deck for her presentation to the four-person panel. Apparently she aced it, because they offered her the job at the end of the interview. I am in awe of her.

___________

In news of my own healing, I had my six-week follow up with my surgeon this week, and everything appears to be progressing well. My son drove me to my appointment and waited for me as I underwent X-rays and the physical assessment of my gait and how the joint itself is operating. The new titanium hardware and rotating ball are playing nicely with the bone and surrounding tissue, fusing where needed, rolling as appropriate, and I have now been released from movement precautions. This means I can bend past ninety degrees again, cross my legs, turn my feet inward, bend over a jigsaw puzzle and peer closely at the pieces to my heart's content, and lean far forward to study the flow of sentence on my laptop screen, all without worrying about dislocating the new hip joint. 

I confessed to my physical therapist yesterday that my arthritis flares are back, which I suppose is to be expected given that my post surgery medications have now been stopped, including the twice daily mega doses of aspirin, which served as a blood thinner, and the morning dose of meloxicam, an anti-inflammatory to help tame swelling in the surgical leg. Both of these also nicely throttled back random body pains. But, as I told my husband when I became aware of the old aches returning, "Everything hurts, except the hip, and that is massive." 

In the past, people always insisted to me that the remedy for arthritis pain is movement. Nah, I'd think. That's just more pain. Of course it was. I was walking on a broken limb. But now, when I ache, I find that my actual impulse is to grab my trusty cane and go for a walk. It's what my instinctive brain is telling me to do, and I obey. And it does help. The pain recedes. My body feels more limber. Holy moly, walking actually feels good. 

My son and I had some errands to run after my appointment. In the Whole Foods store, as I trundled along, he said, "Is that pace comfortable for you? Because you might want to slow down." Apparently I was moving faster than he was comfortable with. I walk just fine without the cane at home, but my PT person wants me to use it in public until at least three months post surgery, as apparently the bulk of my healing will occur between six weeks (now) and three months. As well as I feel, and despite my incision being externally sealed, internal restoration is ongoing. I am also working hard in my weekly PT sessions to reawaken and strengthen muscles that I have avoided using for fourteen years. My therapist points out that the cane is a visual cue to people that I'm not yet entirely steady so please don't run me over. I find I'm becoming fond of my cane, which is ironic given how I spurned the use of one when I severely needed it. Oh, me.

At large in the world

My youngest is traveling solo in Costa Rica until mid week, so of course my whole consciousness is there with her, willing her safely from one place to the next, praying constantly for her well being, entreating guardian angels to surround her, and visualizing her laughing and joyful in auras of beautiful light. She just up and decided she wanted a break from the regularly scheduled programming, to reconnect with herself in a tropical place, so off she went, and now I will not take a full breath till she is back home, as much as I admire her agency and sense of the world being hers to experience as she chooses. I trust she will have a wonderful time.

How did my own mother stand it, I belatedly wonder , my traveling solo all over this country and to different parts of the world in my twenties, as a reporter for Life magazine, scouting people and places for stories, before returning with a photographer, often for weeks at a time, to develop fully realized photo essays. I had no fear for myself, but now I'm remembering some of the isolated places I ventured. Some of them opened their arms to me, like Greasewood Canyon, Colorado, and the North Woods of Minnesota, where I reported on hermits; and The Falkand Islands at the foot of South America, when I traveled to find a fleet of perfectly preserved sailing ships wrecked centuries before in their passage around Cape Horn. Other places had a distinctly unfriendly air—Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I visited an archeological dig, even felt a bit unsafe; so many gun racks in pickup trucks emblazoned with confederate flags. But how did my mother endure me being in all those unvetted regions on my own? I confess I was oblivious back then to her possible concerns. Like most twenty somethings, I felt close to invulnerable.

Here's a photo of me in my twenties in the Minnesota North Woods lake area. I've posted it before. I was there with photographer Brian Lanker for a story on a local legend known as Knife Lake Dorothy, who had lived alone on one the Boundary Waters Wilderness islands for fifty years. Then in her seventies, she was the very definition of a powerful and self-directed woman. 

I saw a factoid last night—America has only not been at war for sixteen of its two hundred and fifty years of independence. 

In times such as these, my beloved girl is at large in the world. Never wonder why I pray.

Post-its and mothers

My friend, a fellow journalist who I worked with for many years, sent me a care package that included that pink flower power coffee mug. "My favorite cup, now you have one, too, so we can be twins," the post-it stuck to the mug read. The box also contained thick, white, woolly socks, "from Canada" the post-it said (my friend is from Toronto, though she now lives in Brooklyn), and that scarf I'm wearing in the picture, made for me by her mother, the colors of the yarn chosen by my friend. How dearly I will cherish these gifts, especially that wonderful scarf, knitted by a mother's hands.

