Nothing in my world is certain but “this too shall pass” which is my stock answer to everyone and anyone who asks for advice. Good or not, whatever is going on will be interrupted by change.
Sometimes I let my guard down, thinking I’ve reached a state of stasis where the pattern of my life is on a path that has been steady (sometimes unrelentingly so) and I think, This is it. This is what my last twenty years are going to look like” and then the Universe laughs at me and drops a boulder on what I thought would be a steady path.
John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
Well, this time the Universe dropped a boulder ON me and I’ve been trying to carry the damn thing down the path. Finally, I realized:
Put the damn boulder down. There there. See how nice that feels. Walk around the damn things or crawl over them, but they’re not to be carried. And while you’re at it, clean out that backpack. You don’t need all that shit. And get some sturdy hiking boots while you’re at it. You are not a forest nymph – bare feet for these, the last 20 good years, are going to require support and thick soles.
I think they call realizations of this magnitude epiphanies.
I know this too shall pass, but what I thought was an impasse is simply a wake-up call. All my life, I’ve had to switch paths. I have no idea why I clung to this one. It wasn’t headed anywhere particularly interesting.
So, I’m heading into the forest where there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my. I hope to find the Emerald City. I could use a spa day.
On a fine day in August of 2023, I turned 64 and was happy to do so.
Exactly one week later, I tripped over my suitcase and broke my right leg.
Yes.
Broke it.
(It’s not even a good story!)
I was visiting my son in upstate New York.
My health insurance is terrible, and an out-of-network emergency room visit was out of the question. Besides, I convinced myself it wasn’t broken, I could move my leg and wiggle my toes. Never mind that I felt it break as I fell.
I drove, yes drove, the 500 miles required to get to my beloved home. My leg seemed a tad better. I walked around on it for a week when it started swelling.
And swelling.
And I became afraid it would burst and I would fly around the room like a popped balloon.
I sought medical attention. “It’s broke,” the doctor said. I saw an orthopedist the next day who told me it was too swollen to do anything with or make an assessment, so they put me in a boot and sent me home for a week with instructions to stay off it.
I’ll not bore you with the antics of that very long week but suffice it to say I learned who my friends were.
Because I had walked on it that first week and despite the nature of the fracture generally calls for surgery, they determined it was “stable” and it was my choice to undergo the surgery or not.
I declined. (Insurance again.)
So. A few days went by with me dutifully wearing the boot. I was told to wear it for four weeks and then come in for a progress report.
After several days of excruciating pain and more swelling, I called and said, “Something is not right.”
They worked me in. I was told I was wearing the boot too much as I had taken to wearing it while sleeping as it minimized the pain.
So, I left. And followed instructions.
The swelling got worse. That balloon thing again.
They worked me in. Again. I was x-rayed and examined and told I should call my Preferred Provider for a lymphedema workup.
By this time in this story, I had been x-rayed so many times I glowed in the dark.
Somebody ordered an ultrasound to look for blood clots. I forget who.
Somebody called me with the results. Told me – I would swear to it – that I had a cyst in a lymph gland near my groin.
I got rather excited at that news.
Nobody else was, but, by golly, I was terrified.
COVID was surging along with the flu and a nasty virus.
I came down with the virus at Thanksgiving. Didn’t recover until January.
Finally, got my Preferred Provider to talk to me in a telehealth appointment. She read me the results. No cyst. I had an enlarged lymph gland. Not anything to be excited about. I was referred to a physical therapist who specializes in lymphatic massage and a vascular surgeon.
That word surgeon is rather scary. Don’t you think?
By that time, it was December. The broken leg no longer required a boot, but my right foot was so swollen shoes were a problem.
It took weeks before the physical therapist could see me.
I’m scheduled to see the vascular surgeon on April 4th. For the first time.
Now then. Some of you will remember that I have Long COVID. Well, the fun there just never ends. One of my symptoms is foot neuropathy which is a fancy way of saying my feet feel like they’re asleep all the time with the occasional shooting pains and electrical jolts.
Yeah. I’m a mess. They tell me the broken leg, the onset of lymphedema, and neuropathy are three unrelated problems. I’m having a hard time with that.
