Linnetontheleaf

Abandoning my post at the sink and stove hasn’t been easy. Since I got out of the kitchen, I’m firmly convinced that the heirs to my kingdom are guilty of egregiously wasteful and inefficient practices; they have certainly overfilled the fridge and neglected to clean the stove-top (as I did every evening). Pretty sure that they will not set the alarm extra-early on mornings when the dishwasher needs to be emptied, nor then mop the floor to clean up all the inevitable drips! Yes, I admit that I am obsessed and not exactly sane about all this, but I’m torn — obsessed and insane I may be, but I’m also really, really good at it all! So no, it hasn’t been easy to abdicate my kitchen responsibilities to hopeless tyros.

But I’m determined not to insert my obnoxious know-it-all self into their new province. And if I can manage it, this will be a silver lining to my dark broken jaw cloud! I will no longer harbor the bitterness and resentment which has needled me for the past year or more, and I will have partners who willingly assist because I haven’t made myself impossible to satisfy and to help. That’s a silver lining indeed!

I grew up in a food-centered household, and have created yet another one for my family. Meals together  were a big part of my family life growing up, and are central now to my life with my spouse and offspring. Early in our marriage, kitchen responsibilities were shared more or less equally between my husband and myself, but at some point, I became the chief cook and kitchen manager. I’ve tried to figure out how and why this happened. Most of our couple friends seem to share the workload, but for a decade or more in this household, it’s all been on me. I’m good at it — I have a constant food inventory in my head (I also do the shopping) and good ideas about how best to deploy it. My slightly OCD nature delights in devising meals to use up dribs and drabs which would otherwise go to waste. I even get a huge charge out of emptying the fridge before leaving on vacation.

Since I allowed this evil regime to take root years ago, I have spent hours alone in the kitchen every weekend doing essential prep work, and have cooked dinner single-handedly nearly evening. I walk in the door each night to find the household males, home for hours, expecting a meal like helpless cubs waiting for the mama lioness to return from the hunt. Until recently, it suited me okay because I knew I could it all better, and because it enabled me to dictate the menu and prepare whatever I was in the mood for. But at some point in the last few years, I began to resent it. Why was all this work my responsibility? Why was I, the last person home, the one who had another hour’s work upon arrival? Well, in truth, probably because I brought about the whole stupid situation, but that didn’t stop me from being pissed off about it.

Now that I was condemned to a liquid diet for 4-6 weeks, unable to eat anything which I might prepare for my family, was I going to allow this ludicrous situation to continue? No, I was not!

Today it dawned on me, clear as a bright winter day:  I had until now minimized my situation and cherished completely unrealistic expectations of how quickly I’d feel normal again. That denial was to be expected — it’s a defense mechanism, to get you through the early shock. But pretty soon I saw the evidence that I was NOT on the fast-track to normalcy. That sore rib was a clue; even more — the scary rickety feeling  when I went walking outdoors. I understand how this misunderstanding with myself arose:  I usually bounce back so quickly from injuries and distress that I don’t even check in with myself — I order myself to be fine, and I usually am, or am able to make myself so by sheer grit. But I just couldn’t pull it off this time.

As a personal responsibility freak, this surprised me. But what surprised me even more was my uncharacteristic sympathy with myself. Years ago, a therapist pointed out that I would never treat another person with the contemptuous severity which I routinely visit upon myself. But I didn’t do that today — rather than excoriate myself, call myself a spoiled brat and sternly order myself to quit malingering, I tenderly empathized with my injured body and psyche. It was wonderfully comforting, and dramatically different from my usual psychology.

Of course I can’t leave it at that. (If you are following this, you can tell I’m kind of into self-analysis.) I worry — if I give myself a break this time — that I’m poised on a slippery slope to overlook and excuse laziness and hypochondria in the future. But that’s a question for another day. Today I am allowed to bask in empathy, compassion and forgiveness.

