“hope…it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
i have done time on the kitchen floor. like you, i have been brought to my knees with grief, anxiety, worry, pain, shame, fear, sadness, loneliness, anger, disappointment. when you are on the floor, any movement seems monumental. anxiety is crushingly powerful. it seems unlikely you will rise. and even as you go about your days, doing the things you do in life, it seems you will remain on the virtual kitchen floor.
but then, there is a moment. it appears illusory yet it is luminous. it is a mere butterfly wing, the slightest of silk tendrils, but it is there. elusive and tiny, it asks for absolute focus. like viewing through the eyepiece on binoculars, you slowly steady your gaze. something inside you knows. something tells you to reach for it and hold it gently in your shaking hands. it is hope.
“hope. there aren’t many words like this…describing that which you can actually – viscerally – feel in your body. it makes you breathe differently. it makes your heart beat faster. it makes your knees weak and your ability to wait strong. it makes you weep with anticipation and holds you close with others who are also hoping.” (reverse threading, dec. 7, 2018)
waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a yes or no or waiting for their hair to grow. everyone is just waiting. waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their uncle jake or a pot to boil, or a better break or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or another chance. everyone is just waiting.
somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying. you’ll find the bright places where boom bands are playing. with banner flip-flapping once more you’ll ride high! ready for anything under the sky. ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
oh, the places you’ll go!”
(dr. seuss)
an eighth rest. these two broken wrists are down from a quarter rest to an eighth rest. and waiting.
we are all waiting. for hours, days, weeks to go by. for healing. we are biding time. on hold. on eighth-rest-repeat.
and in that vast biding of time we are maybe finding that some of the things we have busied ourselves with don’t count as much. and some count more. maybe our time of waiting will reveal to us that which is most important. maybe it will be a time of needed rest. a time of slowing down. a time of subitotacet. a time of honoring those who truly help us. a time of quiet conversation, of learning new things, of disassembled notes gathering together from their places in the stars to form a new song.
we wait. and we don’t know when the waiting will stop. but oh, during this waiting, and after the stand-still-pause is over, oh, the places we will go.
my emotional well was full when i woke up today. thinking of us, our children, our families, our dear friends, our community, this world. i desperately want to gather our beloveds in, hold them close, protect them.
i have no words for all of this; i have too many words for all of this. i fear that none of them are helpful, none of them are wise. it’s just me. and, like you, carrying the weight of the world one step at a time, one quiet minute at a time, staring out the window and wondering.
bananas. they were $.49 lb. we picked up a bunch and walked to the register. a moment later, with no question or drama, we paid our $1.17 and left.
the next step in my two-broken-wrists saga is occupational therapy. not because we do everything with our hands. not because we write with them and open doors with them. not because we use them for our personal hygiene or because we cook with them. not because we drive with them or dress with them or shake hands with them. but because using my hands IS what i do. the therapist asked me how long i have played the piano. 53 years. it’s what i DO. so getting my wrists back to pre-snowboard-fall is imperative to me. there are no other options.
before we went to this first appointment i, responsibly, called our healthcare insurance company – the one we pay $29,000 a year to – the one with the slogan ” for the care you need at a price you can afford” – to check in about the coverage of OT. i was told, after much menu-choosing, that i am limited to 20 visits and that the cost will be $50 per visit. with the OT’s recommendation that my getting-these-wrists-back-trajectory would involve appointments twice a week, that would add $400 to the already-$2400/month in healthcare costs. bracing. impossible.
the OT office checked in with me to remind me of my appointment, coincidentally, just after i hung up with the insurance company. i told them what i had just learned and they insisted i was wrong. “no,” i was told, “we have never heard of molina charging ANYthing for a copay.” I asked them to please double-check for me and they assured me they would and that they would apprise me at my appointment.
when i arrived, the receptionist checking me in told me that they had their 23-year-insurance-veteran in the office check and that there would be no copay. i asked them to provide a written document to that effect so that if and when i was billed i would have recourse. they assured me that they would triple-check and to stop back after my appointment.
at the end of my appointment with the therapist, the receptionist told me that “no, you don’t have to pay $50 per visit. it’s actually worse. instead, you have to pay 100% of all fees until your thousands-of-dollars-deductible is met.” what?!!!! now this is the third story i am hearing about the same service with the same provider and the same insurance company. who am i to believe?
