My most read post is entitled Thankful Tuesday. It was written in November 2016, during Thanksgiving week. You can (re)read it in my archives. It gave a snapshot of my new romance, the election year and my family. Now, a year later, I have a great deal of recollecting and reflecting to do.
Thankful Tuesday ended with Thanksgiving in the offing, an election requiring vigilance, and a family blending...
December came with it's usual hectic school and holiday madness. My boyfriend bought me brand new downhill skis for Christmas at the local school ski & skate sale. It felt like a next step in our relationship, to be included in his winter passion, while sailing slept for the season.
I'd skied my whole life; downhill and xc in New England as a child and young adult. Then later as adult I skied out West: the Sierras, Cascades, Rockies, Sandias and Sangre de Cristo mountains that candy-assed me for life; dry powder, wide open trails and warm air. Both his boys skied on teams. My Dutch ex-husband hadn't skied with me or my children (although he had learned in the Alps and claimed to enjoy it) on either Coast. I couldn't get either of my children on xc or downhill skis, except once each when they were very young. After their favorite neighborhood babysitter died in a ski accident in Colorado, that was it. Skiing wasn't safe and wasn't for them. Since I moved back East, I'd just xc-skied out my back door or on local conservation grounds.
Christmas break was short, yet packed visiting family and friends. We celebrated Christmas in MA and ME with all four kids in tow. The two college age children dutifully tagged along and made the most of it with cousins and siblings. When we returned to MA, it was time for me to give my boyfriend his present: One night being the keepers of Rose Island Light in Newport, RI.
We rode from Newport out to the Island in the once-a-day lobster boat at 10am. The wheelbarrow in the above picture is filled with driftwood and scraps that we found for the fire we had in the stove that night. We spent our last full night of 2016 alone, no other guests, in this wonderful house with only the wind, light and sea around us. I'd brought all the provisions (as apart of my gift), and the house has a cistern in the cellar for drinking water and a shower: a must for my man. The park ranger showed us how to manage all the necessities. It was like living on a boat, only on an island there is no rocking; just the rattling of the wind against the windows and the sound of the surf crashing on the rocks below. The ranger then bid us goodbye, saying he'd return with tomorrow's guests around 10:30 in the morning.
The next 24hrs were spent circumnavigating the island by foot, watching the day turn to night over the Narragansett Bay while the gulls, terns, and ospreys road the thermals at the level of the Fresnel lens, cooking three simple yet decadent meals in the small kitchen full of light, sitting in languor by the wood stove, watching the flickering lights of the bridge from our bed and exploring the light house from catwalk to the cistern cellar. We were relaxed, happy, engaged and carefree. Little did we know that would be the last time we could honestly say that....
We lingered in Newport after disembarking from the lobster boat. Our New Year's Eve parties didn't start 'til after dark, and our kids were with the exes. Neither of us are big shoppers, but it was pleasant to walk the boutique lined wharfs, without the summer crowds, and be leisurely about it. We dragged our heels driving home; back roads as much as highways.
For the second time in as many years, I had my man to kiss at Midnight. Can't tell you what a deeply satisfying hum that brings to my being. We all made it to midnight, with the same collection of characters I mentioned in the last Thankful Tuesday blog. I love the simple continuity of these rituals and rights of passage...
A week later, I went on a ski trip with my boyfriend and his younger son at a crew member's house in NH. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, as her house was in Jackson and Black Mountain was her home run. Black Mountain and the Inn at it's base, Whitney's, is legendary in my family. My grandfather took my mother and uncles to ski there for their entire childhood, and he was an original investor in turning the Mt. into a ski resort. My mother and remaining uncle have "lifetime passes" as a result. Although I grew up skiing in New England, skiing was primarily done in MA and ME where we lived over the course of my youth. I'd never been to Black Mountain, although I'd seen pictures and home movies, complete with rope tows and shovel lifts (which were still standard fair in my childhood when I was learning to ski ).
Saturday morning my boyfriend and his son, along with our hostess and her family, went skiing at Black Mountain. I was glad to see it was more of a hill and that I could learn to use my new "curved" skis somewhat quickly. I had to train my body to move differently, more subtly with the new design, which was fine with me, once I figured it out. My boyfriend's son, being on a ski team and getting weekly couching, was excellent at passing along what he had recently learned, and teaching it to me. I followed in his tracks and could feel the new movements and curving styles that were more efficient and responsive than my hopping turns. Over the course of the day I progressed from Green to Blue and felt like I could have stayed longer than we did, as my three season open-water swimming and four season running had trained me well for cold weather sports. At the end of the day, our hostess took a picture of me in the lodge to put in their history of Black Mountain scrapbook (my being a Harrison Grandchild). It felt nice to have been on that Mt., skied it well and with honor. We had a lovely dinner and lively discussions at her house that night.
