My Truant Pen

Tongue-tied

Some of what I've missed telling you about

When you get out of the habit of frequent posting, you get tongue-tied. There’s a pressure behind your speech, of all the things you meant to say that are unsaid. This blog is part friendship, part letter home, part baby-book, part journal and part sanity check. But it also only touches a portion of my life. There are realms of my life that go unsaid and undocumented here. For example, I rarely talk about work in any but the vaguest of ways because, uh, not to put too fine a point on it but it’s really dumb to talk a lot about the details of your work in your personal blog. (See also: Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Why haven’t I written very much lately? There are a few elements. First of all is the sheer time/energy factor. I’m really crazy super annoyingly busy. I just simply don’t get much downtime between a full time job, obnoxious commute, small children, real dinner, housework, church work (another place I’m horrendously behind/lax) and needing 8 good hours of sleep a night.

Second is, truly, that tongue-tied factor. It’s harder to restart than it is to continue.

Third is the stoooopid leg. OK, a bit more story here. We all remember how I brilliantly busted my knee leaping off a 5 foot stone wall. Right. Then we all remember how much BETTER I was getting. Well, about a week and a half ago, doing yoga as prescribed by the orthopedic surgeon to restore my flexibility before I hurt myself, I stretched the opposing tendon to my injured one. It seemed minor. I went to PT the next day and we got some stretches to work on that. Look how GOOD I was being people! Then on Thursday night I went to dinner with people I totally didn’t know. It was fun. I sat with my knee bent, which was sort of novel and fun because I hadn’t really been able to sit that way for two months! When I went to get up, uh, I couldn’t. I really, really, really couldn’t walk. I couldn’t put any pressure on that leg. I needed help to get to my car, which sheesh. Talk about embarrassing! Then my knee blew up to balloon size.

I did the only logical thing I could do. We left the next morning to go camping.

Then my stoooopid lower back which I’ve totally had completely under control since Thane was born decides that one bum joint isn’t enough. I have kept my lower back issues under control with a combination of massage and core strength. With the enforced inactivity, the core strength has been compromised, and the additional pulling off of significant limpage has caused some serious back issues which infuriates me past speech.

So yeah, things have taken longer than they usually do and I’ve been in pain.

And fourth? Well, there are big things afoot in the parts of my life I don’t talk about here. And that’s where I’ll leave that, in incredibly tantalizing and confusing form. Best of all, from an annoying-my-readers point of view, if this thing doesn’t pan out, you’ll never know what it was! Muahahahah! If it does pan out, it’s too big to not be mentioned here. So you should cheer for success with it (which makes it clear, I hope, that the THING is an opportunity not a threat).

So what haven’t I told you? Well, we went to The Gloucester Fiesta with our neighbors the weekend before last, and had a complete blast. Watching our kids play together in the surf (in their diapers, the weather was supposed to be awful but turned amazing!) in the foreground while the walking of the greasy pole went on the in the background totally made my day.

Grey has started summer camp. It seems fun, but extremely tiring and logistically challenging. Each day is different and requires different gear! On the other hand, they get two fantastic field trips a week!

I am on my third batch of jam for the summer. So far there’s two strawberry and one strawberry rhubarb.

We went camping for the 4th weekend (see also: things that are challenging with one leg). I took no pictures. Our Saturday was fantastic. Our Sunday was good. We came home Sunday night, and then had fun watching fireworks with Crazy Unka Matt on the 4th proper. Grey fell asleep in the kitchen chair eating a post-fireworks snack.

The meeting I was at when my knee conked out was a really neat one about setting up a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program in Boston focused on food justice. The best part was all the locally sourced dishes that were fed to us there. YUM!!!! Or maybe the best part was the fun and interesting ideas tossed around. It’s hard to pick.

We’re getting ready for our summer vacation. My knee has BETTER behave, but I find it oddly prescient of myself that for once I opted NOT to go backpacking this summer. Instead, we’re going to Ashland Oregon. We’ll be seeing 5 plays in a week for our vacation, and I can’t wait.

