Over the weekend three people told me that they had also broken their left fifth metatarsal.  The first was the woman that gave Sam his new cockatiel ‘Snowflake.’  At the time she was driving a standard and recommended it to hasten healing of the tendons.  The second was  a wizened woman in Food Lion who said that deep water walking was a great way to stay in shape while hobbled by a peg leg.  The third was a fellow community gardener.  When I told him that the doctor had called it a ‘dancer’s break’ (surely a way to help us clumsy oafs feel a little less klutzy) he laughed.  His doctor had called it a ‘basketball player’s break.’  Sexism is alive and well.

Bob brought over two canes that had belonged to his wife Lynn.  She was quite stylish.  I will look quite jaunty hobbling along with a leopard print cane.  Maybe I can get a pillbox hat to match.

The foot has been changing color everyday.  It reminds me of a childhood injury.  My nose was broken, lip split, both eyes blackened while sleigh riding.  Having no memory of the accident or consequent pain, I was pretty neutral about the whole thing.  I can remember how my family shuddered to look at me, pain at seeing their littlest one mangled.  For myself, I couldn’t wait to look in the mirror every morning.  To me, my face was the aurora borealis, the whole crayola spectrum of flaring and fading bruises moving in unpredictable patterns under my skin.  Today the second and third toe peek from the boot in shades of gray and red.  Saturday’s black smudge on the outer side of the foot is a purplish landscape like the last fading of the sunset at twilight.  The swelling has receded leaving a greenish yellow streak across the top.  There is a bruise on the inner side at the edge of the arch that looks like a giant’s thumbprint, brown edged with blue.  Two blue spots mark the heart of the arch underneath.

Groovy.  Movable tie dye.

I am without a doubt, with no reservations, a complete klutz.  Here’s the proof.

Yesterday I was weeding around the patio when I disturbed a ground wasp nest.  These are a kind of yellow jacket and they are very aggressive and very territorial.  The sentinels came out stinging and got my right hand and foot right away.  I jumped backwards and thought about going through the sunporch door but was afraid they would follow me in and sting the kids.  So I jumped to the side but remembered the laptop cord was snaked through the window.  Not wanting to knock the laptop off the table I twisted so I would go over the cable.  I landed off kilter on the side of my foot and took off to the backyard.

It was awhile after the swelling in the half dozen stings subsided that I realized that there was something else going on with my left foot.  I finished the weeding, put in some lemon-thyme, did the grocery shopping then found an urgent care with an x-ray machine.

That’s the fifth metatarsal and the injury is sometimes called the dancer’s break.  It’s actually a commonly broken bone but on the positive side, the doctor said its one that usually heals well on its own.  The doctor who looked at the x-ray yesterday thought it was displaced but the orthopedist disagreed.  This means no surgery or pins.  Yea!

“No one has given me a flower,” she said,  “since my husband passed seventeen months ago.”

And Helen looked down at her feet, nodding slightly.

In bright sunshine of a late winter afternoon the chains on her jeans jingled and light made sparks in her hair.  Helen carefully chose a long stemmed rose from the bucket and slowly, cautiously traversed each walkway.

“What organization sponsored you?” and “What church?”

“We don’t go to church,” she said quietly.  “I don’t know what you mean,” in her tiny voice.

She waited patiently at each door, giving the senior within time to negotiate coming from sitting to standing, to peek out a window, to decide whether or not to open the door.  The first few seemed confused, not addled just uncertain.  I tried to see her through their eyes.  She is so serious and her appearance reflects not the latest fad but her own style of darkness and light.  I  hoped they could perceive her intent, how difficult it was for her to overcome her shyness and speak to strangers.  How important it was to her to acknowledge her respect for elders.  How fervently she wished them happiness.

The senior housing center contains a surprising forty-five units sequestered off a by-way and tucked  into scrub woods.  Five miniature attached apartments comprise each row-house.  Those visible from the entrance are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the road.  Unused back doors meet uneven ground in weedy backyards.  There are no fences to lean over, no paths connecting them.    It speaks to separation, like blind women groping forward not knowing that those they seek are immediately behind them.  Helen calls them ‘dog pounds for people.’  For several months she had been wanting to visit, to bring them something, to say “hello, I am thinking of you.”  Valentine’s Day and a really good price on variegated bouquets of long stemmed roses made this possible.  We unwrapped the discount grocery store bundles, plunged the stem ends into fresh water in a clean bucket  and hoped for the best.  They were surprisingly intact, firm buds, strong stems.

