That Night

My first thought was "Now I've done it. I've finally done it." 

It was similar to the feeling I had at age 16 when I totaled the family car while making a right turn on red. That time, despite having crushed my parents' Vega to half its size, I was able to walk away uninjured ("Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" people were screaming.) This time, I could only acquiesce.

My second thought was "I have no idea what happened, but I appear to be in extremely competent hands." 

I remember the flashing lights of an ambulance and many hands on me and being on a stretcher, but I'm not entirely sure which of those memories took place on the street, which were in the ambulance, and which were of being unloaded at the emergency room. As things started to come together more, I knew I was in the ER.

By this time, I must have figured out I'd been in a bicycle accident. The last thing I remembered—as "memory" itself haltingly reformed—was leaving the office with my bike, walking it across L Street, and turning onto the bicycle lane. Or maybe it came back to me later. But that's the extent of the events preceding the accident that ever have come back.

I remember having a neck brace put on me and being reassured by someone that it was just a precaution, that I didn't appear to have a spinal injury. I was asked if there was someone they could call. I don't remember saying the words, but I apparently came up with my brother's land line, a number he'd had for more than 20 years (and that he's since changed; I do not know his new number by heart).

At some point, as medical personnel started stopping by, I found out I'd fractured my right elbow (I always say "fractured" instead of "broke" because that was the word first used in my presence), knocked out a tooth and maybe damaged more, and cut up my face. 

An ENT (again, who introduced himself as such, so I'll never forget his specialty) stitched up my face—two gashes around my right eye, one on my upper lip where a tooth or teeth went through. I'd never had stitches before (at age 52, never been treated in an ER, never spent a single night as a patient in a hospital). The sensationless sensation of thread being pulled through tissue and tugged was new to me; at the same time, it reminded me of numbed dental work—that impression of major construction going on not quite here but in a room next door, the mysterious vibrations and structural manipulations of space felt all too viscerally.

My brother arrived in the emergency room and told me D was on his way. I was calm (drugged), probably apologetic, definitely immobile, and appreciative of what felt like order around me. 

I'd be spending the night (no kidding), and we were waiting for a room.

My brother manned iPhone central at the foot of my bed in the ER, communicating with our sisters and with his wife. At some point, D arrived, smiling, tender. My brother, D, and me—the trio who'd been with my father when he'd died at age 92 a year and a half before. This was the first time just the three of us were together since that day in July 2012, though I wasn't thinking that then. (I'm thinking it now.)

My injured right arm rested painless and immobile in a splint or brace across my chest. At some point, I met the orthopedist who would operate the next day. A young guy in his thirties, as young as my regular doctor, whom I'd seen just a few days before for a checkup at which all was well.

All evening long, I listened to gentle information and was ministered to—my first experience with the utter surrender of control entailed in the receipt of trauma care. Somewhere down deep, grief and sadness awaited their entrance, as did patience and fortitude, Sharks and Jets on opposite wings. But for now, the only thing required of me was to wait.

Later that night, when I was settled (oddly content) in my hospital room and my brother and D had left for the night, I was near-dozing when another doctor came into the darkened space—a dentist (dental surgeon, it turned out), closer to my age than the young orthopedist. He was nice, had grown up in Washington like me, and we talked about the high schools we'd gone to. All evening at the hospital, despite having no idea what had happened to me on the bike lane, I'd been able to converse relatively lucidly with anyone who came up to my bed.

He touched my shoulder in a comforting way. He examined my mouth and told me a tooth next to the one that had been knocked out was compromised and would have to come out as well. I thought he was referring to an upcoming procedure, but he started jiggling the tooth right then with his bare hand. I said, "You're going to pull it out now?" Saying it was already crumbing in his fingers, he tugged, as if removing a splinter, and it was out, leaving the root behind.

He said, "We'll take care of you." Then he touched my shoulder again and said goodnight.

Getting to 50 . . . and Beyond

This is cheating, but I can't think of a better way of summing up what my folding bike means to me than what I said in my Christmas letter in December:

"On my 50th birthday [in September], I bought a bicycle. I haven’t owned one since my Schwinn banana seat. A bike has been on my mind for a long time (D. and I ride every summer on Cape Cod, where I’ve rented mine), but it’s taken me a while to admit it’s okay for me to have one. (Don’t ask—it’s like the contortions I went through before I gave myself permission to move from the Maryland suburbs to DC 16 years ago.) This bike has changed my life. It’s a folding model, perfect for my tiny “urban cottage” (D.’s second home, mine being his lovely house in, guess where, the Maryland suburbs). I had no intention of using it to commute, but within a month I was riding to work, mostly on bike lanes, weather and other factors permitting. You’d recognize me—I’m the one who obeys traffic signals. The obvious feeling is freedom, but it’s not the main part. For years I’ve had dreams I’m on a bike, but the sensation is the accomplishment of getting somewhere on my own power. I wake up feeling, Wasn’t it cool how I got there?"