OK, those are the big things I’m willing to talk about. What’s going on with YOU?

Preschool Graduation

I remember this time last year, when Grey’s then-relatively-new preschool was holding its preschool graduation. I saw the note and thought. Ppfft. Preschool graduation. Call me when we get to a real milestone.

Ah, hubris.

The young graduate, a member of the class of 2011

I was, shall we say, rather less sanguine when the note arrived in my son’s papers this spring. He was graduating, a proud member of the (I kid you not) Class of 2011. For weeks heading into the event, we began hearing about the big surprise waiting for us. Grey starting singing a new song I hadn’t heard before with a chorus guaranteed to make moms cry. “Seasons come and seasons go. To you it’s fast but to me it’s slow. You’ve helped me learn and you’ve helped me to grow, but now I’m moving on.”

Apparently, they practiced their graduation ceremony rigorously, several times over several days leading up to the parental version. Finally, the big day came. The weather was iffy, so we were inside. The room was packed with proud parents – familiar after a year of shared pickups and dropoffs. After a wait, Music Jill began playing ‘Tis a Gift to Be Simple (I was personally extremely grateful it wasn’t Pomp and Circumstance, which I personally loathe after, uh, 7 years in the band that had to play it). The four and five year olds began filing in.

The graduating class making their parents sniffly

It was a quick ceremony. The center director said a few words. Grey was nominated to read a selection from “Oh the Places You’ll Go” which he did very well if you could actually hear what he said. They presented flowers to their teachers. Their names were called, and their diplomas presented. Then, they sang their two musical numbers. And with that, it was over. My son was a preschool graduate. He was headed to the grown-up world of summer camp, where there is no nap time, leaving behind the ladies who had taught him for over a year.

Congrats, kiddo.

See all the pictures, plus three videos: one of Grey reading the poem and two of the kids singing, here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/fairoriana/GreyPreschoolGraduation

Jubilate Musica

My first semester of freshman year in college, I took Music History 204 (having skipped the prerequisites due to 6 years of orchestra and a strong passion for music history). Professor Stoner walked us through about 600 years of music, from “Hey, we can write this down so we don’t forget”, through hocketing to the Baroque. I fell for early music, and I fell hard. I still haven’t recovered from that first passionate discovery.

My sophomore year, having quite quickly exhausted the early music resources of a school that definitely wasn’t strongest in music and definitely definitely wasn’t strongest in early music, I did an independent study on Wind Instrumental Ensembles in Italy from 1450 to 1620. That website is actually how (why) I learned HTML, which led to a 10 year career as a programmer. I digress. I love love love early music. Of all early music, I love best the wind ensemble music of 16th century Italy. Of that, I *heart* Giovanni Gabrieli’s wind ensemble compositions most of all, and daydream about hearing them with authentic instruments. I made my husband go with me to Venice, just to stand in St. Marks and imagine what it sounded with Gabrieli’s opposing choirs.

So when I got a note from one of my favorite local early music ensembles (Blue Heron) mentioning in a small postscript that their conductor was going to be leading a bunch of young musicians playing period instruments in a program of Gabrieli and Praetorius, well…. I had to be there.

It was with a light heart this morning, in summer sunlight, that I turned my steel chariot to transport me to Back Bay for the concert. I had planned on taking the T, but I was running a bit behind and figured that I’d probably be able to find street parking, and if I didn’t, I could park in one of the lots down there. That was ok with me. Heaven forbid I be late. There were cornetti and sackbuts! Tickets sold at the door! Late was not an option.

About halfway down 93 I noticed that there were a lot, and I mean a LOT of small planes and helicopters circling over the city. I passed a digital billboard with yellow, black and a “B” in the middle. It was 11:25 am on Saturday the 18th.

Whoops.

Reckoning that my original course was still my best option, I pressed on to the city, encountering surprisingly little traffic. But when I got to Back Bay, route after route was closed for the parade. And parking? Completely non-existent. I crawled through the streets looking desperately for pay parking, meter parking or permit parking where I would only get ticketed, not towed. How horrible and appalling it would be to drive past the church where this music was to take place (several times) and yet be denied! I started to panic. Then, just when my situation was getting dire, I found a great spot at a meter (no charge for weekends) which didn’t even require me to use my (non-existent) parallel parking skills. The day was saved! I rushed breathless to the church.