The next day we decided to go to Attitash Mountain in Bartlett, NH, as we worked out way back home to MA. We again started with Green trails and I progressed to Blue. Now I can't remember if it was a Attitash or Black that we took a lift to the top and the Green trail was closed and we were forced to take a Black Diamond, but I believe it was Attitash. However, that morning went well, and I enjoyed myself immensely. It was bright and sunny as we ate lunch at the lodge. I remember overhearing a middle aged man say, "I don't ski after lunch, it's too icy", and tucking into my brain, but not taking it seriously. Since I'd gone a day and a half in tandem with my boyfriend and his son, and I could tell they were itching to challenge themselves while I had relearned to ski, we agreed to go up together and take different runs down.
This course of action worked swimmingly for the first 3-4 runs. However, on the last run, the sun was dipping behind the peak of the mountain, the snowboarders had skimmed the snow off the ice and laid in deeply cut tracks which the shadows made difficult to determine moving at high speeds. I was on the same Blue Trail, Upper Cathedral, I'd been running with the guys, going fast on the steepest section when it happened. My downhill leg (left), became stuck in a snowboard track and I couldn't release it before slamming into a wall made from groomed ice and snow shavings. I saw a large orange-red ball of light burst before my eyes, felt my knee buckle backwards unnaturally and then collapsed onto my right side.
I didn't hear anything, which was odd. As someone who has broken more than her fair share of bones, one usually hears the break internally; you know it's broken the second it happens. This was different. I hoped for a vain minute, that the hyper extension would just result in a pulled ligament or strained muscle. But as I attempted to stand up, with the help of a Frenchman who stopped immediately upon seeing my accident, my head (which had blinded me with the bouncing red ball of light) was now telling me that I had no leg under my knee; I simply couldn't feel it when I attempted to stand on it. The Frenchman, followed by at least two other concerned skiers, all went for help and asked if I had anyone to tell. I described my boyfriend's son, as he has a long mane of hair that's hard to miss, his name and what he was wearing. I was later told that they were both waiting for me at the bottom; when told, the son said he wanted to be the one to go to me first, and my boyfriend wanted to make sure medical/EMTs were on their way to me.
The son did arrive first, then the EMTs and then my boyfriend (at least I think that is the order). The ski patrol wrapped me up like a burrito in a papoose sled and pulled me down the hill; looking up at the cloudless blue ski, shiny green pines and white snow-shower wake of the EMT flying above me, I felt a childlike happiness. My boyfriend and his son skied along side the whole ride down.
At the bottom, they hooked the papoose sled to an ATV and dragged me across to the full length of the base of the Mountain to the Medical hut. I remember the woman who treated me was named Patty. She had connections to New Mexico. She looked like a healer. She had me try to stand. I couldn't. She had me try to bend my leg, which I could, as the swelling hadn't made that impossible yet. She said she, like me, hoped it was just a pulled or torn ligament, but she wanted me to have x-rays at a hospital. She made a splint out of cardboard boxes and padded it with forgotten gloves, mittens, and hats, and then wrapped electrical tape around it. She taught us (my boyfriend and I) how to get me in and out of the car.
Now as I write this story, and as I've told it to others earlier, the question becomes, "Oh, you must have been in so much pain. How on earth did you manage 3 hours in a the back of a car like that." I say, "It's funny what shock and desire can do." On one hand, I was still in denial and shaken. I desperately desired for it to be a pulled, or at worst torn, ligament, so I battled with my mind to make it so. My body, on the other hand, was screaming different outcomes to me every time my boyfriend hit a pothole. So how did I cope and not let on, stoic Yankee style: I sang! I sang along with as many songs as I knew and played solitaire on my phone when I didn't know the songs. Amazing how we can override our own circuitry, isn't it? It was my blatant attempt to keep the guys from the front seat in the dark, because if I let on to how much pain I was in that would mean this wasn't going to be a rest and recover accident, but something more substantial.
We dropped his son at my boyfriend's house, and then he took me to the ER at Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA. The nurses were impressed with Patty's cardboard splint. I don't remember it taking long to get an evaluation room. In keeping with my laconic evasion of the growing reality of my limb, I sent my boyfriend on his way to buy groceries and to make dinner for his son. I was tested, x-rayed, and sampled. Then the look I was fearing arrived. It came with the words, "your x-ray is abnormal, you need surgery as soon as possible." My first tears.....they would flow on and off for months, and still come now when I least expect them. That was Sunday, the 8th of January.