i stood there and literally cried in front of the receptionist in the middle of the waiting area. you mean to tell me that our $29,000 a year doesn’t really cover much of anything??? this is blatantly wrong, grossly outrageous.
bernie sanders, if you have listened to him speak, has given a example of the perverted and pathetic healthcare in this country. he speaks about a family who makes $60,000 a year and that this family must pay $12,000 for healthcare. “that’s 20% of their gross income,” he bellows. what i wish he would add is this next example: consider a couple who makes say $65,000 a year (this is the magic healthcare cliff for two people and only $5000 more than the previous example). that couple will pay anywhere between $24,000 and $29,000 for a policy that will still have high deductibles and yet (clearly) not actually have good coverage. i want to jump on the bernie-bellowing-band-wagon and yell, “that’s 45% of that couple’s income!!! what is wrong with that???? EVERYTHING!” how is it that we can live in this country, the richest country in the world, and have the worst healthcare for our populace? how is it right to set the populace up for financial disaster when they have to deal with the eventual health scare, injury, illness?? (on a side note, i won’t even beGIN to start talking about Covid-19, for i have nothing good to say about the administration’s handling, lack of information or truth, and unpreparedness for this pandemic that will truly test the resiliency of our country.)
when i could take a breath at the receptionist’s desk i asked, “what do these appointments cost?” how much is my professionalism worth to me, i am thinking. i earn my living playing the piano, i am thinking. i have fifteen albums of piano music, i am thinking. i am a pianist, i am thinking. i just need care for my wrists so that i can do what i do, i am thinking. at what cost, i am thinking.
but healthcare is not like bananas. i was told, “we can’t answer that. we don’t know.” i beg your pardon??? “billing handles that. and it’s different depending upon insurance plans and whether or not you have appropriate insurance.” i beg your pardon???? “what if i just wanted to pay cash right now?” i ask. “you can’t,” she says. “we don’t know what it costs.”
i wonder if it would be more if i paid cash – after all, i’m not an overstuffed insurance company that has the capacity to deny portions of the billing or disallow costs or base payment on the coding used to describe my treatment, while at the same time accepting ridiculously high premiums from clients with the knowledge that the insurance offered is incomprehensibly lacking.
no. i’m just a person who needs her hands.
we left, went to the store and bought more bananas.
1980. it’s not often i have listened to this song since four decades ago when i recorded it. i was a mere 20. listening to it warbling now, in the way that only old cassettes can warble, has been a mixed bag: this cassette master, with little studio experience, with reel-to-reel recording, with no auto-tune for my young nervous soprano-ish voice, with too-sweet flute lines and picked guitar, measures-too-long-instrumental-interlude; i am catapulted back.
it is shocking to hear the innocence. it is shocking to hear the pain. if my wednesday post this week was too much, i would hasten to add that this will be as well. this is a song about stripping a young woman of choice, of what should be the blissful love of first intimacy, of no justice, of no opportunity to process. it’s the story of sexual assault in the late 1970s. it’s the story of sexual assault any time. it changes everything. every trajectory. it’s my story.
NO BALLOONS is a song of the times. especially for someone who listened to john denver, james taylor, carole king, joni mitchell, bread, loggins and messina, america, england dan & john ford coley, the carpenters – the A-team of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-interlude-chorus. simple melodies, simple instrumentation, simply written, simply sung.
i can’t believe i didn’t write it in the vein of led zeppelin or kiss. it should have been a screaming heavy metal song, full of pointed weapons of anguish, of power-stripped anger. instead, it sounds like a sweet love-gone-bad song, “you take away my hopes, my dreams, you give me no balloons to fly.” only it’s not. it’s about no air. no breath.