Taking advantage of my single status, I ante’d up my $10 and walked in. There was no assigned seating. I noticed, Presbyterian-like, that only a few people were sitting in the very front row. I made myself one of them. The church quickly filled behind me.

And oh glory! There were cornetti and sackbuts! There were recorders and theorbos. There were bass viols and violones. There was a harpsichord and organ. And there were glorious singers – clear crisp sopranos, warm confident mezzos, firm authoritative tenors and profound basses. They sang in Latin and German. There was counterpoint across the balconys. In fact, the only downside of this concert is that I was directly under the balcony that held the sackbuts, so I didn’t get to watch them except for one piece where they were in the center area of the stage. One of my favorite conductors (Scott Metcalfe who [how cool is this?] does a conducted sing-along once a year so interested amateurs like myself can remember how much fun it is to make music. He’s an EXCELLENT rehearser!) was center stage, animated, bringing the musicians along with him.

For an hour and a half, I glowed. My heart sang. At several Gabrieli chords, tears came to my eyes. It was superb.

The glow has come through the day with me. I feel nourished and restored. I feel extremely tempted to pull out my cornetto and see if I can get good enough to get called in. (Apparently, talking with one of the cornettists afterwards, they’re extremely hard to come by and perhaps the standard is lower than it might be for other musicians.) The day was clear and warm. The city was full of celebrations. And I had the sounds of Gabrieli in my ears.

These are the moments of our life to which we aspire, and which we must hold firmly in memory. It was glorious.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior.

My camera says I live a rich and full life

This weekend I tackled the gargantuan task of emptying both of my cameras of their memories. (This was a downside I had not anticipated of getting a “nice” camera. I still use my point and shoot, so I’ve basically doubled my work!) As a result, I now present you with a complete grab bag of pictures. These include:

– Biking
– Buying a new car
– Easter
– My brother’s graduation
– The carnival that came to town
– Camping
– Our adventure walk

June 2011 (Picasa)

Enjoy!

Adventure-uncovered secrets

Yesterday, a friend came over. Our plan A had included a picnic in the Middlesex Fells, but the weather was chancy, so we opted for a shorter, more local walk. I offered to show my husband, friend and eldest son the hidden tunnel running under I93, where in former years a train had run, that is the future path of the Tri-Community Bikeway and currently home to a very talented set of artists.

We got there and marveled, but our feet felt light, my mother-in-law (the saint!) was home with Thane, and we had no deeds to do or promises to keep. I offered to take us home the long way or the short way. With a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of us, under overcast skies, we took the long way.

And so we walked. I have always, always loved going on walks. I fondly remember the Connecticut College Arboretum, and the green. I love evening walks, right before bed, in bitingly cold or fondly warm dark. I love daytime walks through seemingly familiar but unexpectedly new paths. I have a tendency to drag people through bush, briar and bramble long past the polite mark, explaining that we’ve come so far that the fastest way home is forward. Sometimes this is even true. But I confess, I have never tried this with my eldest. I know my weakness is to push people past when I’m tired, and I’m an indefatigable walker.

But the path stretched so freely in front of me, and the company was so congenial, I decided to begin teaching my five year old my love of walking adventures.

We stopped at McDonald’s for ice cream and coffee. We stopped at Woodcraft to admire all the possible ways to remove digits and daydream of lives with room for whittling. We ducked off the road to try to identify an old abandoned building, and then circled back to it. We quoted each other poetry, discussed programming design patterns and explained some small section of the world to Grey.

We were getting a bit tired, by the time we walked past the gate.

The poem on the door reads:

Welcome to the Cotton-Arbo retum;
Please do step inside.
Here you’ll find a peaceful respite
And a feast for weary eyes.

Weary from a world that’s become
Plentiful with neon signs,
Blaring out wherever you go,
Up ahead and from behind.