What a strange day. Usually when I’m home from the office, it’s for an important appointment or project, and I spend my time rushing from place to place or getting work done. But today my only project was to begin my long recovery from a facial fracture, to become accustomed to a mouth full of hardware, and to figure out a liquid diet. Nervously I monitored my condition — my jaw, now immobilized, wasn’t very painful, but I wondered how sore that bruised rib and banged knee would become. Most of all I wondered if I dared to focus on the fact that I couldn’t part my teeth — I sensed a scarcely suppressed panic waiting in the wings of my subconscious, and was afraid I’d awaken it if I thought too much about my predicament.

I invented some projects to occupy myself — repaired a piece of furniture which had been broken for roughly a decade! — then set out on a walk to the local Amazon lockers to pick up a book I’d ordered. Unhappy realization: just walking outdoors, for the first time since the accident, made me nervous. At the slightest provocation, I relived that awful downward plunge, the sidewalk rushing up to smash me in the chin. And yet it wasn’t quite engrossing enough to keep my mind off my mouth, so I played some Elton John songs on my phone to distract me. I was gradually coming to realize that I hadn’t just broken my jaw, I’d broken my confidence.

After a morning of diagnostic exams, neurological tests and CAT scans, I found myself in the chair of a maxillofacial surgeon, learning about treatment options for a condyle fracture of the tempromandibular joint. Ostensibly there are three, but only one (immobilization by wiring the jaw) gives consistently good results, so there wasn’t much of a decision. But I had issues. I’m pre-diabetic — how would I manage my blood sugar on a liquid diet? This highly recommended surgeon (a dead ringer for the Property Brothers BTW) was out of network — could I find an in-network doctor to see me right away instead? If not, what was this going to cost me with Dr. Property Brother? And I would need sedation for the procedure, but I was alone and wouldn’t be able to drive myself home. But, eager to get started on the road to recovery, I set out to solve all these challenges as soon as possible, in order to proceed asap,

In retrospect, I’m rather astounded by my will and concentration at this stressful juncture. I was in pain, and I must have been in shock, but I somehow marshalled my wits to do the needful. I Googled, I made calls, I texted, I researched providers on the Cigna website. Dr. PB got much better reviews than in-network doctors, so I sat with the office manager to affix a dollar amount to the procedure and to authorize it with the insurance company. (This is a good example of the absurd cruelty of our health care system — that someone with a broken bone in her FACE is expected to cope with such BS and try to make an informed decision about emergency treatment.) Google and my endocrinologist’s nurse persuaded me that I could find healthy liquid nutritional options, and my 20-something son was summoned via Uber to the office and drive me home. All systems go.

Side note: I got my first laughing gas that afternoon. (Not sure any of my previous dentists even used it; don’t recall it ever being offered.) I informed the assistant, doubtful I should experiment with a new psychotropic substance at my advanced years, but she casually crooned, ‘it’s g-o-o-d,’ as if she were describing a particularly nice batch of sativa. Boy, was she right — I sat there inhaling, feeling myself floating higher and higher. (Broken jaw? I have a jaw? What is a jaw? Strange word, jaw…) But I knew she’d soon be back to check on me, and in the paranoiac way of all high people interacting with straight people, I tried to prepare a normal, dignity-preserving response when she returned. Useless! When the assistant returned with a breezy singsong ‘how are we doing?’ I heard myself squealing helplessly in response! So much for dignity.

Though I find it impossible to believe, I’ll turn 65 in June. But until recently, I haven’t noticed much decay — I felt as strong, fit and capable as I was 20 or 30 years ago. But hard as it is to accept, in the last year or two, I have begun to note changes for the worse, as osteoarthritis robbed my joints and bones of their suppleness. A rigid and rickety spine makes it hard to right myself if I lose my balance, and my stiff, inflexible feet do not firmly grip the ground.  For decades, I have walked for miles most days (read my earlier post about my twice-daily largely-pedestrian commute), so have necessarily monitored these unwelcome developments closely!

To add to my challenges, I’ve gradually increased my working hours, so most of the winter, I’m walking to and from the train in pitch-black darkness. Our town is hilly, and many sidewalk slabs are upended by the roots of huge old trees. All these factors are a recipe for disaster for an aging commuter like myself.

