Cracking Up Again

 I managed a full year of writing and posting my blog essays, but I only made it seven months between fractured bones. Yes, I fell again, this time breaking my wrist. Silver lining, it’s my left wrist and I’m right-handed. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for today’s abbreviated post. My keyboard skills are pretty good two-handed, but losing the use of five of my ten digits is dire.

All I did was walk down my driveway, pick up the Sunday paper, and walk back to the house. A neighbor was out doing yard work. I gave him a brief good morning, and then splat, and hello sidewalk. Oddly, I went down onto my right side but broke my left wrist. I don’t even know how that happens. The right wrist is sprained, but mostly functional.

 Functional is a spectrum concept. I’ve had 18 hours to figure out how to do some things and to give up doing others. Jeans, for example, are officially out for the duration. I’ve been in elastic-waist yoga pants ever since I had to ask Michael to zip me up after a potty stop. It goes without saying that I can’t tie my own shoes. And I definitely cannot ask Michael for help with that.

 My dad became quite frail in his elder years, partly because my mother did everything for him, including tying his shoes. Many years ago, I drew a line in the sand about shoelace independence. Imagine how much fun Michael could have at my expense if I asked him for a shoe tie!! As they say, discretion is the better part of valor. I’m just not going to go there at all.

 I had surgery on my left hand a decade or so ago to fix a problem with the bottom joint of my thumb, which had drifted out of its assigned parking space. That was one of the most painful surgical recoveries I’ve had. Preliminary X-rays suggest that no surgery will be required this time, but boy, does it hurt. When I get the permanent cast on, things should settle down to a dull roar. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

 As with my broken foot last fall, I am so grateful to have a fully committed and able-bodied partner to depend on. Michael is really in my corner and I couldn’t appreciate him more than I do. Still won't ask for help tying my shoes, though …

 Who can you count on when bad things happen? And who can count on you?

 Ciao

 P.S. I will be experimenting with voice typing between now and next week. All my doctors seem to be doing it. I’ll let you know how well it works for writing blog posts.

The Long Love

 I’ve talked a little bit here and there about our fall trip to Vienna, Austria, but as of last Tuesday, the trip is real: we bought our airline tickets! The airplane takes off in four months, but I’m already floating on air.

 It seems incredible that we will live in Vienna for four weeks; perhaps what I should really be amazed by is that Michael and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage this year. Most people will agree that marriage isn’t easy. Even when the love is true and deep, the realities of daily life can be erosive.

Bad things happen to people, and when you share a life with another person, there are more opportunities for bad things to happen. Add in a couple of children and the bad-things-happen index seems to rise exponentially. Some of the bad things are manageable—job loss, broken limbs, non-fatal car accidents—but we’ve had some bad luck that practically sucked the marrow out of our bones.

 I’d have to say my illness, which was finally diagnosed as lupus in 1989, was the gigantic bad thing for us. It forced me out of my career in telecommunications, which I happened to love, and which also provided our family’s insurance and lifestyle support. Michael had to take on complete responsibility for supporting us, which would have been enough of a burden in a society where you need two working people to get ahead. But because I was often incapacitated, he also had to run the household, manage the children, and take care of me.

 Wow. Sometimes it surprises me that he didn’t bolt. We both had had short, bad first marriages and neither of us wanted a repeat divorce. When we married, we made this vow: Homicide, suicide, or natural causes, the only way out is a pine box. Later we added: If you leave, you have to take the children.

 Do I think our vow is what made Michael hang in there when times were so difficult for us that we had to downsize our house and tighten our belts considerably? Probably not. I think he just loved me that much. (But when I browbeat him into adopting a toddler with me a few years later, the vow definitely was in play.)

 All the children survived and thrived, each in their own way. A decade or so ago, Michael had cancer—two different times, two different kinds—and I took care of him. It balances out if you hang in long enough. I’ve read recently about the phenomenon of gray divorce: old people leaving long marriages. I hear that Covid caused a lot of the trouble because couples, forced to spend so much time together, found out how unhappy they were.

 We are blessed in that regard. We enjoy many of the same things, like ballet and theater and art, and we find the same things funny. We like to spend time together, but we’re not joined at the hip. We support each other’s interests and hobbies. Maybe it’s not so surprising that our marriage is in its 50^th year.

 Early in our dating relationship, a strange thing happened. Michael was riding in the car with me, cracking jokes and fiddling with my radio station—major no-no, people—and I blurted out a sentence that I couldn’t explain then and I can’t explain now. I said, “I can’t believe I married such a turkey.”

 Boy, was that a conversation stopper. I had known him less than a month. I couldn’t believe I said it and, as he reported when we finally discussed it years later, he couldn’t either. Neither one of us acknowledged what I said. I gripped the steering wheel and drove. He made a comment along the lines of “How about them Cardinals?” (We lived in St. Louis back then.) The tension faded, but, thankfully, the relationship did not.

 Sometimes we say that we’ve been together over the centuries, sharing past lives. We are so simpatico that it feels like we’ve put in a lot of time learning how to balance in a marriage. Metaphysical, I know, but why not? I’m happy to think that we’ll find each other again in some distant time and place. Maybe we’ll get another 50 years out of it!

 Who’s in your life that you would like to be reincarnated with?