Now the chaos of a crowded garden
Overwhelming seems to be,
But once you center your attention
Focus on the true beauty
Of a tree’s bright leaves or flowers,
Of a waterfall’s great power,
Soon you’ll find your vision shifting,
As the minutes roll to hours.

And to unwind you begin,
Like pluming grasses in the wind,
As a breeze can comfort you
And help you see the world anew.

The war with life’s resounding din
Can sound like raining rocks on tin.
This battle we hope you will win;
So take the first step,
Please come in.
– Mindy Arbo

Finding ourselves ready for both adventure and respite, we went in. It was probably an average sized suburban lot – maybe a little larger than the uniform green lawns we’d been walking past, but not unusually so. But this garden was so invested with love, you could palpably feel it. There were statues tucked into corners, poems printed on gates, pools of water with koi or fountains of cheerful water. There were blocks of rose quartz and a thousand varieties of plant. And through it all was the warm sense of welcome – to be invited as strangers into this labor of love and trusted to tread there with light and respectful feet. What a precious gift to give to strangers – the labors of your years!

We weren’t the only ones who liked the garden:

We left with light feet and light hearts, to return home.

The next block, we found a candy shop:

The advisability of stopping at a Gingerbread house while tired on a long adventure is not lost on me

Grey, admittedly, got tired by this point. The entire journey was about 4 miles, which is rather a long walk for a five year old. I talked about the plants we passed on our long walk home: the walnut trees, foxglove, dogwood. (I got accused of making things up.) With tired feet, we came home – infinitely richer for our adventures.

I had forgotten. I had forgotten how many secrets you cannot see from the thirty-five-miles-an-hour world I live in. I had forgotten how lovely it is to walk with friends. I had forgotten the infinite variety of homes people live in. I had forgotten how liberating it is to step off the path and onto another path that does not lead to your goal.

I am so grateful to have remembered, and to have won a battle against “life’s resounding din”.

A room of one’s own

The other day I came to the stunning realization that while I (partially) own a house, which has many rooms, most of which I have laid out, decorated, and in many ways control. But none of them is my room, my secret hiding place.

Throughout my childhood I had a series of secret hiding places. This was true even when I had a room of my own (a non-universal trait of my childhood – I shared rooms with both my siblings at some point). I was thinking about those rooms the other night, as I foolishly went to the attic during tornadoes (while sensible people moved to basements!) In my fantasy life, I turn that small attic room with its long view across fields to a New England town center to my personal little private place. A place that is mine, and no others. A place that is not child-proofed, sensible, or public. I go there to read books undisturbed – perhaps a secret stash of Peanut M&Ms hidden from marauding sweet-toothed children.

For some reason, my childhood secret places all had a desperate need for a ‘fridge. In one, during a brutal winter in the usually clement Northwest, my heart was delighted by the gap between the plastic window-covering and ice-reamed window.

I’m thinking, now, of all those secret places – the gaps that seemed so trivial to grownup eyes, but were so invested with mystique by childhood. One was turned into a bedroom for my sister (Oh! The tragedy!) One remains unfound, mysterious and mouldering by the river. One collapsed, held up by weak and compromised softwoods. Several quiet spots in the woods, protected by a canopy of trees, are now marked by a self storage facility, or a clear-cut.

I am not entirely sure I’ve ever gotten past that need, though. It’s not the place I need now, but the quiet. The being unfound and unsought. I need not so much a place to myself as a time to myself – to read those novels by poor light while eating an unreasonable number of Peanut M&Ms washed down with water cooled in my “refrigerator”.

That attic room, so remote and lovely, is really my mother-in-law’s room as much as it’s anyone’s. She certainly spends a preponderance of her time there. I usually only lurk up there when it’s present wrapping time – during which span the room feels chaotic, not peaceful.