I called my boyfriend who was still in the grocery story. I repeated what the nurse said. I could hear the air escape his lips like a sliced canvas life raft; airy, watery and thick. It took him a few beats to believe it, but once he did, he was all there. He contacted my family and friends. Fortunately I have a wealth of medically trained friends and family members. They all researched the surgeon on call for the am and found her to be a good sports medicine Doc. Only one friend, who had worked with the surgeon in the past, hesitated regarding her bedside manner, not her ability to perform the required procedure. Path of least resistance won out. I was now in full blown pain, as the shock dissipated and denial disappeared. By this point I had surrendered to the pain, medicines and diagnosis.
Tibial plateau fracture. That was the breaks name. The surgery took 3 hours and required a plate and 7 screws. I don't remember much of Monday through Wednesday, except for the surgeon telling me I
might never run again, that I
wouldn't be allowed to walk for 2 months, and that
it would take 6-12 months to heal. I can still summon mental snapshots of my neighbor and her mom sitting with me, my family coming in and out, and my boyfriend bringing homemade chicken soup and a box filled with multiple kinds of macaroons for me and the nurses!
Wednesday we went home. Not to my house, but to his, as there were too many levels and stairs to navigate at my house. My son and dog also moved into my boyfriend's house. Part of what we discussed with our four children at Thanksgiving and Christmas had been the possibility of blending our tribe and moving into a house of ours within a few years. So this was simultaneously welcome, unprecedented and an interesting experiment. Half the week we had both boys under the same roof, too.
Thursday the first PT and OT came to the house to help me learn to navigate basic tasks. After just a short session of attempting to use a walker, learn how to properly stand and sit, and be told attempting stairs were still days away, I was exhausted. It was hard to believe that I'd run a half marathon two months earlier and swum a 5K a few months before that. Yet the surgeon told me, it was because I was so active that my femur hadn't shattered in the crash. Most people with tibial plateau fractures like mine end up with broken thighs, too! The muscles in my legs, absorbing the impact, had spared my upper leg. I fell sound asleep on the couch in the living room.
I was shaken awake by my boyfriend. His eyes told me something was terribly wrong. He told me his older son had been in a horrible ski accident and he had to wait for another call to know more. His son was a Sophomore at CMU, a dual mechanical engineering and physics major, a stellar student athlete and on the ski team. The next phone call would result in my boyfriend collapsing to the ground, on the second floor, having me desperately attempting and succeeding to climb the stairs backwards on my butt and crawling to cradle him as he took in the news.
His son had been racing with friends down an easy trail, which set his ski to chattering, under the speed, that one released, having him lose control and flying into the trees.
He punctured both of his lungs, fractured six ribs, his collarbone, and six vertebrae, damaging his spinal cord in the process. This was the afternoon of Thursday, 12 January.
Now it was my turn to be all there for my boyfriend. While he arranged a flight to airport nearest the trauma center his son was being airlifted to, I arranged a car service to pick him and drive him to the hospital. My father who was visiting from ME, enroute to my niece's volleyball game in CT, took my boyfriend to the airport. My dad and stepmom cancelled their plans to go to CT and stayed on to take care of me and my boy. This is all a blur, as I was in much pain, medicated and out of sync with myself. Now I was texting his relatives, mine, both our exes and others on an as need to know basis.
For the next two months his son was in Hospitals: Mass General and Spaulding. His son is now a paraplegic, paralyzed from the chest down. During those same months, I went to visit him in the hospital and even spent the night before his spinal surgery in a hotel around the corner to support my man and his family. I had to go in wheelchair. It gave me an immediate initiation to non-walking life. It was exhausting and required lots of advance planning for even the simplest of tasks. I injured my shoulder from "pacing" in the halls the hours of his surgery, it took six months for it to not hurt when I slept on it.
In February I lost two dearly beloveds and nearly a third. Jack Robb, the patriarch of the Robb family and a dear friend succumb to Parkinson's disease. Bingley Robb, my trusted canine companion of 12 yrs and a chosen brother of Cora, died after a heroic fight, as well. My massage therapist, Tony, had to have emergency open heart surgery and it was a delicate surgery. Three touchstones of mine; two taken, one receded from my life until this month.
My boyfriend's son handled his surgeries and hospital stays with grit and grace. My man and his ex-wife took turns being with him non-stop for 7 months. I moved back into my own house, with my son and dog, in mid-March. His son moved into an accessible apartment also in March.