"Passing on Your Left"

Today I searched for a post from five years ago because I thought it might trigger an idea for an essay. It didn’t, or hasn’t yet, but I ended up reading a number of entries from the summer of 2007—I haven’t gone back to read old posts in the longest time—and I was pleasantly surprised to see how witty and fun they were. Not that I didn’t think they would be; I just had lost touch with that whole habit. 

I had quite forgotten what it was like to ramble on about this and that in my life, and how comfortable I seemed doing it—all the weaving back and forth in time and from post to post and link to link. I think I trusted myself more in those days to let my mind go where it wanted to. That might be a healthy place for me to get to again. 

So I didn’t get inspiration for an essay (the story is five years old, after all), but I did get inspired to write a new post, which you (someone? anyone?) are reading now. The last time I blogged was in January, and I thought this time was really going to take. Sigh. 

Maybe I was meant to be led back here today by thinking about that lunch with an old high-school classmate in 2007. 

Today might be the quintessentially beautiful Washington spring day. Clear blue sky, ’70s. I spent time in this park again with a vegan cupcake (the best vegan cupcake in Washington) and cup of coffee after eating lunch at my desk. 

I’ll bike home on the folding bike I bought for my 50th birthday last September. I really should have blogged about that when it happened. It’s one of the greatest additions to my life, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I would have blogged about five years ago. Perhaps I will at some point. 

I came across this delightful blog (or really blogs) today and want to visit it more. Part of it is something called the Betty Crocker Project, an admitted rip-off of (or riff on?) Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia thing (I know that was the book and movie name; can’t recall her original blog title at the moment), but this couple is creating vegan versions of every recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookbook. They have their own cookbook coming out next year; I read about the blog in the publisher’s catalog. 

I just thought of a bunch of things to blog about. What does it mean when you have to make a mental note to put something into words at a later date? One thing it means: The bike lane awaits.

So Runs the World Away

Thanks to Diablo for sending me the following poem by Mary Oliver, a resident, as it happens of Provincetown, where I recently spent a happy week and a half.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

***

I spent many hours with D. biking the trails in and around Ptown, including the magnificent Cape Cod Rail Trail, which we hope will someday extend all the way up the Cape to Provincetown. I haven't owned a bike of my own since I was a child but am on the verge of buying my first adult bike. This is thanks to D. and the roads we've ridden together over the last nearly three years.

While on the Cape, we had a very nice visit with a former grad school professor/writing teacher of mine and his wife. He retired a few years ago and moved up there about three years ago. I used to see him at least a couple of times a year at various social or literary occasions but hadn't talked with him at length since his move, so it was nice to reconnect. One thing I told him was that he was a big influence on my teaching, as, among many other things, I learned from him that it's okay to teach from notes, that no one will think less of you if you refer to them. In fact, I still write out notes before the first session of every workshop I teach, and later sessions if I'm teaching an essay I haven't taught before, but the interesting thing is that I refer to my notes less and less. It's the writing of them that imprints them.

One of the last times I spent time with my old teacher and his wife was at a Josh Ritter concert at the Birchmere, probably in 2006. Now in his late sixties, he's a huge Josh Ritter fan. As it happened, I had just downloaded Josh Ritter's new CD, So Runs the World Away, onto my iPod before my vacation. I was just listening to it the other day and was struck by its style, so different from his earlier, more classic singer/songwriter mode. It's kind of epic sea shanty meets art song. I need to listen to it more.
I started this post almost two weeks ago (through most of that last paragraph). And just tonight I bought a novel, Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, whose title reminded me of Josh Ritter's and then of this unfinished post.
The book I have to finish before starting that one is Rosanne Cash's memoir, Composed. I just finished a lovely chapter about six months she spent living in London at age 20 and 21, and that chapter ends on a note of wistfulness about friends and mentors she lost touch with over the years, some of whom she reconnected with later in moving and unexpected ways, some of whom died before she had a chance to.
I hope to see my teacher again the next time I'm passing through.