One of the great joys of parenthood is to see your own childhood pleasures experienced by your children. This is one I’m unsure about, however. Grey hates being alone. Oh, he’ll do it when he has to. But where I wandered off and hid, he’s always here and present. He needs constant company (and usually of a higher caliber than just kid brother, although kid brother will do if nothing better presents itself). It’s early with Thane to tell if he will treasure quiet aloneness or not. Quiet aloneness is not an attribute that 2 year olds are noted for. But perhaps he will find some quiet corner (with or without refrigerator) and claim it as his own.

Did you create little havens for yourself? Do you still? Do you have a spot that is (or feels) uniquely yours? Do you miss it? Do you have a surfeit of aloneness, and wish for a little more shared space and tumult?

And the thunder rolls

Fierce weather has cut a swath across this continent. Tonight it is touching down in my small Commonwealth – but so far distantly. Tonight, after the children were tucked in, I snuck up to our high attic to watch the lightening. It was truly a remarkable night for lightening. The sky flickered as though some distant celestial campfire threw shadows upon our darkened world – illuminating the spring-heavy trees and church steeples. The thunder was a constant rumble. The lightening I saw never touched down – it threaded across the sky like revealed veins in the encircling arms of the sky. But here, north and east of Boston, it seems not much more than a summer storm, ushering fast, cool winds.

The fifteen minutes I spent there, in a dark room watching lightening flicker ceaselessly, seems like the first quiet fifteen minutes I’ve had in about two weeks. It has been a busy stretch! When I think of all the things I’ve saved up to tell you – important things! – I feel nearly overwhelmed. And tonight I feel too poetic for bullet points. Last night I stayed up until 1:15 in the morning transcribing 18 pages of notes on the risks and mitigations of an ERP transition for a 9 hour meeting I attended. If I never see another brutally factual bullet point, it may be too soon.

So instead we will wander on together, long form.

First: my knee. When last we left our favorite joint, it was in dire discomfort. I checked that wall I so blithely jumped off again yesterday, and I must confess that it might be closer to five feet than the four I defended myself with. A week after the initial injury I met with an orthopedic surgeon, who got me to PT not 5 minutes later. Really. Remarkable. I did a few PT sessions, and now I’m quite certain that it was a bad sprain. Today, I managed to do several flights of stairs leading with BOTH legs. I even ran for a bit before I realized that was probably a bad idea. (But it was pouring!) I kneeled to pick up toys. I am pretty sure in two weeks there will be barely a twinge left. I’m going to try to actually get ahead of my pre-injured state with the PT sessions I have remaining though. This knee has never been quite as strong and capable as we might desire. But at this point, it is only hampering the most enthusiastic of my activities. (No 5K for me this weekend, not that I was planning on one!)

Second: it’s a darn good thing I was 90% mobile, as we went camping this weekend. At the time, I would’ve told you it was buggy, stressful and I was unsure of whether this was all worth it. It has only taken a few days to fade into lovely memories. How wonderful and odd our minds are to make it possible for us to enjoy things in retrospect that we did not enjoy at the time, or to forget pain and remember pleasure. One of those remembered pleasures was swimming. Our preferred campground, White Lake State Park boasts a lovely sandy beach offering access to a lovely mountain lake which is surprisingly warm, even in May. We went swimming three times, which is a pretty good ratio for so early in the season. Grey displayed significantly more water skill. Thane showed significantly more water-wariness (after recreationally attempting to drown himself constantly last year). I got to take some lovely swims out towards the middle of the lake, past the sight of inflatable alligators where all I could see were mountains, trees and water. Grey made a friend in the little boy at the next campsite. Thane did 1000 puzzles, just like he would’ve done at home. We also had a lovely “car walk” across the Kankamangus, down to Lake Winnepesaukee and back. I have concluded that the thing that would make camping super fun was if some of my friends came too, so we could tell tall tales around campfire. Unfortunately, my friends all seem to have either a) lake houses or access thereto or b) sense.