But, I think, I’ve been coping rather well. I’m seeing the physical therapist and her magic is of benefit, but the neuropathy is getting worse. Upon occasion, I wake up screaming in pain.
I’m hanging on for April 4th as I’ve convinced myself that the word surgeon isn’t quite so scary and that he or she will work a miracle.
April 2nd dawns with a tornado warning. I’m at work and we’re sitting in the basement of the building in this decrepit room and I’m staring at my swollen foot waiting for the storm to pass. I have this terrible sense of foreboding. Heavy, heavy dread.
We learn later that a derecho (straight line winds traveling more 240 miles) roared through as did fifteen tornadoes. Both phenomena are rare in the mountains.
Once we get the all-clear, I’m fixing to go home because I’m not fit to work. I feel awful mentally and physically. But I can’t. Downed power line in one direction. Fallen giant billboard in the other. I literally can’t get home.
Several hours later, the one road is clear and I head for my Beloved Barn.
Did I mention they clocked those winds at 91 mph at my local airport? Yeah. They did.
I arrived home to find my giant oak tree laying on my sanctuary, my heart, this pile of sticks I call home. It starts to rain. I start to cry.
I cannot tell how bad it is as it is getting dark. And raining. And I’m crying.
My dogs are in the house. I can’t safely get to the door. I can’t hear them.
I go into shock, I think.
I get in the car, and I drive to my lover’s home an hour away. I don’t remember much of the drive. My lover has no power, but he feeds me and puts me to bed. I don’t really sleep although I do have nightmares. Finally, it is daylight and I head for home with a quick stop to buy a dog crate and leashes and dogfood. Hope dies hard in my heart.
When I get here it doesn’t look as bad as it had in the dark. But still. Plenty bad.
I’m afraid the whole barn will come tumbling down, but I work my way to the front door, open it like I’m defusing a bomb, and my dogs come running out.
Hallelujah!
I rake a quick peek and hope rears again, but the real damage is likely to be to the roof and the second floor. No way am I going in. But in any event, it’s not a catastrophic loss as I had first feared.
Of course, there’s no power. Anywhere.
I sit in my car with my dogs and make phone calls. Cell coverage is spotty.
The woman at the tree service sounds manic, but she says, “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow being April 4th.
I must cancel my appointment with the vascular surgeon in order to be here when they remove the tree.
Yes, really.
Thankfully, they reschedule me for April 18th – next week.
The tree is removed. Part of my old tin roof is missing on the portion that is still tin and not shingles, but the tree did not penetrate the roof. It’s a miracle.
Inch by slow inch, I go inside. I go upstairs. Nothing is collapsed. Nothing is knocked over. There is a crack in the drywall near the ceiling of the master bedroom, but it didn’t even leak.
I am blessed.
I crawl into my bed, with my dogs, in my beloved barn and I sleep nearly 24 hours.
When I wake, I am not refreshed. If this is what PTSD feels like, I have a new appreciation for traumatized folks and the effort they make to get through a day.
I give myself comfort care as much as I can with no power. I am not about to leave my dogs again and they don’t travel well. We are hunkering down.
The power eventually comes back on, and my crying jags begin to ebb.
I return to work on Monday.
But wait. There’s more.
The eclipse is Monday. I have the nifty approved glasses. I go outside and I watch the eclipse. But it’s an unpleasant sensation. My eyes are bothered. My greatest fear since I was a child was going blind. I continue to watch, very carefully positioning the glasses, but my eyes are watering and I am not enjoying myself. I go back inside.
I wake up in the wee hours of the morning with a red, swollen left eye and shooting pains. My eye is crusty with discharge.
I manage to find an eye doc that can work me in.
I am not going blind. But I have debris embedded in my eye. No. We don’t know what. I’m guessing oak tree fragments. He digs it out and applies a temporary contact lens as a bandage. I am instructed to return tomorrow.
Tomorrow was today. My eye should be normal by the weekend, he said.
Normal. What a concept.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for rain, high winds, and possibly, yes, possibly, tornadoes.
