a year ago, an idiosyncracy of life and more to come

It was a year ago today that I walked back from the neighborhood mailboxes with a note from my radiologist saying the my follow-up mammo showed "no evidence of cancer." I remember bounding over the rocks in my front yard and with mindful determination coming into the house to "take charge" of my day. I was going to repot plants, by golly, and get on with my life after having in hang in suspension for the past ten days.

I came out to the patio and glanced up as Mark was taking a couple of steps on the lower rung of the expandable ladder, on his way up to the roof to prune the euchalyptus branches. I went to the potting table and heard Mark holler: "Look out!". I looked up and caught a glimpse of him jumping off the ladder as it tumbled like slivers of frozen water toward the potting table and then onto me. I crossed my arms over my chest as I fell downward, bracing my back and head against a fall to the concrete. I felt a tug on my leg as I curled backward.

In the next few moments, Mark rushed to my side, peeling away the layers of broken pottery, cracked table and ladder. As he pulled away the ladder, I held up my leg and saw my foot looking foolish as it turned ninety degrees sideways. "This is bad," Mark said, and I just looked at the foot with splayed toes, amazed at the incongruity. My shoulder ached, my neck ached as I held myself in semi-prone position, but I felt nothing in my foot or ankle.

Mark called 911 and checked my eyes and breathing as they suggested. Then I began to feel some anxiety. A trip to the Emergency Room and then what? This was my Saturday, and what about tomorrow?

Thus starts an idiosyncracy of life when moments of change cascade into our lives whether we are ready for them or not.

Twelve months later, I have slivers of scars hiding screws and a plate in my ankle. I have a new physical therapy support system to help me "strengthen my core" as well as my ankle, calf, and thigh. I go regularly for a massage which tended my back muscles through the weeks of crutches, walker and black boot. I have a new work community because of a younger colleague who was one of three non-family members to drive me where I needed to go. I walk with a different stride--shorter and more measured, slowed a bit by necessity and practice. I have this blog and over 300 days of writing entries.

Yesterday,the eve of this "anniversary", I shared hysterical laughter with Mark over the ridiculous occurrences of the day: a car battery that needed replaced, signaled by a car clock that kept resetting (think "Groundhog Day" for a car); a missed birthday party of a friend because I received a phone text that said "Hi, Anita, we are canceling our party due to weather" and found out later, it was a "wrong number" text by someone who also had a friend with my name, also had a birthday party they were cancelling due to the freakish winter storm which dropped snow on rose petals all over the Tucson valley; a series of 11th hour emails from our accountant (or, we suspect, a member of his staff), over necessary documents to complete our taxes and the tax filing of my 92 year old dad who had given me the tax envelope--which I didn't check, assuming, mistakenly, that my 92 year old father was functioning as the 91 year old he was last year--without the documents he thought he had put in there and needing pages of medical, dental and prescription costs info that I had to get from over the Internet (this required one hour's worth of phone calls to Secure Horizons and another 30 mins, including on-line "chatting" with Walgreens, and a new email address in order to get this info in a timely manner) which still resulted, Mark and I are guessing, in our accountant and/or his staff possibly "firing" us as customers because we expressed frustration at getting the request for this info one week before the filing deadline!!!!

How absurd life continues to be: so we laughed and laughed and drank white wine that glistened in our glasses half full.

If you have read all of this post--have a glass of wine on us and celebrate the idiosyncracies of life and laugh until you think you cannot stop laughing. It's the only way, sometimes, to get ready to go to bed and live another day.