Lately, I keep hearing my own mother's voice saying, "Oh my darling, we are so blessed." She repeated it often in life, like a mantra, a refrain, as if the words themselves could weave a net of protection around her beloveds. Not to be all woo-woo, but in the midst of our mind bogglingly insane world, I feel her net of protection, still. If this is mere delusion, at least it’s an emotionally comforting one. 
 

Sitrep

In the days before my hip replacement surgery I felt my mother’s presence near me all the time. At night, I dreamed of her, and in the days, she was always somewhere in my thoughts. I knew it wasn’t that she had come for me, rather, she was there to reassure that all would be well, I would not die from this routine operation I had spent fourteen years fearing and delaying, because my cousin died from it in 2011, and my own hip gave out, bone crashing against bone, on the very day of his funeral. 

I was due at the hospital at 5:30 am, my surgery scheduled for 8 am, my surgeon’s first of the day. The streets were icy, some roads impassable, the snowbanks mountainous from the winter storm the day before, which had dumped a foot of snow on the city. My son slept over, as he would be driving his dad and me to the hospital at 4:30 am. The night before our daughter called to say she would travel from Brooklyn to get to our apartment at 4 am to be with me before I left home. I knew she was worrying about not seeing me before I went under. “I’m not going to die,” I promised her, not liking the idea of her traveling an hour alone with a strange Uber driver in the wee hours along icy roadways. “I’m coming,” she insisted. “I need to hug my mama.” She ended up going to the hospital with us, so they were all there as I underwent surgery, and they stayed all day, my whole family, husband and kids, abiding with me.

It went well. I am healing. My son moved in the first week to help out, along with his dad, who had taken the week off from work to tend to me. My stoic men anticipated my every need. My daughter and her husband moved in the second week, when my husband returned to work, and again, I could not have been better cared for. Honestly, the part of all this that moves me to tears every time I think of it is how completely my children stepped up for me. How present they were. How loved they made me feel. Love in action. They showed me just what that means. 

I’m three weeks into recovery now and already the gains are exponential. The full body pain I lived with for more than a decade is gone. I am walking strongly on both legs, my left leg holds me, despite my two imperfect knees, which I am learning to work with. It’s amazing how much the effort to compensate for the broken hip—because I understand now that I was walking around with a broken joint and that’s not a euphemism—threw my entire skeletal and muscular structure out of whack and how quickly those flares of pain receded once alignment was restored. I still need to rebuild muscles, strength, heal tendons, and observe no bending precautions for another few weeks, as well as continue to faithfully do my PT, learn to listen to my body when it gets fatigued because I’ve done too much (because, typical of me, with the assigned exercises, I tend toward “anything worth doing is worth overdoing”), and generally be patient with myself as full and total recovery takes up to a full year. 

Plot twist, my operated-on left leg is now the longer one. This is fairly common with this operation and it may “settle” as the muscles and tendons stretched and manipulated in the procedure tighten/strengthen over time. And if it doesn't, oh well, I'll still sway to one side when I walk but I will no longer be in pain. I have already regained a much greater range of motion, and can ambulate for increasing distances with little effort, which was impossible before. I still get tired. I’m also sleeping horribly because I’m confined to lying only on my back and I’m not naturally a back sleeper. I have to ice and elevate the swollen surgical leg several times a day, and make sure I walk every hour. I have to ice the right knee too, as it’s doing the work of the shorter leg now, and has its own issues. The physical therapist gives me quad sets to do to support the knees, as I also rehab the hip and leg that I avoided putting any weight on for fourteen years. I’m trying to be the proverbial good student, to nail this recovery journey. All is generally going well. 

I’m also back to work, because I was getting really bored, too distracted to read deeply, and watching too much TV. I can’t sit at a desk or table though, as I’m inclined to lean forward, past the verboten ninety degree angle to peer at my laptop screen, which prior to six weeks, could cause the healing hip joint to dislocate. So I sit in the recliner in the back bedroom, laptop propped on my bent right leg, and make do. I’m grateful to have work to do, the perfect project really for this extended period of physical restoration. I’m editing a wonderful and often heartbreaking coming of age memoir by an actor who’s finally getting his due. A lovely man. 

In some ways, I feel like my life is entering a brand new stage but I don’t yet know what shape it will take. In the meantime, imagine me reclined in that chair in my daughter’s former bedroom, elevating my healing leg between regularly scheduled walks, doing editing work that feels meaningful, and conjuring possibilities for a future in which mobility is no longer an obstacle.