Third. It has come to my attention that my children are growing up too fast. I’d like to complain to the management, please! This morning was, truth be told, Kindergarten orientation. We went up to Grey’s to-be classroom and met his to-be classmates and to-be teacher. It is a lovely classroom, with books and colors and name tags. It is a place where I think he will be happy. The school is super duper. I mean, I went to FOUR elementary schools, and you could combine the enrichment features of all four of them and still end up short of this one. There’s a music room, and art room, a gym, a stage, a science room (seriously?!!?). They have onsite physical and occupational therapists. There is a school nurse and school psychologist. The library was large and friendly. There was a well equipped computer classroom. The children we saw all seemed to be engaged, having fun, learning, doing cool things. They were very friendly, welcoming the little kids to the school. It felt like a very healthy, happy place where the kids learned good things – and where there was room for them to be themselves. I am super-pleased, since this is just our local public school!

Then, when I picked Thane up, I got the word that he will be going to preschool next month. Indeed, he had apparently gone for a visit today, and his teachers had a hard time convincing him to come back to the Toddler 2 classroom. “He’s so ready” they told me. I know he is. I can’t argue. But sometimes I look at him and wonder where my little baby went. I can hardly see any traces of the infant in his determined features and flamboyant curls.

So while the accountant in me looks at these big changes and says “KACHING!” (because lo! Preschool + public Kindergarten < toddler care + preschool!), the woman in me, growing a little older, looks a little wistfully at how quickly her sons are wantonly abandoning their baby-hoods in preference for boyhood. I like babies. I was rather fond of my babies. I'm proud and pleased by the young men my sons are becoming, but I hope they don't feel the need to be too grown, too soon.

There you go – the momentous events of the last week and a half. Perhaps sometime I'll have the leisure and opportunity to post things that are NOT bare-bones updates… but we will all have to wait together for that moment.

199th Commencement of the Princeton Theological Seminary

This weekend, I left New England and my boys behind to drive down to New Jersey to watch my brother graduate (again). This degree was his Master of Divinity — the degree needed by a Presbyterian in order to pursue ordination as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament. (Technical note: you don’t actually BECOME a Minister until you find a church that wants you to come and minister to them. It’s a bit like a marriage. Both parties have to be present for a wedding to take place, and for an ordination for ministry to take place. So if you happen to know a nice Presbyterian church in search of a young, energetic pastor fluent in Latin and Greek, I can hook you up.)

It was a bit of a throwback weekend for me. I was with parents and sibling, but without my children. I was a bit mobility limited, due to what is technically referred to as “a busted knee”*, which was a pity because the Princeton campus was lovely, the weather was lovely and would have richly rewarded wandering. Also, my brother’s room required significant work to clean out, and the best I could do was to supervise. We got to appreciate all my brother’s favorite food hangouts, which were surprisingly quite tasty.

199th Princeton Theological Seminary Graduation

The graduation ceremony itself was rather momentous. It was scheduled to conclude right when the rapture was supposed to take place. I reckoned there were worse places to be found at the moment of judgement than in a graduation ceremony that was more than half worship service. The ‘chapel’ was an imposing cathedral. The brass choir, seminary choir and vast pipe organ filled it with sounds ethereal and stentorian. We, the assembled congregation (it really was a congregation, not a crowd) sang all seven verses of “All Creatures of Our God and King”. If you thought there were only five verses, so did I. The fifth verse is ok, but the sixth verse downright funereal:

And thou, most kind and gentle death,
Waiting to hush our latest breath,
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Thou leadest home the child of God,
And Christ our Lord the way hath trod:
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

That sober tone threaded through the graduation ceremony. In a high school or undergraduate graduation, there is a sense of rowdiness, celebration, accomplishment and future wonder. With this graduation, there was more a sense of hard work and challenge begun than of hard work and challenge accomplished. As we walked out, my mother said, “It reminded me of when we were commissioned as missionaries. You know that some of those who have gone before you became martyrs.” There were three graduates from Myanmar, to return to that country. Martyrdom is, perhaps, not so remote a possibility for them. There was also a sense swirling in the air of the changes to the church that this next generation will face. The ways we have worshiped together over the past centuries are not working as well in this new millennium, and even the oldest and most dignified of the the church fathers and mothers know it. Yesterday they commissioned my brother, and his classmates, to fearlessly find a new way to worship God and tell the old old story in a new new way.