The units further in the back face each other around a central  square.  By the time she reached the first of these rows, the neighborhood network must have kicked in.   She was met more quickly at the front doors.  Her “Happy Valentine’s Day” and proffered flower were met with wide smiles and not a few moist eyes;  suspicion dissipated.  While waiting at one stoop a lady poked her head out three units away.  She couldn’t wait.

“Hilda’s not there.  Her car is gone!”

Helen bypassed the intervening houses, choosing another rose.  She left several with this cheery woman rather than leave them tied to the door knobs.  Drawn by the sounds of conversation, more residents came forward, waiting.  Helen demurely passed out her offerings with a quiet “Have a nice Valentine’s Day.”  Neighbors remained out-of-doors chatting and catching up with one another.

With a dozen apartments to go we spied a woman in the last row struggling to bring a chair onto her stoop.  Even from a distance we could see that this was quite an effort.  I suggested that Helen go right away and not keep her in suspense.  As she walked away, I thought of her steadiness, steadfastness.  She had set herself to a task that was uncomfortable for her.  She does not like to be the center of attention and here she was causing quite a riot.  I admired the way she stood up to the scrutiny from behind curtains and peepholes.  Then I noted a disturbance in one of the  units that she bypassed.

The front door opened as Helen passed up the sidewalk.  An older but not elderly woman was intent on sweeping — but also on keeping an eye on that girl.  Since her neck was not a periscope she was forced to quite vigorously sweep the door frame, then the front step, then the beginning of the sidewalk to keep an eye on Helen’s retreating form.  I heard her ‘harrumpf’ which sounded in my mind like ‘it’s my turn.  Where’s mine?’  I brought her a flower to ease her anticipation but could tell right away that this was second class.  Mine was not the hand to make this offer.  Helen had started something much deeper than we had known.

I had to rescue the poor girl from the unit she had gone to.  The resident had asked her inside and was  filling a plastic bag with small handicrafts.  “You can have this and this and this,” the woman was saying and proudly  “My son already gave me my flower today.”  We admired her flower and I extricated poor Helen who was completely at a loss under the barrage of pent up words that were pouring around and through her.

When we got back on track, all the front doors had been opened.  “Welcome,” it said to me.  “Don’t forget me,” was the message Helen percieved.  She did not forget a single one.

So we’re at TJ Maxx picking over the clearance items.  Chris of course separated from me as soon as we got through the front door.  Once I’d done my thing, I found him in men’s clothes and we headed for the cashier.

As I am paying for my few purchases I see two employees are talking to Chris.  They are both young women, maybe twenty.  One of them says to him “you know that girl that was talking to you a few minutes ago?”

“Um, yeah, I think,” he answers.

The two young ladies look at each other then the second says, “she wants to know can she have your phone number?”

I fell out.

Chris mumbled something about not being interested and not giving out his phone number.  Outside of the store, joking, I asked him if that happens to him often.

“Every time I go out, pretty much.”

My son is a chick magnet?

Just for kicks I asked Helen about it later.

“Yeah.  Girls ask him for his phone number all the time.  He doesn’t give it out.”

What?

A finding in neurology shows that our brains continue to grow and make connections into our mid-twenties. This is why younger people’s intellects are so flexible. Human beings under the age of thirty are natural and avid learners. They absorb so much so quickly. It also may be the reason that older people sometimes feel like they need a translator in order to understand what teenagers pick up so quickly. We are so lucky that there are people out there to fill in that gap. An example:

Last week a study was published by Adrian North of the School of Life Sciences in Britain relating musical preferences to personality attributes. One correlation that I found to be especially interesting is that “contrary to the stereotype, heave metal fans are gentle and at ease with themselves.” I keep this in mind when I sit with my son watching videos on fuse. He is my personal translator. When the leather and chain clad lads jumping around fire pits spitting brimstone and groan, moan, grunt and growl he helps me out.

“Grrrr, ungh garble, huhnguh!”

“Honey, what did he just say?”

“He said ‘I don’t like rice!”

Grungh skrun hungh huhnguh”

“Now what did he say?

“He said ‘don’t serve me rice for dinner!”

We muddle along.

(You may want to skip down to the previous entry and play the video. Charles, this is the song I told you about)

He didn’t bring home a t-shirt. Nor a sea shell, starfish, a jar of sand. He could have taken a camera and shared pictures of Sammi and Erica walking on the pier or Travis and Max goofing off at ocean’s edge. This was a momentous trip, this thirty hour jaunt to the beach. It was a measure of trust, the stretching of that invisible cord between parent and child. Are you responsible enough to be five hours away, over night without a parent? Do I believe that not only you but your friends will make positive choices?

Clearly I believe he has made good choices in his friendships because I did let him go. Sammi picked him up at 7:00 a.m. He called when he got to the beach, that evening, again Saturday morning, before leaving the shore (as instructed). He spent his money appropriately. He was on time. He even slept some.

