Happy New Year (May the Road Rise Up to Meet You)

It's New Year's Eve and when I got up this morning, I decided to start the new year off right by collecting my trash can from the curb. (It had been there for four nights because every time I remembered it, I was too exhausted to make the trek down the driveway.) It's unseasonably warm at the moment--actually it was quite balmy as I made my way down the drive with my hair a fright and in my green fuzzy robe, looking very much like Maxine sans the bunny slippers. From the evidence at hand, it was apparent that it rained in the night. I know this because the asphalt was two-toned, and my municipality-approved garbage can had about an inch of rainwater in it. Thank goodness for the unseasonable warmth otherwise I might have awoke to a foot of snow.

Last week, was unseasonably warm and we had even more rain. I'm not sure the amount, but this morning there were no worms to be saved, and while I don't know how much rain is needed to set worms afloat, it rained cats and dogs for a night and a day and a night a few days before Christmas in the 'Burg, and worms we got. On Friday morning a week ago, I awoke just after dawn and after very little sleep, feeling restless. So I decided to hike down the street to my mailbox and post the last of my Christmas cards (the ones that would arrive after Christmas). Despite living in a court full of duplexes, the post office in its infinite wisdom decided to perch an ugly row of metal multiple resident boxes right as one enters the court. For years, when my illness (ME/CFS) was at its worse, others would have to collect my mail for me--I mean, if walking down my short drive to collect the trash can be a challenge even today (something others used to do for me as well), you can imagine the challenge of walking down the street to collect my mail--, and so it was a real pleasure to have enough strength and energy to start my day with a walk to the box.

At any rate (you knew I'd eventually get around to the point didn't you?), as I started my way back to my home, I realized I didn't need (the lightest version of) my dark sunglasses. It wasn't yet light enough outside to bother my light sensitive eyes and yet it was light enough to see the world clearly, and so I looked at the world through my own peepers... a wonderful early Christmas present. It was then, on the walk home, I noticed three worms in the road, deposited as they were from the relentless rains we'd been having. And so I saved them from either drying up in the sun or from my neighbors, who would be up soon and driving their massive vehicles over the roadway.

I have a story about worms (actually, I have more than one story about worms as my essay The Queen of Sheba would attest), or one worm in particular, that changed my life forever.

It was 1993, and my last law exam of my last year in law school (Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary) had been dispensed with on Friday. I was 37 and appeared to have a bright future (despite having to manage my environment due to multiple chemical sensitivities) when I drug my thoroughly exhausted self to my Mother's from Virginia to Maryland on Saturday, the day before Mother's Day, to pay homage to my mother. On Mother's Day I gave my mother a beautiful handmade (not by me) glass and wrought iron bird bath for her back garden.

And on Monday morning as we sat there admiring my Mom's new acquisition and enjoying the freshness of a morning after a heavy rain, my mother spied a slug in her garden. Having recently learned that salt would dry up a slug (but not yet having learned that slugs police themselves and that one never gets an over abundance of slugs in the garden), I told my Mom I'd take care of it. I grabbed a container of salt and efficiently took that wee slug's life. My mother turned to me and said, "How does it feel to be a murderer?" In my defense, I wasn't quite awake. I was still hung over in total exhaustion from a couple weeks of law school exams.

Suddenly, my mother remembered that she had to get to her job at a locally owned pharmacy. My car was parked behind hers in the drive and so I'd have to move it. We decided that I would pull down into the street, wait for her, and then pull up into the driveway once she was off. I did as we agreed and there I sat... waiting. Who knows what she was doing in that car?

Finally, I pulled my car to the curb, parked, got out, and started walking up the drive, which was on a slight incline. Not quite as bad an incline as the drive in my current home, where I can't see cars parked behind me as I exit my garage, but an incline nevertheless. I say was on a slight incline because my mother now lives near me in Virginia and her new driveway is almost flat. (But that's neither here nor there because my mother no longer drives.)