Will I ever experience gentle west winds again or will they fill me with fear and remembrance from here on out.
Trauma creates deep wounds that never quite heal despite all the scar tissue. Ready to open up and bleed at the slightest provocation.
The windchimes, the ones of wood and copper handmade and tuned to a melodious phrase (I forget which key) by a company named Woodstock may be gone. Or perhaps they’re in the debris left behind.
I used to love listening to them when the wind rustled on a summer evening. The setting sun glinting on the copper. They sounded like my heartstrings thrumming in contentment. During storms, they played a symphony of strong emotions. I wonder what they sounded like when the tree sheared off.
Did the tree scream?
Research now tells us that trees communicate with one another, have friends, and have a mechanism to help a struggling friend who is sick or malnourished or dying of thirst. Is my forest in mourning? Are they pumping nutrients to the stump? Are they singing a dirge when the west wind blows?
Much of the trunk of the tree still lays in my yard. I need someone to cut two four-inch or so slabs. I want a remembrance of that tree for me. One for my son. Charcuterie boards? Maybe. Something. I have a friend who is a serious woodworker. Perhaps she will have an idea.
But I want that wood sheltered in my home. The one miraculously still standing. My heart home.
I’m in shock still, but able to recognize my good fortune. My house should be collapsed. It wasn’t built to sustain such a hit. The tree was old. I’m guessing the diameter was 36 inches or more. I hugged it a time or two.
Years ago, now, perhaps 15 or more, I planted a variety of climbing hydrangea. It grows wild in the forests of Japan. It needs shade and the north side of an oak tree to thrive. It had both. Slow growing, it had just started to take off – flowering its tiny white flowers in June. I hope I can salvage it – move it to another oak tree.
My garden looks like a war zone. The same wind that sheared my tree threw my lawn furniture, fountain, and garden tools around. I’ve no doubt lost a lot of work.
But my house still stands.
Hallelujah.
Yes, Hallelujah in the vein of Leonard Cohen. Perhaps I’ll write my own verse to that masterpiece.
I offer up my own verybroken hallelujah. Grateful. So grateful.
Since October or so, I’ve been holding it. Tense. Frenetic. The holidays. The winter. Illness. No respite. Certainly no hibernation. But now…I can exhale.
I blame it on the time change. On work. On any number of things, but I sleep this time of year. The sleep of the innocent. In long stretches under a goose-down duvet. Deep sleep where I inhale the cool nights and exhale the warmer days.
The greening of Appalachia is my time on the calendar just as this place is my spot on the planet. I never had a favorite season if you don’t count school years and summer vacation until I was hit full in my psyche with my first Appalachian spring. May, Memorial Day weekend, 1974. I was 14. I remember the gobsmacking. I never had a favorite place until this geography invaded my soul. The mountains wrapping me in comfort like a goose-down duvet on a cool night.
The inconsolate beauty of the mountains in new greenery does bring tears. It’s a sight to behold even if you did grow up with it. Even after fifty years of Appalachian springs. They are never routine. Never ho-hum. They command attention. The forsythia, the daffodils, the magnolia, the pear trees, the redbud, and yet to come this year, the blackberry.
Manicured lawn with an explosion of color in town. Wild free-form landscapes out here. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, (yes, really) white and yellow daffodils out my kitchen window.
I remember planting them. I bought 150 bulbs for naturalizing from one of those mail-order nurseries with preprint ads in the Sunday paper. I duly planted each and every one in heavy clay with a tablespoon of bulb fertilizer and a ¼ cup of composted manure.
Thirty-five years ago.
They have doubled and quadrupled and carried on. The incessant reproduction of spring. Each year. More. And more until now. I drive up my hill after a frenetic winter. After a long day at work. I round the curve. The trees thin and there are my daffodils on the hillside. Nodding in the west wind of a spring breeze. The white pear tree petals scattered on the ground. The purple redbud highlighting the nascent green of the forest. The azaleas readying for bloom.
I can breathe when the earth can. Winter is over. Full technicolor.
“Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close up.”
And I am. It is a time for renewal. For breeding. For birth.
W. Va. Fur and Root 