But instead of a gift shop throw-away he brought something to me late the evening of his return. In the quiet after everyone had gone to bed he told me this.

“The best part was when we were coming back. We were about thirty miles from Greensboro on this road with nothing around it. There was just road and rows of pine trees. Travis and Max had fallen asleep. Sammi had the cruise control on. She and Erica were talking, I couldn’t really hear what they were saying. Then the best song ever came on, you know “Mad World” from Donnie Darko and I looked at my friends and out the window and I had this really great feeling…”

He didn’t bring me a t-shirt, a goofy shot glass, a postcard. He brought me a moment, the onrush of metta in this mad, mad world.

Seventeen years ago today
the earth did not wobble from its axis.
The stars did not dip in the sky.

Seventeen years ago
the universe did not for one second
hold its cosmic breath
or move from expansion to contraction.

(But you cannot convince me of this.)

Seventeen years ago Helen made me a mother.

My planet wobbled.
The stars sang.
And every angel or deva or what have you
collectively paused
for an immeasurable moment in linear time,
directing their joyous attention
to the absolute perfection
of sweet and wondrous
human creation.

(Happy Birthday, darling girl.
Mama loves you.)

Forgive me, I am a little giddy.

When we were tiny Grandma Collins used to grab our little feet, count off our toes saying “to market to market to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again jiggity-jig.”

Chris came home this morning.

I have always said that there is something very special about Chris. His surgeon, Dr. Weatherly, confirmed this. Chris is one of the 5% of people whose appendix corkscrews behind the cecum (the connecting portion of the small and large intestine). As his appendix became infected, it became enlarged on the back side of his intestines. This area has no pain receptors. Normally as the appendix enlarges it contacts a wall of nerves that immediately gets your attention. In Chris’ case he had pressure and cramping but not that typical pain associated with appendicitis. We estimate that his appendicitis was worsening for at least four weeks before it ruptured.

Dr. Weatherly said that his appendix was the size of an orange–and picture an orange that has been sitting in a warm moist environment for four weeks. Ugh.

Note: surgeons do not let you bring home soft tissue in a mason jar.

The really good news is that given the position of the appendix, when it ruptured any infected material was localized and therefore didn’t cause wide-spread infection. Chris did have to have a larger incision including some cutting of the muscle wall in order to remove tissue and infected material. This resulted in his extended hospital stay.

Chris worked really hard to get better. His doctor explained to him the effect of painkillers on resumption of his digestive processes, encouraged him to walk, breathe deeply and cough. All of this was very, very painful. (Note to readers, ‘very, very’ may be poor style but that’s the way it was). Chris made the decision to refuse painkillers and exceeded expectation in his efforts to speed his own recovery. He showed determination but also a degree of personal insight in pushing himself to his appropriate limit.

This morning Chris was absolutely ready to come home. He slept well for the first time last night. The weekend night nurse walked on cat paws. She checked in regularly but stole in like a shadow, reassuring, never invasive. When Chris awoke he was refreshed and looking at the door. Yesterday I came home for a couple of hours in the afternoon to set up the guest room with a t.v. and an armchair. Sam and I took out the rug so he would have a straight shot to the bathroom. This morning Chris let us know that he was not going to be stuck away in a wing. He is at this moment in the family room, he caught up with his MySpace buddies and is right in the middle of the (in)action, as typical. He needs to be on minimal activity for a couple of weeks but he is home.

For minors, even ‘man sized boys’ as a recovery room technician put it, the staff want a parent to be the first person a child sees. This is deeply reassuring for the patient at a disconcerting and confusing time. But as the child looks blearily at the parent, the parent has a chance to take a good look at the child. Putting myself firmly in his field of vision, making sure that Chris would have to see my smile every time his eyes fluttered open I studied him. I watched his dry lips shiver and spasm. I saw how closely his pallor matched the color of the sheet drawn up over his shoulder. The unnatural whiteness emphasized every chicken pox scar and angry welt on his face. I looked at the uneven whiskers he has recently started to shave. I put myself as close as I could catching the reek of gas with each exhalation. I allowed my heart to fill with love then leaned over him, letting my love pour over this poor child, more creature than boy.

As he came out of the anesthesia he began to be able to focus. His head rolled, his eyelids snapped open. The dense pupils constricted to huddled points making his irises appear alien. He stared at me and I saw how his eyes are actually made up of areas of green and brown and russet, all overlaid with reflected light. His eyes look exactly like shining pebbles and autumn leaves on the bottom of a sun streaked mountain stream.