And well did I know all this! So Tuesday evening, when I felt my body somehow launch from a forward trajectory to a downward one, my first reaction was to blame myself. I was rushing, I was careless, I was an aging hag who should be ashamed of herself. My mother’s word would have been ‘hacked’ — by which she meant mad, frustrated and upset, mostly at herself. Boy, was I ‘hacked.’

A fellow commuter rushed over to be sure I was okay (I wasn’t, but I pretended), and solicitously walked me home as I held my blood-gushing chin in my hand. The next day, returning home after my diagnosis and treatment, I discovered a bloody hand print on the front door, like something from a slasher movie. Only then did it begin to dawn upon me that I’d suffered not just an accident, but a real trauma.

I’m a pretty piss-poor blogger, aren’t I? As soon as I forced my shy self out on the WordPress limb, the sense of exposure greatly undermined my confidence in my writing, my thinking, my conclusions, everything. Plus the gloom which descended upon me with Trump’s election never lifted. (It’s even worse now, after the distressing conclusion of the impeachment trial last week.)

But now, after years of inertia and insecurity, I’m suddenly inspired. Ironic perhaps, and admittedly narcissistic — that while the GOP trashes the constitution and enables an incompetent and corrupt president, while the coronavirus marches across China, perhaps to our shores, while Australia burns and Britain commits suicide — I finally have something to say. And sorry, it’s all about ME.

Tuesday evening, rushing home from the train in the dark, I tripped over a sloping sidewalk slab and fell headlong like a downed tree, breaking my jaw. Within 24 hours, after lots of medical input, my broken mouth-joint was immobilized by bulky metal appliances and wires installed on my back teeth — the best option of several treatment plans offered. I’m no longer in pain (except for a bruised rib and knee), but the oral hardware is semi-incapacitating — it’s impossible to talk normally, and chewing is out of the question. Liquids only for 4-6 weeks! But the worst thing is the panicky feeling of being unable to open my mouth, to unclench my jaw at all, to have access to my tongue, which is imprisoned behind my clamped-shut teeth. It’s freakily claustrophobic;  I cannot even dwell upon it for fear that I will lose my mind.

But this is my reality for the next 4-6 weeks, and as awkward and sucky as it is, I bet I will learn a lot from my predicament. And I’ll work all that out here and share it with you.

Each morning, I commute 23 miles from my home in Maplewood, NJ to my job in midtown Manhattan, one block north of Radio City, and back again in the evening. A New Jersey transit train carries me for 21.3 miles; I walk the remaining 1.7 miles. I have done some version of this NJ-NY commute for 34 years, astonishingly, first from Jersey City, then from more-suburban Maplewood after we moved there in 1996. It’s a rare day that I get a ride to or from the station in Maplewood, and even rarer that I succumb to the dubious temptations of the NY city subway.  (I’m convinced it often takes longer.) I have walked in all weathers, from frigid cold and blizzard conditions, in torrential rain and beastly heat. I have walked when hungover, heavily pregnant, and when plagued by plantar fasciitis, cracked heels, sciatica and morning sickness. But most days I feel fine, thankfully, and the weather is usually unremarkable or, occasionally, splendid, and I enjoy my daily excursion and all the sights and sounds I experience along the way.

My morning itinerary begins with a .5 mile walk from my house, on a suburban street in our leafy Essex County suburb, population about 24,000, to the train station. It’s downhill most of the way in the morning – I wish it were backwards, since I sometimes dread the uphill trek at the end of a tiring day or in the worst heat of a summer afternoon. The downhill walk can be treacherous in winter weather; ice collects on our sloping, shaded driveway, melting daily and refreezing smooth as glass overnight. In years of negotiating this minefield, I’ve fallen only once, though as I grow older, I don’t know whether to question my sanity for venturing forth in risky conditions or to squelch my misgivings as a biddy’s jitters.