I was about 12 feet from my mother when I spied a worm washed up onto the driveway. Having been admonished for killing a slug, I bent down to scoop the worm into the grass. At that precise moment I had a chilling thought: "With the incline of the drive and my bending over, there's a possibility that my mother won't see me when backing up." And so, I started to turn in the direction of the grass and throw myself into a forward roll, which would have looked quite stupid had my mother not sped down the driveway at that moment.

As it turns out, as I was having the thought that I was possibly behaving quite stupidly (okay, there's no possibly to it), my mother was remembering that I was in the street waiting on her. Without looking in her rearview mirror, she put the car into reverse and gunned it, something she never did. (And so we will never know if she could have seen me or not. She simply did not look.)

Next thing I know, the trunk of Mom's car slammed into my lower back and spun me in the direction of my intended forward roll only to slam my right shoulder and hip. Next thing my mother knew, she was hitting something that felt suspiciously like her garbage cans, which she had hit on numerous occasions when backing out of her drive. The problem was: her mind knew that she was too far up the drive to be hitting the cans. She stopped on a dime.

I was face down on the drive and her car's back left tire was leaving marks on the inside of my thighs. Still reacting to imminent danger (not realizing my mother had stopped on a dime), I rolled out from under the car and into the grass only to have the distinct pleasure of seeing my mother throw open her car door and try several times (unsuccessfully) to get out of her car seat without releasing her seat belt. It was suitable footage for Laurel and Hardy.

My back was in serious pain and I could not move my legs (at least not initially), and so I yelled for Mom to get my brother Michael to call an ambulance. By the time, Michael made it outside, I realized (suspected) I could do without the ambulance. (Don't ask me why I have an aversion to ambulances 'cause I can't tell you.) After canceling the ambulance, Michael somehow got me in the passenger side of the car, though I could not bend my right leg, and with Mom in the back and Michael driving, we headed off to the emergency room.

I was desperate in my attempts to calm Michael down, as every time his panic caused him to take a corner too quickly the centrifugal force sent me into a level of pain that threatened to make me pass out. (That's saying a lot since I have a high pain tolerance.) And then there was my mother in the back seat scared out of her mind and hating herself for having run over her daughter. And so I started singing songs my mother had taught us when we were kids. Irish songs (because, as you may recall, my mother is an Alien from Northern Ireland), funny songs, songs most people could not imagine singing to their children... at least not here in the U.S. At least not back then.

My favorite--the Morales Cloth Shop--went as follows:

A man came 'round the other day a coat for him to buy.
I showed him one at ten and six, try that one on says I.
He tried it on it fitted him well and he went to walk away
When I tapped him on the shoulder saying the coat ye have to pay.
He turned around he looked at me and his big fist he drew
He knocked me into the corner saying, "That's the way I'll pay you." 

Refrain (needless to say the tailor's troubles weren't over):
Oh murder, murder, call the police.
He doesn't know when to stop.
Sure there's going to be a funeral at the Morale's cloth shop. 

(And so on.) 

So there we were singing our heads off and me joking with Mom and Michael to keep THEIR spirits up on the way to the Emergency Room. I become quite funny under intensely stressful situations. (Just ask the police officer who wondered how I survived wrapping my car around a tree while air borne... a story for another time.) Yes, now that you ask, I have lived my life like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

We arrive at the emergency room about 20 minutes later. Michael armed with instructions to make sure they are not painting in the hospital--Michael informed just minutes before our expected arrival that the hospital had been doing renovations for months--, and Mom trailing behind him and telling everyone and anyone who would listen, "I've run over my daughter with my car!", burst into the ER only to find that the hospital had painted in the emergency room that very day. They called another hospital to insure I'd be safe from paint while being treated for my injuries and 45 minutes later we arrived at the 2nd hospital. Michael ran inside, with Mom holding up the rear while taking her own name in vain, when an ER nurse started to apologize profusely. Just as she was telling the other emergency room that they had not been doing any recent painting, painters were on the other side of the door, next to where the phone was facing, painting. She rushed outside with an icepack in hand to provide me with some relief while directing us to an Emergent Care because the next closest hospital was a good 90 minutes away.