“and now with my eyes closed, i no longer see the pain in yours or feel it in mine…” and that was a product of the times as well. i closed my eyes and silenced my voice. i stopped feeling it. or did i? “and i cried as long as the rain lasted and when it stopped i stopped.” was it really that simple?
until this week i really never thought i would share this song again. after all, the song is 40 years old; i’m an alto, perched firmly on the tenor shore. but somehow, between the #MeToo movement and the swirling-around-us-in-the-world-contention and public court battles in recent media and the lack of regard for those who truly need help or healing and my aunt’s texted article and the weeping inside of my younger-self and my silenced-silence, it felt like it was time to be vulnerable and candid and believe that our muddy-boots-narratives might make a difference for someone else.
we each have a story, a timeline, an arc that takes us through this life. things we want to remember in detail, things we desperately want to forget. things we have lived boisterously out loud, things we have lived in despairing silence. the tapestry that holds all these threads together is the soul of our experience, the way we can hear others and truly listen, the empathy we can employ in a world that seems to cite MeFirst instead of UsTogether.
i wouldn’t wish this experience on anyone. i’m pretty sure that every day since those-dark-days-in-the-late-70s i have both been affected and have effected because of them. i have made choices and non-choices, taken action and had reflexive reaction. i have searched for answers.
but i also know that my heart was blown open. i am not standing on a different rung of the ladder, too high up to understand or remember, too discurious to ask, too blinded to see, too discriminating or apathetic to care.
i am next to anyone who needs me to listen, really listen. i am next to anyone who needs me to jump and catch their balloons before they have flown too far to reach.
when i think about my sweet momma and my poppo, my big brother, my godfather uncle allen, my grandmother-mama-dear, more beloved family and dear friends – all who have left this earth – i don’t think about their jobs or upward mobility, their income or the status symbols they owned. i don’t think of the timeline of their school or work or whether they had finished a degree or if they had even gone to college. i don’t ponder awards or certificates they received or resorts where they may have vacationed.
i think about what a difference they made in my life. my mom’s devotion to cheery kindness, my dad’s quiet and stubborn thoughtfulness, my big brother’s goofy humor and ability to tell a story in all its details, my uncle’s absolute commitment to his fun-loving smile no-matter-what-was-happening. i think about the joy my mom experienced when my dad brought her grocery-store-flowers. i think about big bowls of coffee ice cream with my brother, neil diamond playing in the background. i think about my uncle generously paying for my very first recordings in ny, diligently holding me up and gently pushing me. i think about simple moments with them. in what could be a crowded-with-information-obituary in my head for each person, i hold a piece of their heart instead. they have made a difference in this world. they made a difference for me. i remember.
(from THE FAULT IN OUR STARS) “you know, this obsession you have, with being remembered? this is your life! this is all you get! you get me, and you get your family and you get this world, and that’s it! …. and i’m going to remember you. …. you say you’re not special because the world doesn’t know about you, but that’s an insult to me. i know about you.”
we live on an infinite continuum of opportunity. chances to bring light and hope to others. deeds we can do out of kindness, goals reached by collaborating together. we face choice just as soon as the sun-peeking-over-the-horizon wakes us. we innately or intentionally decide, we head in a direction, we live a day.
“We’re all traveling through time, together, everyday of our lives… All we can do is do our best to relish this remarkable life. I just try to live everyday as if I have deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it… As if it was the full, final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.” (from ABOUT TIME)
this song. i have performed it countless times. in nyc’s central park for tens of thousands of people, in small medical clinics, in large oncological settings, in chicago’s grant park. at a pharmaceutical conference in puerto rico, outdoors with the lance armstrong tour of hope. across the country, in pajamas and jeans and all-dressed-up. in theatres and at walks/runs, in schools and churches. for organizations including y-me, the american cancer society, gilda’s club, young survival coalition, susan g. komen foundation, the annual breast cancer symposium. and each time, heidi and i, working together in performance, fighting back tears. the list is profound. not because of the innumerable times i have sang this song, but because of all the people in these places and behind the scenes, joining together, remarkably touching the lives of others: those they know and those they may never know.
we make a difference. in every arena of our lives. every place we go. every interaction. every gesture. every assumption. every conversation. every every-thing. every single thing.
what intention will we have? will we be positive or negative?