In deepest winter, day is scarcely dawning when I leave the house, and the sun has long set when I return. I remind myself to consciously enjoy the pearly morning skies and the blazing sunsets, and to listen to the rhythmic, throaty hoots of mourning doves, the monosyllabic conversations of coupled cardinals, and the rattling flight calls of robins.  (A few robins overwinter in our area, though there are many, many more in the warmer months. I always watch for their return in the early spring.)  We don’t have many deer in our neighborhood, thankfully, since I’m a gardener, but we do have other forms of suburban wildlife.  Fairly often, the pungent odor of skunk hangs in the morning air, and I have seen raccoons scurrying back to their beds in the trees after a night carousing in Maplewood’s garbage cans.  Little brown rabbits graze the lawns, freezing motionless as I pass by, and I know why, since predators abound.  Hawks often float overhead, and coyotes and foxes are sometimes seen skulking along. I’m impressed with how ably these predators have adapted to urban life.

Three blocks along suburban residential streets (where I know every house and front garden by heart, observing new paint jobs and plantings with interest) brings me to Memorial Park, 25 acres of grass, ball fields and playgrounds laid out in the 1920s by the Olmsted Brothers (of Central Park fame). I walk past the adorable Civic House, built in 1929 in the Arts and Crafts style, with leaded-glass windows and a slate roof; in days of yore, I would stop at the Civic House each evening to pick up our children, who as kindergartners spent their after-school hours here in a town childcare program.  My route also takes me along the East Branch of the Rahway River, spanned by several quaint bridges.  The Rahway is usually tame, a chuckling little brook at the bottom of a six-foot deep stone-walled canal, but a heavy rain can bring it to full gushing life, flowing swiftly and bearing along substantial tree limbs and other debris. It has been known to crest its walls after unusually heavy downpours.

A great egret takes up residence in the canal nearly every summer, and I greet him each day as he stands motionless, fishing near a little weir. I’ve also seen the occasional blue heron, and once, surprisingly, an American bittern.

Flowering cherry trees line the canal-side walk, bursting into luxuriant clouds of pink and white bloom in early spring, virginal as Victorian brides.  It is breathtaking to walk beneath them; I always feel I should salute them like sacred beings.  Sadly, this past winter’s late snowstorms felled several of the largest specimens.  As I greet the flowering trees in April, so do I the lilacs as well the following month, pausing morning and evening during their brief bloom time to savor their sweetly heady perfume.

Across the path from the canal is a low-lying playing field used in season by the sports teams of nearby Columbia High School. When our children were small, it was flooded in winter to create an ice-skating area, but that seems to have been discontinued, although the little frame Skate House still stands in the field. Old-time residents describe great town-wide winter gatherings at the pond and Skate House, which sound to me like a scene from IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

The flooded field used to attract ducks and geese, who would forage in the waters when the ice would melt. I always enjoy seeing ducks tipped over, tails upright, as they feed underwater.  I was also tickled to see a duck slip and fall on the ice one morning, its big flat feet sliding out from under him as he sat down hard on his feathered bottom.  Barn swallows enjoy this field as well, darting over it like stunt pilots, often daringly low, in their ceaseless quest for insects.  The birds raise their young beneath one of the park bridges in a colony of cup-shaped mud nests. When the bridge needed repair recently, Maplewood bird-lovers successfully petitioned to have the work postponed until the nestlings had fledged.

I negotiate the long but gentle slope up to the train station, past the large field where the music festival Maplewoodstock is held each July. This is also a favorite sledding hill. One recent summer, a mockingbird always stationed himself at the top of a lamp-post here, singing his heart out every morning. He must have moved south as winter approached (though many of these birds remain in the area year-round), or some worse fate befell him, as one morning, he had vanished. I still find myself looking and listening for him as I pass his lamp-post!

There is no need to waste words on the travesty which is New Jersey Transit, the agency responsible for the next stage of my commute, the 21.3-mile ride through the Oranges and Newark, across the Meadowlands and beneath the Hudson River to Penn Station. It used to be a fairly model rapid transit system, but increasingly starved of funds and bereft of leaders and advocates, it now provides commuters with decidedly substandard service, inadequate equipment and frequent delays and cancellations. Despite all this, I read my books, chat with my neighbors, and enjoy bits of trackside scenery, such as the wall of brilliant graffiti near Newark Broad Street station, and the ospreys which perch on power poles in the Meadowlands. (A signal indicator of an ecosystem’s health, the birds had declined precipitously due to pollution and rampant development, but have returned as the area has been gradually restored.)