Still, it wasn’t a depressing service, just a serious one. There was one moment that I’d been looking forward to for three years. You see, my brother has two middle names. If you say his full name, you say a (modified) version of the first four books of the New Testament (the Gospels). My brother has gone by the nickname Gospel for years. As his name was read, though, a chuckle spread through the crowd. If any crowd would get his full name, it was this one! Perfect.

Today, we went to church at Six Mile Run Reformed Church (where my brother has worshiped for three years), put together a masterful logistical plan for getting everyone where they needed to go, wished my brother and his girlfriend safe travels in their cross country tour, and went our ways. Next up: camping!

Good News Bad News in their pre-graduation concert

My parental family, missing only my sister.

*My knee is actually super much more better. I went to the Orthopedic surgeon on Thursday afternoon, and he pronounced my injury a sprained ligament (can’t remember which one), and strained calf and hamstring muscles. So bad, but temporary. It’s already hugely better, and recovery will be a matter of days to weeks, instead of weeks to months. I already had my first PT session, and I have significant range of motion back. So that’s good! But I didn’t want to push it by overextending.

Kneed an update?

I am categorically incapable of figuring out how sick/injured I am. I hate it. Unless you’re running a fever, it’s so…. subjective. I mean, I have quite a high pain tolerance. I gave birth without so much as Motrin twice. (Witnesses claim I whined a bit towards the end of the second time, but what do they know?) I also apparently find my own motives hiiiiighly suspect. I must, in my heart of hearts, think I’m a lazy piker who’s totally overselling this hurt thing to get sympathy.

So when people ask me how I’m doing (or what happened to you) my knee-jerk reaction is to make a joke or a light comment out of it. Deflect. I don’t have the data to back up any assertion I might make.

How am I doing? Well, yesterday I used — and needed — crutches. I discovered I have a lot of upper body strengthening I need to do. (See there? Deflection.) Yesterday I found the walk between desk and car appallingly difficult. Yesterday I was mentally shaky and foggy – I’m still not sure why.

Today is better. I got a good night’s sleep. I stayed off my leg all afternoon and evening yesterday (except putting the boys to bed). I iced it and elevated it. This morning when I got up, it felt noticeably better. But as one of my colleagues reminded me this morning, healing from these kinds of injuries is not linear. By 3 pm today I felt completely worn down, sore, swollen all over. That’s actually been one of the harder parts – my entire body seems swollen and bloated, possibly from lack of accustomed movement, or maybe a side effect of the medications I’ve been taking.

I have an appointment with an Orthopedic surgeon on Thursday. The office is so close to my house, I could walk it. One block. It will feel completely lame-o to drive. I presume the dr. will do a cursory examination and then order an MRI. Another few days for that, and then I’ll finally have some facts. (Of course, if the facts indicate it shouldn’t be that bad, I’ll feel silly.)

I also totally need a better story about my injury. This one takes too long. “I jumped off a four foot wall” is sort of odd unless you get ALL the backstory behind it, which is jut tedious. No one seems to be buying the “ambush attack by kung fu ninjas” version, either. Darn it all.

So that’s where I am: wishing I had actual data to quantify my injury/pain, feeling somewhat better, trying hard not to push it, going to the doctor on Thursday.

Turns out you need your knees

Back in my Sophomore or Junior year of college, I once went on one of those “Spring Break” trips college students are supposed to do. However, I hung with a crowd that was responsible, practical and quite nice — so our Spring Break blowout was a ski trip to Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. The wildest we got was a reenactment of Braveheart in the living room. I recall now the 12 or so of us descending on parental houses on our way up and greatly admire the fortitude of those parents putting up with us!

It was my first time skiing. My father has very bad knees and my mother no powder-ambitions, so despite living quite close to some first rate skiing, I had never in my life strapped on those devices. Our first day my then boyfriend, now husband, patiently took me on the bunny slopes, showing me how to move about on my rented skiis. I did pretty well. After an hour or two, he decided that I was ready for my first gentle slope.