He was at turns frightened and confused. And yet for the first twenty minutes every time he swam toward us and consciousness he looked closely at Beth, his recovery room nurse and said, “my name is Chris. How are you?” and offered his trembling hand for her to shake. She quietly introduced and re-introduced herself, studied signs by some unspoken rubric, twiddled with tubes and levers, and gentled him toward his awakening. She was competently reassuring and soon he let loose his grip on fearfulness.

Fear had stalked us all day. My friend Laurie who lent us shelter and access to a phone early in the afternoon later told me that she saw fright in him and tightly controlled panic in me. An emergency room nurse brought his to the surface. When checking his vital signs she noted that his heart was pounding hard enough that she almost didn’t need to use her stethoscope. She asked the obvious, are you scared? which gave him an opening to talk about it and get some reassurance.

Post-op, fear is no longer on the surface. It has receded chuckling into its dark damp crack, a days work well done. Soon enough it will send out its twin spawn, ‘legitimate concern’ and ‘baseless worry’ to anoint the ground before its next visit.

The pause in recovery, limbo, is different than the waiting for the doctor’s diagnosis or the surgeon’s prognosis. It is different than waiting rooms in general. It’s the pause on the rock wall after choosing the route but before committing through action to the course. It’s the pause between breaths; it’s the moment after a sigh while deciding whether or not to inhale.

“What you need to understand is that the part of your brain that is active when you want something is different then the part of your brain that is active when you get it.”

Chris may have been listening but he didn’t want to hear what I had to say–just as no one standing in the line that snaked out of the DMV and into December’s late afternoon gloom cared. For his fourteenth birthday, Chris endured two rites of passage–first trip to DMV and a visit to a tattoo parlor. To celebrate the anniversary of my giving birth to him, I got to watch.

“It’s like this, bud. When you want something there’s an area in the depth of your brain that starts to pulse with electric activity. It’s like a strobe light going ‘want, want, want, want.’ Now it doesn’t really matter what your head applies to that want. It’s not saying ‘want a million dollars,’ or ‘want world peace,’ or like you, ‘want my ears pierced.’ All its doing is saying ‘urg. want. now.’

Now you’ve wanted your ears pierced since, um, when?”

“Like, five, six.”

“Right. You’ve had this habitual pulsing activity deep in your brain all day every day since, well, since you were a baby going ‘want’ ‘want’ ‘want’ ‘want’ and when you were 5 or 6 another part of your brain started saying – ‘look, earrings, shiny.’ Your brain found an ‘it’ to go with the want. So now you have this back beat going wannit, and the harmony going ‘earrings’ Get it? ‘Wannit, earrings. Wannit, earrings. Wannit, wannit, wannit, earrings.’ That’s been going on in your head for 8 years.”

Chris is kind of smiling now.

“So this is part of you. You’ve lived with this song in your head for years and you think once you get your ears done it’ll be over. You’ll be satisfied. All of your patience and rational arguments and persuading and more waiting is finally coming to bear and you will be happy for the rest of your days. Satiation time.”

“Yeah, I’ll be happy when it’s all done.”

“But you won’t be satisfied.”

“I swear, mom, this is all that I want. This is it. I’m really happy about this.”

“I know, darling, and that’s why we’re standing out here in the cold. But what you need to understand is like this. You’ve got the ‘I wants’ going in the deep ancient reptile part of your brain. OK. And you have the ‘it’ part somewhere in your lobes. Now when you actually get what you want, the acquisition part, what do you think happens in your brain?”

“I stop wanting it because I’ve got it.”

“Nyet. That’s not how it works. When you get something your brain shoots off fireworks that fill your skull with feel good happy chemicals and you feel like you just ate a whole pan of Girardelli chocolate brownies. But still, you’re not satisfied. See acquisition, acquiring stuff has nothing to do with the ‘I want’ part. The ‘want, want, want’ may get drowned out for awhile but it keeps sending out that back beat. A week from now, a day from now your lobes will latch on to something else, your ‘wannit’ will say ‘yeah, something new, pay attention to me’ and you’ll be right back where you started. Acquisition never satisfies desire.”

His smile indicates that a part of him knows that this is true, but he can’t admit it and risk not getting what he has been reaching for so long.

“I don’t think you’re right, mom. Once I get this I won’t ever want anything again,” he tries to say but can’t keep a straight face.

“Word, dude,” a voice interrupts from the bundle of coats and scarves in front of us. A dark bald head emerges, the lobes decorated with 1/2 inch cubic zirconian. “What she say, ‘acquisition never satisfies desire?’ Your mom’s got the real Truth, little man.”

And as he turns away with a smile I see mothers in line nodding their heads, college students grinning and teenagers rolling their eyes.

Word. It’s the truth.