But this essay is about my walk, so let’s pick up again outside Penn Station, a bland architectural crime perpetrated in the 1960s on the 1910 masterpiece of McKim, Mead and White. I emerge from the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere onto the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan with 650,000 other passengers who pass through the station each day, and begin my 1.2 mile walk uptown.  I have taken several routes north and south through the years, depending on construction and traffic patterns, and occasionally to accommodate shopping or other errands on my way. My current uptown itinerary takes me first north for a number of blocks, along Seventh Avenue to Times Square. (I take a different route back to Penn at the end of the day.)

After years of walking these blocks, I’m intimately familiar with the sights and sounds along the way, and I look and listen for them each day, just as I greet my mockingbird and my cherry trees.  For instance, at the intersection of Seventh and 34th Street, across from Macy’s (‘the largest store in the world’), I always prick up my ears for the East Indian newspaper vendor who chants ‘good morning, New York Times, Post, Daily News’ in a pleasant, murmuring monotone.  One of the last of a dying breed, he is there every morning, having collected his papers at the crack of dawn, and staked out his usual spot at this corner.

This account is not a travel document, so I won’t focus on the monuments and attractions along the way, although there are several sights which interest me.  For instance, there’s the plaque on the Macy’s building which proclaims ‘here the motion picture began.’  Really?? The plaque goes on to say that on April 23, 1896, Thomas Edison first projected a moving picture in Koster & Bail’s Music Hall, formerly on the site.  The Motion Picture Industry, the vague entity which affixed the plaque, is apparently incorrect, however, as there were considerably earlier projections.

TO BE CONTINUED!

When I left my office last Monday evening, a mini-demonstration in support of Trump/Pence was proceeding up Sixth Avenue. A little band of whooping supporters dressed in stripes and stars rollicked down the sidewalk in rampageous high spirits.  ‘Oh no,’ I thought irritably. ‘I’m going to have to deal with a sideshow all the way to Penn Station!?’

I didn’t have to; that was the one and only political display I witnessed that evening — but my reaction seems quaint to me now, and blissfully naive. Trump isn’t something I’ll have to deal with for 20 blocks, but for 4 long years!

When the unthinkable occurred last Tuesday, like most liberals and Democrats (and maybe many Republicans too), I was profoundly stunned. I walked around in zombie numbness for several days, knowing that eventually the novocaine of shock was going to wear off, and that sucker was going to hurt like hell.

And now it does. It’s a grief like any other, I guess, with its stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and (ultimately) acceptance. With faint interest, I note that my mood is much like that after my parents died — at first there’s almost an excitement; it’s engrossing to be the recipient of such decisive news. You reel a bit, sure, but you might even mistakenly believe you’re doing well. Then reality sinks in, and you glimpse the long, difficult road before you — to come to terms with a very big fact that will alter so much about your life and your mental landscape — and in the case of this election, so much about our country as well (I fear).

So here we are, taking our first steps down that road. I won’t offer advice or comfort; I have none; I only know that we must walk this place.

This morning on my train commute through New Jersey’s swampy meadowlands, I saw one of those ospreys I wrote about last time. Though they’re rather common, city-dwellers don’t get a lot of opportunities to see them, so it’s always a thrill for me. They’re majestic — over 2 feet tall, with bold brown and white markings. They usually perch on a branch or power pole surveying their favorite fishing grounds, as this one was doing this morning.
My joy at spotting this bird seemed to spill over into my entire morning. I found my eyes somehow ‘primed’ to appreciate the beauty and meaning around me — an adorable child in a stroller, the bright stripes on a woman’s bag, a cooling breeze on this humid morning. In the same way that a cross word with your mate can make you grumpy all day long, my brief encounter with the osprey brightened my whole day.  Thank you, Pandion haliaetus!

Photo by Yathin S. Krishnappa