I made it halfway down that slope on my own power. The second half was in the back of one of those ski patrol sled thingies. I had badly injured my knee.

I’ve never gone skiing again. I couldn’t walk properly for nearly six months.

The rest of that fateful trip was spent in agony. I hadn’t learned critical lessons like: pain killers help kill pain, going to a doctor when you’ve seriously messed up your knee is a good idea, or the critical “Always pack enough books so that if you bust your knee on the first day of a weeklong skiing trip you will still have enough to read.” The “bookstore” in town carried pretty much nothing I wanted to read. It’s a spot that happens to be convenient to our summer camping trips now, so I return not-irregularly, and always wince when I do.

So why do I bring up this fateful memory, now in the lushness of mid-May?

Well, I’ve had highly intermittent trouble with this knee. I likely tore the meniscus badly. The meniscus provides side-to-side stabilization, and does not heal once it’s been injured. So every once in a while doing something simple like stepping across a log, or putting a child into a car it “goes”. The knee slips out of position. It hurts like Hades for about 5 minutes, then I can at least go about my business. It aches for 24 hours, then is forgotten.

Yesterday, a lovely fine day, my husband and sons were playing baseball in our stamp-sized back yard, and Grey hit a “home run” over the fence. I had a few extra moments, so I figured I’d make myself useful by shagging balls. Now, there is no easy way down from my yard to the downhill yards. We have a 12 foot cement wall separating us. So at one point I had to jump down about 4 feet to the next landing (my neighbors yard is lower and terraced instead of having one big wall). I was quite careful (and had done this many times before). But this time, when I landed, excruciating agony was my reward. I laid there, frantic in pain, and called for my husband. He fetched me, helped me back up (the long way) and got me to ice my leg and take ibuprofin. (See? That right there? That’s called maturity and learning from your mistakes.) Thirty minutes later, out of town friends of ours appeared at our doorstep for dinner.

As it became obvious my leg was not going to “bounce back” (and I worked my way through a full injury-shock cycle), I called my neighbors, who are Physicians Assistants. My friend the ER PA came over, looked at my leg, and explained exactly what I should do. (Which involved going to the ER, getting an X-ray so if we need an MRI we won’t have to jump through that hoop, and getting crutches.) Now, usually going to the ER would be really hard for us. There aren’t any grandparents around to call for backup (although we do have great friends and neighbors we could’ve leaned on if we had to). But this time… voila! There were our Maine friends right there, happy to help. So that’s how it all transpired.

It’s not yet clear to me how badly injured I am or am not. It definitely not just a slip. I think there must be some additional injury or tearing (although it might be just a sprain?) I’m set up for a full-fledged Incident, with orthopedics etc. I have a knee immobilizer, crutches, and plenty of Ibuprofin. I slept in a looong time this morning, reckoning nothing does better for healing than sleep. My husband has set me up on the couch, and my plan is to let the knee be for as long as I can. I’m starting to feel hopeful I’ll be able to move about somewhat tomorrow (you know, go to work?) and not be a bump on a log for the whole week.

But I’m struck by how lucky I am in all of this. I have done that same “shagging balls” when I was home alone with the kids. I don’t know what I would’ve done if they were in the backyard and I was direly injured hidden in the fields behind them — especially if I hadn’t had my cell phone with me. But this time, my husband was right there and ready to help. Then having a neighbor so helpful and nearby was truly amazing. It certainly helped me prevent repeating my mistakes from the initial injury. Next, having friends happen to be in the neighborhood who could and would watch after my children while I went to the ER with my husband was a tremendous stroke of fortune. Handing over my insurance card at the ER, I considered how blessed I am to have good insurance, so I could seek treatment for this injury and afford to pay for it. And of course, I’m so lucky to be married to a loving, capable partner who can take care of me and our family through all of this. Finally, it just so happens that this is a week when it’s ok that I’m not 100%. Those weeks are rare.

No one gets through life without bad luck. We all get sick or injured sometimes. I feel remarkably blessed, though, that my bad luck came with so much good luck associated with it.