“the truth is, I now don’t travel back at all, not even for a day. … live life as if there were no second chances.” (ABOUT TIME)
with these broken wrists i have moved from a whole rest to a quarter rest. i have made progress playing my piano and my broken-wrists have told me when to be silent. in the silence the earth keeps spinning, we trek around the sun, everything keeps keeping on. but for a moment, i rest.
we are each granted rests upon entrance into this orchestra-of-earth. sometimes they are chosen, sometimes they are not. always they are necessary. it is in your quiet that others make noise, that others speak, that other timbres color the muted. the hush is yours to own; the rest is yours to take. the silence both sometimes frighteningly deafening and sometimes a grand relief. the metronome really never stops.
(a reprise of paragraphs from 8.13.2015 post): at 1am, we walked to the lakefront. away from as many lights as we could get away from, we laid on some old steps, bricks and mortar digging into our backs so that we could gaze straight up, watching the night sky for the meteor shower.
the streaks of white light across navyblueblack make us draw in our breath. i’m wondering how far away this meteor is…how it is that we, here on earth, can see this amazing sight. such a big sky. such tiny bodies in contrast lying on the ground, waiting for the symphony to start, waiting for the downbeat, the symphony that has been continuously playing, the downbeat lost in centuries upon centuries of time gone by. like any good piece of music, it’s the rests in-between the notes, the rests in-between the meteorstreaks, that build the anticipation, that create the emotionflow, that bring tears to your eyes. each burst, each streak of whitelight is a miracle, a tiny moment exploding in time, so far away, in vast vastness.
time stretches out in front of us. and behind us. we are tiny and we are big. we gather in the moments, we breathe them, we rejoice, we worry, we ponder, we move. there is no downbeat and the symphony is already playing, has been playing and will continue to play. always. it is magical. and it is vast.
i don’t feel as much in-a-boat as i feel that i am relentlessly treading water. but there was no handy treading-water bitmoji and i remember the exact moment that this bitmoji showed up on my snapchat mapping…in the middle of a lot of treading.
treading, treading. guessing at why what-is-happening is happening – in wide concentric circles around us, tightly close to us.
and today, both valentine’s day and d’s birthday, i want to express gratitude for this man who is standing in the water with me – waves crashing over us, undertow threatening to pull us down, riptide ever present – and holding my fiberglass-cast-encased hand. the person who is equally as perplexed at this time, who takes turns with me being alternatively flabbergasted, philosophical and soberingly pragmatic.
he continues to zip my jacket, buckle my seatbelt, paste my toothbrush, carry my music, pepper-mill my breakfast and dinner, put the ernie straw in my coffee. he has learned the fine points of where-on-the-head to place hair conditioner, how best to tie plastic bags on my arms, what stool will work best at the piano, which wine glass i can pick up at the end of a day. he has watched me learn how to hold mascara with two hands and pull up girl jeans by the belt loops. he has been treading water with me as we look to the horizon.
maybe this watershed is the thing that elicits change. at the end of 2019 i could feel it coming. and i can now, with all authority and certainty, say that the change is not that i will, smack dab in the middle of middle-age, become a professional snowboarder. nope. but there may truly be things out there i just didn’t see or consider. perhaps the things that are vexing us, stunning us, deeply disappointing us, are just the things that will propel us. ah, if that just didn’t feel so pollyanna-ish.
this life is bigger than anyone can ever live it. that includes us. treading water in the watershed might be a time that forces dynamic change. like everyone, i wish i had some prescient inkling of what’s-out-there, what-will-happen.
my perceived lack of control is maybe a misperception. maybe that which has taken away control is conversely granting control, granting the creativity that comes with grabbing onto flotsam and jetsam in a sea that seems to be swirling. maybe the grasping-at-straws is grasping-at-ernie, a touchstone that seems flimsy and unimportant, but which actually is grounding, rooting, and gives voice to more solid footing, less wave-action, more direction-choosing.
the watershed is here. moment by moment we stare at it. we roll our eyes, we yell at the angst-y details, we shake our heads in confusion, we stop and stand still and, yet hyperventilating from treading, we wonder. we try to breathe, to center, to be in the eye of the storm.
holding hand-cast, we look forward and we guess that this ain’t the last watershed on the horizon.
download WATERSHED from AS IT IS on iTUNES or CDBaby
it broke more than both my wrists, that snowboarding fall last monday.
it broke my ability to do many things for myself. it fractured my independence.
it exploded my previous gratitude of those around me, loving and caring for me. it expanded a dependence on others, particularly david.
