Resiliency, patience and a broken wing…

I bought a necklace a few summers ago while visiting in Frisco, Colorado. It’s a small silver disc with three tree branches on it.  I was drawn to its simplicity. The paperwork inside the box said the charm represented resiliency.  It could have stood for a whole lot of other things—love, courage, or hope —but I was glad it was resiliency, as that seemed to resonate with me.  It reminded me of the swaying tree branches in the strong Kansas winds and how it’s the winds that develop the tree’s strong lateral root system. The following summer, I found a charm of similar size with a small piece of turquoise in the center, and the words “Protect this Woman” encircling it.  I figured, given the amount of time I was spending alone on the trails,  the silver talisman couldn’t hurt. For the last year, these two charms have dangled around my neck, offering me both protection and resilience, or so I liked to think.
 
My resiliency has been challenged after a fall I took while hiking a few days ago.   I fell in the mud.  Just typing that makes me want to laugh for some reason.  I mean, really… I fell in the mud?  I broke the fall with my shoulder and am now wishing my wrist had done the breaking,  as I’d be in less pain, but I had little say in the matter.  A week earlier, a friend had told me that being able to get up without using your arms was a good indicator of overall strength and progression of aging.  I thought about that while lying in the mud and contemplating my transition to vertical.  Either my core strength, with the possible help of one arm, was going to get the job done, or I was going to be the woman “who had fallen and couldn’t get up.”  I didn’t linger long on that decision and dragged myself out of the mud and onto my feet upright via my core, a small, desperately needed, victory.

I also pulled my phone and sunglasses out of the mud and cleaned them off as best as I could with my hands, as my clothes were covered in mud.  To my children who make fun of my phone because it has not one but TWO protective coverings on it, this is why.  I made myself sit down on a nearby log to collect my wits, survey the damage, and take a few minutes to put my head in my muddy lap and cry before making the two-mile journey home.  I’m not sure what concerned me more….What did I do to my shoulder?  Or …How quickly my plans for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, and possibly the rest of the summer had changed in one quick slip of the foot. I was a walking mud mess that couldn’t make eye contact out of my mud-smeared sunglasses with the two people who passed me on bikes.  Maybe they thought I had just participated in a Tough Mudder Run.  Probably not, but it made me feel better.

By the time I got home, I was in a lot of pain, and the only way I could hold my arm was across my chest,  with my hand on my heart, as if I was pledging allegiance.  And I did.  To never hike in mud again.

My fear was as great as my pain…what had I done to my shoulder?  Was my summer ruined?  How was I going to manage? I thought about a woman whom I was standing behind in line at the Gap a few weeks earlier, who was wearing a heavy-duty sling on her arm and was sharing her horror stories of pain with the man who was ringing her up, who had experienced the same injury and had worn the same sling.   I remember more of their shared words of pain than what I purchased that day.  Certainly, ice and a couple of Tylenol would put me back together again, wouldn’t it?

Webster’s online dictionary defines resilient as:
“Being able to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens; being able to return to original form after being pulled, stretched, or compressed.”

I know this because looking up that definition was the second thing I did when I got home. The first thing I did was take a bath, leaving my shirt on, as I had no idea how it was going to come off without scissors, which I was not going to attempt one-handed.  Just thinking about maneuvering my arm out of the sleeve was painful.  I put soap directly on my shirt and washed it along with my muddy legs and arms, as if it were a part of me.  I was thankful for the quick-dry material that was being tested in real time. The sports bra, I figured, I’d wear for the rest of my life or until this, whatever this was, was healed.

To Webster’s definition of pulled, stretched, or compressed, I’m going to take liberties and add “broken,” because that’s what the doctor in the ER later told me.  I fell in the mud and broke my humerus, or my funny bone. As soon as this stops hurting, I’m really going to laugh about that. He also told me I might want to change my shirt (that I had been wearing and washing in the shower, for over a week, and gave me tips on how to maneuver my arm out of the shirt with as little pain to the shoulder as possible. The sports bra, by the way, was removed on day four, sacrificed with scissors, in a one handed feat that took the better part of the morning.

This experience has tested my patience, exposed my vulnerability, and pushed me to do things that I’m very uncomfortable with, mainly asking for help. Having only lived part-time in Frisco for a few months, I didn’t have an extensive network of friends, but the two I had came to my aid before I had to ask, and for that, I was extremely grateful. 

I’ve also developed an appreciation for the very simplest of tasks that I previously took for granted, such as applying deodorant to both arms, pulling shirts over my head, or being able to slice a watermelon, because if it’s whole, it isn’t going home with me. My hygiene is waning to almost absent, but so is my social life, so I’m giving myself a pass.  I miss typing with two hands and am finding that this solo-handed hunt-and-peck method feels like a foot on the brakes to my stream of consciousness, not to mention the two-step capitalization process.  I miss being able to tie my hair back…a few more days and I’m going to look like the dark-haired version of my daughter, Emery, and her husband, Miles’ dog, Olive, who is about as close to a dog with dreadlocks as I’ve ever seen.  I’m tired of wearing yoga pants because I can’t get my jeans on, and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to zip them.  Oh yeah, and I miss yoga.

My necklace with the resilient and protection charms is in my purse, where the nurse put it before my x-rays,  no doubt with a new tangle or two,  which I wouldn’t be able to untangle anyway, and if I could, I wouldn’t be able to fasten the clasp, so in my bag it will stay.   One thing that a broken shoulder doesn’t seem to have affected is my ability to whine.  Sorry, but I feel like I’ve got at least another 24 hours of stomping my feet and saying,

“Dammit, I want to climb a mountain, zip up jeans, ride my bike, tie my hair back, and carve out a piece of watermelon to eat.”

I cried this morning when I realized that after deciding clean sheets would make me happy, I took them out of the dryer and discovered I couldn’t make a bed one-handed. I slept under a messy pile of clean sheets instead until my sister arrived. Sometimes you’ve gotta cry.

One of my friends compared me to a bird with a broken wing, which is precisely how I feel while perched in my bed with a blue-skyed mountain vista that seems to be beckoning.   Now is my “lay me in a shoebox with a Kleenex blanket to heal my broken wing” time.

Resilient?  I’m not sure.  I think I’ll have to wait and see what my return to original form after being fractured looks like for my answer.