Life inside the bubble

I got my son into watching The West Wing over the holidays and now he's off to the races with the series, on season three already. He said, "This is the first time I've glimpsed why anyone might want to work in politics," he said. "It never made any sense before." Of course, we're so far away from that vision of political life now, but it's still a comfort watch, to imagine a world in which people serve with an actual desire to make others’ lives better. My boy is such a good son. He came with me to all my pre-surgery screenings this week, drove me there and back, sat in with me on the PT recovery planning meeting, helped me order the stuff I'm going to need, and has generally made me feel very taken care of. Yes, he can be a bit bossy, but we do understand it's his love language.

The little one is back in Dallas with her parents, and I miss her little face, her nonstop chatter, her busyness and rich imagination. She said to her grandma, "Let's go and play in my room," and I love that she has identified a room on our apartment as being her room. It is where she sleeps when she is here, so it stands to reason, after all.

Here's something else I love: How my daughter and her cousins love and enjoy each other. How when Harper's mom is in town, they all get together and paint the town, young women together having a supremely grand time. I told them send me pictures so I could relive my youth vicariously, and they indulged me. The next day, they lay on beds and couches all over my house, somewhat hung over, but all in agreement that the time they had was worth it. It certainly looks like it was!

My husband is upstate today, working with a small natural history musuem, teaching its science associates and student volunteers updated best practices for preserving its ichthyology collection. While he was there the snow started to come down. He's making his way home now through the still falling snow. I'm just sitting here, The West Wing playing on Netflix as I get ready to pick out end pieces for a puzzle my daughter gave me for Christmas and wait for the sound of his key in the door. Here's what it looks like right now outside my window.

And here's the very cool puzzle I'm about to lose myself in. Puzzles are my mediatation.

One more, this is me one week before my bionic hip. I look so optimistic, like I'm saying, okay fam, here we go.

Whimsy and rage

I ran across that long ago photo of myself while looking for some records for the lawyer who is drawing up our will and healthcare proxy and advance directives and other important life documents one should have in place when one is about to undergo surgery, no matter how routine. My children were four and one when that photo was taken in 1995. It ran with a story I wrote for a magazine about my father's last days and how watching him die brought into sharp focus the tender long married love between my parents. I recall the photographer told me, "Don't smile, it's a sad story," and I said, "But it's also a beautiful one."

I find myself unable to write much here. I heard a woman the other day speak of the schizophrenia of holding whimsy in one hand and explosive rage in the other. I lie in bed at night beside my husband, reading or maybe streaming something, distancing for a moment the tragedies unfolding daily, a woman, a mother of three, her head blown off by the state while citizen cameras rolled, we all saw it, we watched it again and again from many angles, the spray of red against the windscreen of her car as it meandered out of control into a telephone pole. The shooter, whose words in the immediate aftermath, caught on tape, were "Fkn bitch," was quickly whisked from the scene and rushed into hiding by the state. In the days since, his masked and heavily armed cohorts have doubled down, terrorizing American citizens with threats of the same happening to them, their only crime, caring for their fellow citizens, and simply existing with a sense of decency intact in their souls. It's all distraction, distraction, distraction from the darkest tales you can imagine, no, darker than that. And it's working, too. Another woman asked, "How do we vote our way out of this?" I have been wondering the same thing. I'm not saying don't vote, but how do we come back from where we now find ourselves? It's not that I've lost hope. My city managed to elect a bright young idealist for mayor. They'll try at every turn to stymie him, but at least he's an agent of light shining a torch into the descending night. But you see my dilemma: how can I comfortably write here when what flows from my fingers only makes me a target, too.

Christmas came and went. It was low key and undramatic inside the bubble of my whimsy. We gather, we hold each other, we laugh and love, we commune. The Dallas crew was here again this weekend, the little one had another one of those playdate things at a crunchy granola Quaker preschool her parents hope she will be admitted to for when they move back to the city later this year. She is in rare two-year-old form, testing the boundaries and her vocal range, how well I remember this stage, but also sweet as can be, brilliant and imaginative and verbal, our darling girl. 

I got laid off from the magazine last week, so that happened. I was one of thirty-six editorial staffers released from employment, including some very key personnel, suggesting the publication will be suspending print and going all digital. The Chief Content Officer quit the same day the layoffs came down, as if to say, Nosireeebob, I'm not presiding over this sh*t show. I respected it. At least I won't have to worry about juggling the editing of stories while I'm trying to rehab from my upcoming hip surgery. It's two weeks away now. I'm scared and excited. I'm really doing this thing.

The politics of hope