it broke through my vulnerability threshold. it made me acknowledge my modesty and encouraged me to try to stand tall in my new temporary disability.
it broke what i knew about others around me. it both surprised me in all the best ways and surprised me in all the worst.
it broke my assumption that all things – all my relationships – all my work – would stay the same. it shattered any sense of security.
it further broke my trust in our country’s healthcare coverage. it pointedly drove home that point.
it broke through any calm-in-the-storm-around-us i had found. it exacerbated a profound sense of worry.
it broke my muse. it scared me, really scared me, and it made me wonder if i would play again, write again, perform again.
day 5. my quiet piano welcomed me into the studio. i stood in front of it. determined. and i played. nine fingers, not ten. not the hand-span of all other days, but never mind.
day 12. eleven days after breaking them i still wake up, after night’s elusive sleep, surprised to see my wrists, well, more accurately, my cast and hard splint.
i think, “here we go,” and i set out to see what’s beyond two broken wrists.
emergency room to the right. urgent care to the left. it was a choice point.
as we drove from the ski hill back to our town, i was worried. terribly worried. but my worry was less about my two broken wrists. it was less about the pain. it was less about all the things i could see – already – that i couldn’t do for myself. it was less about my piano and, thus, my life. it was less about how long it would take to heal and what that healing would look like. it was less about how important a role david would play for me in this process of getting-my-wrists back. it was less about how this injury would impact me.
my worry? it was about what it would cost.
i wracked my brain for all the research i had done in selecting this year’s healthcare plan and how the deductibles work and what is covered and what is not covered and whether x-rays were completely billable sans satisfying our deductible. i worried about the cost of the emergency room, the cost of the ER staff, the cost of radiology, the cost of casting. there was a moment, driving through paddock lake, that i began to sob, thinking of the financial worry of all this. my wrists throbbing, our health “insurance” a whopping $29,000 a year out-of-pocket, and i was sobbing, in the middle of post-injury shock, at the worry of the additional burden this would put on us.
and that’s pretty pitiful. what a pathetic country in which we live that the first set of thoughts when injured is not getting well, is not healing.
i believe in an effort to more fully understand what i was going through, ptom told me he read a few blogposts written by or about people who had broken both wrists. it occurred to me that might be a good idea so i googled them.
the first post made me made me frustrated. after telling the story of her injury, deborah, who lives in new zealand, spoke about her experience with the socialized healthcare in that country. i wept as i read the motto is “prevent, care, recover,” and there was no cost to her – at all – through diagnosis, treatment, healing, extra care helpers, rehabilitation, transportation. she lost no work salary during the time of her recuperation. every single thing was covered and paid. she states that, “this has been a huge relief to me and has definitely aided in my recovery, because I’m not stressed.”
why am i so amazed by such a humanitarian approach to a nation’s care of its populace? is that not of utmost priority? should our population have to worry about seeking care to remain in or regain good health? what kind of country does not put the health of its people first?
as we approached the hospital in kenosha we had a choice. emergency room or urgent care. i asked david to park by urgent care. in the middle of pain emanating from both my wrists, two slings fashioned by ski patrol around my neck, i thought i remembered that maybe the co-pay or coverage would be more palatable in urgent care. we sat in big red for a few extra minutes; i repeated i wasn’t sure what to do or not do. not sure about the differentiation between urgent care and the emergency room, i thought we could at least ask if urgent care could handle what i presented – a need for x-rays and exam and treatment.
we walked into a crowded waiting room. indeed, they could handle my injuries. we waited hours with all the others there, many of them with masks covering their mouths and noses. everyone looked worried.
a very kind doctor examined me, did x-rays, cast me, gave me directions and sent me on my way with follow-up to an orthopedic doctor in a few days. at that office, a very kind doctor examined me, re-cast me, gave me directions and sent me on my way with a follow-up and more x-rays in ten days, a likely change of cast-type in four weeks, physical/occupational therapy on its heels and a standing invitation to see the reigning hand specialist whose expertise had been proffered.
and, of course, we haven’t received any billing yet. i’m quite sure that will be the icing on the cake, well, so to speak.
or maybe i should say – that will add insult to injury.
reverse threading 