At the Emergent Care, after the effort required by Michael and Mom to get me inside, the doctor would not look at me because I could not stand and put weight on my leg. And so off we went to the third hospital who assured us from the Emergent Care office that they had not painted in months.

More singing and joking, and hours after the accident, we finally arrived at the 3rd hospital--Laurel, Hardy, and Sad Sack. There we learned that I had not broken anything, but I had damaged ligaments in my left knee and seriously damaged ligaments in my right knee--damage to the right knee that would require surgery--, along with sustaining a substantial degree of muscle trauma. Armed with that information and a full length leg sling, they sent me home to make arrangements for surgery, and after spending a week at my Mom's receiving well wishers, my ex-Y collected me and I had arthroscopic surgery to remove the ligament "debris," which allowed me to bend my knee again.

My soft metal brace... lest you think dear reader
that I am making this stuff up.

The rehab went poorly, and I was told by both the surgeon and my rehab therapist that I was not a candidate for knee (ligament) reconstruction even though I had lost 80% of my anterior cruciate ligament and and 60% of my posterior cruciate ligament and had some minor damage to the meniscus ligament. Turns out, the bodies of people who respond poorly to arthroscopic surgery, and who also have chemical sensitivities, tend to reject the attempts at ligament repair. And so I was equipped with a metal brace and sent home, but not before being told I'd have to wear the big, bad-ass brace when walking any sort of distance (which turned out eventually not to be true, though I did have to wear it for a number of years when walking long distances and dancing).

The folk at rehab also told me I'd never ski again when I asked. I asked about a more substantial brace for skiing and their response was: "What if you injure the other knee skiing?" I was through the denial and bargaining stage rather quickly and entered into a place of uncomfortable acceptance. My right knee was wrecked for good. (And my hip, which has been x-rayed numerous time because the symptoms say "break" while the x-rays say "not"--the symptoms have also at some points said "necrosis of the hip joint.") I can't jump or run (even if I had the energy to do it), and even with the brace on, when I was not disabled with ME/CFS, I would injure the knee playing tennis because I was too aggressive at the sport and could not seem to force myself to dial back. Heck, to this day, I can't turn on the ball of my foot. I've learned a whole new way of walking about.

But seriously, I'm lucky to be alive and I don't suffer much because of the knee, though I did have to suffer through "save the worm" jokes for years.

Last week, after depositing my mail and making my way back to my shared, quadruple driveway (I live in a duplex), I discovered that our shared driveway was literally littered in worms. I saved another 42 worms that morning, and I managed not to get run over once, having quite the chuckle in the process. Later that day, I recounted my efforts and my good humor over surviving the worm saving expedition to my neighbor who shares the duplex. She said, "I know. When I got out of bed this morning and opened the blinds, what should I see? But you in your fancy dress coat--the 100% camel hair that I got at Goodwill for $7.50--, PJ bottoms, and slippers bending over and picking up worms in the drive way like some little old lady. Not that you're an old lady." My neighbor is 83 and I'm 56. I think she was being nice. What she meant to say was "like some crazy old lady." (In my defense, those were real shoes... I just happened to be without socks, and in her defense, I wore those shoes as slippers for years because they provide great support to my knee when too much enforced bed rest weakened my muscles.)

If you endeavor to save a life in the new year, please make sure you also save your own while not sustaining any long-term injuries (if possible). My message to you by way of writing this essay is: Get plenty of sleep and keep your wits about you.

However, to usher in the new year, I'll leave you with this traditional Irish blessing (the one that's referenced on the pillow in the picture):

May the road rise up to meet you [but not in the same way it met me], may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun sine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields [softly... so the worms won't go afloat]. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand. 

P.S. Here's a picture of my wee 83-year-old Irish Mum from this past Christmas. As you can see, she eventually recovered from having run down her own daughter.