ACCOUNTING FOR YOURSELF
This time I have a legitimate excuse for not having posted for a while: I went to the site 2 weeks ago and received note of a “Critical Error.” For a moment I thought it was referring to the 2016 presidential election, but no. Some dastardly digital dilemma had befallen me and I couldn’t access the site to even try and figure my way out of it. I tried for 2 days. Nada. And of course, WordPress would have to be one of the platforms that runs without humans. I could write an essay about this, but who wants to waste energy writing or reading about things that piss us off? Instead, Iet me express gratitude to Gary, our IT guy in New York. I am in awe of him, not only his genius tech chops but his Buddha-like smiling calm. And yes, I do feel just slightly gleeful that even he found it challenging to get this back up and running.
There were days when it looked really dodgy, that not only would 11 years of work be lost, but worse…all my loyal readers would be gone, just like that. I don’t know how many of you there are, I’m not interested in the numbers, but I feel you out there and believe me, that feels really good. So the possibility that suddenly we’d have no way to reach each other had me feeling bereft. Every writer needs to be read and over the years I’ve had the good fortune of hearing kind words from many of you. So this would be a good moment to invite those of you wish to be found in case of a future fuck-up, to leave a comment on the website. This way I have your email addresses – totally private. Ok. Enough of the digital world.
During this absence I celebrated what I call my “other birthday.” Thirty years ago on October 13th I broke my neck in a car accident and ended up being put back together with somebody else’s ribs during 5 hours of surgery and the wearing of a halo vest for 2 months. I was told by the neurosurgeon then, and several doctors since who’ve seen the X-rays, that they don’t know why I wasn’t dead or at least a quadriplegic.
Those of us who’ve broken our necks and survived are our own tribe and we pop up in each other’s lives in unexpected ways. This morning I read of the death of Travis Roy. He was 45 and had been a quadriplegic for 25 years as a result of an ice hockey accident when, just 11 seconds into his first hockey game for Boston University he crashed and broke his neck. He said it felt as if his head became disengaged from his body. I relate. He shattered the same vertebrae as me. For some reason these numbers fascinate me: 1stgame, 11 seconds, 4thand 5thvertebrae, 20 years old, 25 years a quadriplegic. For me: 44 years old, 3 weeks after I met Joel, 4thand 5thvertebrae, 30 years of living I so nearly didn’t have. Numbers, like life itself, contain both logic and randomness. If he’d stepped onto the ice 1 second before or after, if I’d had 1 less coffee at breakfast that morning…
All of us try to measure time even though none of us can know when we’ll run out of tape. These days many of us are overly concerned with numbers: The R rate, months in lockdown, 2 metres distance, 20 second hand-wash, months until a vaccine, vulnerability statistics, days until the election, number of electoral votes needed for a win, daily infection rates, lost wages, guns bought and on and on, as if knowing these numbers somehow will enable us to be in control.
When I read about Travis Roy this morning I felt humbled. He gave what remained of his life to raising money for people with spinal cord injuries and helped more than 2,100 quadriplegics, plus 5 million for research. He said, “Sometimes in life you choose your challenges, other times challenges choose you. It’s what you do in the face of those challenges that defines who you are and what you’ll become.”We’re all being challenged now, obviously some more than others, but none of us are escaping the impact of this pandemic. None of us can know what will be gained and what will be lost. Life is the ultimate lottery. Better to count our blessings.
Joel and I count ping-pong as one of our daily blessings and one of the reasons it’s so uplifting is because we don’t keep score. We play the ball and the ball plays us. We celebrate the great shots and laugh at the misses. In the end the only thing you can count on is the breath you just took. If you take another it’s cause for gratitude.
On a lighter note, while grocery shopping yesterday in a nearby village I saw this sign outside a gelateria:
The translation: “You can’t buy happiness but you can buy ice cream and it’s practically the same thing.”
I hope each of you finds some small happiness today.
With thanks for your patience.
As always,
Maggie