On the Ides of March my daughter was hospitalized; first on Long Island, New York and then in MA. During March my son, daughter and I were reunited under our own roof. Neither my daughter nor my boyfriend's son would return to college until the fall semester. We all had a lot of healing to do. I went back to work, on crutches, in mid-March.
April, May and June we all did various therapies to regain our strength and stamina. My boyfriend and his ex-wife decided to beginning renovations on their respective homes, while their oldest son lived in an accessible apartment for the Spring and Summer.
I had my last physical therapy appointment in June. I'd asked if I could safely enter a race in July and was given the green light by my surgeon. I swam a 3 Mile Open Ocean Swim on my 55th birthday in July, the morning of the 15th. It stands as the personal highlight of this year. My number one super-fan, my mother, came with me. She watched the rowers and SUPs race the 4 Mile loop around Misery, while we swimmers raced 3 Miles from in Manchester-by-the-Sea to the inside of island and back on that overcast morning. It was fitting that on the day she gave birth to me, I felt reborn by the sea; not being able to run and still hurting to walk, swimming has been my salvation this year; mentally and physically.
The next morning, 16 July, my boyfriend and I departed the dock on his 37' sailboat for a week. A year earlier, we had sailed for two weeks; one with his youngest son and his son's friend, and the other week just the two of us. It had been wonderful and we hadn't wanted to end. I'd been looking forward to this week to commune with nature and each other. Nature rose up to meet me, but my boyfriend did not. We spent a week sailing in a loop from the North Shore to Cuttyhunk and back. It was his first week away from his son in 7 months.
He'd been telling me that he was looking forward to being alone with me. However, I now believe he was just looking forward to being alone and away from people and buildings. We had both experienced deep trauma during the winter. I'd hoped that this week in the summer would renew us individually and as a couple. It nearly ended us instead. I was hurt and angry by his lack of engagement and felt rejected although he'd stated he was looking forward to being with me. I was realizing just how limited our relationship had become and it scared me. He apologized for his lack of engagement and said he hadn't planned to be that way...but after 7 days of making the same choice it broke my spirit.
I'd vowed to myself to never again be in a relationship where I felt emotionally, spiritually and physically abandoned. By the end of this week I was feeling all three and was wondering how patient I should be with myself and with him. I'd been alone in my marriage for easily 5 years before I asked him to leave. I'd waited 6 months for him to ask me on a date, and when he didn't, I knew it was over. Now it'd been over 6 months, but both of our children, and my own leg, had been broken, which had resulted in a fracturing of our relationship. This week of sailing, I'd hoped to reconstruct a way forward, but we were stuck in neutral or worse, grinding gears. Fortunately, I take solace in the sea and pleasure in simple things.
Mostly I love life. I love making plans and setting goals for the future. I try to keep moving forward and not to get too mucked down by the past. Yet all future language in our relationship had disappeared. Beyond the return to college of our two eldest kids and the deadline of finishing the renovations on his house prior to Thanksgiving, there remain no future discussions. He has been hanging on by his fingertips and going forward one detail or punch-list item at a time. I've felt sidelined.
A year ago, I wrote the most read entry, about our relationship and taking it to the next level. Now here it is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I'm feeling Thankful, but not in the way I imagined.
I'm thankful for modern medicine and modern healing arts. I'm thankful for a strong and supportive friend and family base. I'm thankful for being able to walk, and even jog, in the woods again. I'm thankful for both our oldest children resuming their lives with so much grace and grit. I'm thankful for the resilience of the two younger brothers. I'm thankful for my parents who want the best for me. I'm thankful that my kids talk to me, deeply and often. I'm thankful for being able to appreciate all of these things in the moment...........
Yet, I'm wary. I know there is nothing constant except change...but there remains no talk of the future with my man; yet there is love. For that I am thankful and scared. Does one wait a year for trauma to stop obscuring reality and the ability to discuss the future? Has our reality permanently been altered so that future is too much to ask? Is there ever a good time, or does one just go about her business with her future on hold, although that is not at all who she is or what she wants? Or do you just know when you know and decide then?
I'm a Tigger by nature; an optimist, an idealist, and a romantic. But this year has found me down in Eeyore territory (I couldn't bring myself to write about politics or work) for far too long; having to tirelessly manufacture optimism and viable horizons. In two days, ten of us will sit at my boyfriend's table and share a Thanksgiving feast. I'm looking forward to preparing the food and atmosphere for this gathering. I'm suggesting that love and hope will win out, and would be most Thankful if you, dear reader, sent some loving and hopeful vibes my way this season! Gobble, Gobble to all!!
