The fall that brought me to this point happened on a terrace between two houses. It was a calm and moderate November day. Walking along, piking the mail, my feet suddenly slipped out from under me. I reached back with my right arm to catch myself, heard and felt a rip in my shoulder. Landing almost flat on my back, I regarded the clouds above me for a second. I had no idea what I was in for.
The shoulder and arm hurt for the rest of the day. It was something that would work itself out, I thought. But the pain remained the same until I delivered my last address. Thinking it would abate with some rest, I headed home and took it easy. But as the evening progressed, the shoulder only seemed to get tighter and the pain more severe.
I had problems sleeping that night and took the next day off. By mid-morning, the pain was excruciating. I called my boss and said that I had injured myself the day before and needed medical attention. They did not take it well, saying that I should have called when the incident occurred. But a sympathetic supervisor took my written statement and sent me to the emergency room. X-rays showed nothing. The doctor diagnosed a sprain.
Then started a series of events that could be described as a bureaucratic adventure. Doctor visits resulted in physical therapy and row upon row of forms that postal supervisors, doctors’ assistants, and main-office personnel knew the names and numbers of. I had to learn very quickly the mechanisms of government and medical institutions.
For six or seven weeks, I cased mail in the office, my work restrictions keeping me off my route. Sorting mail into the various routes in the office was difficult. At first, it was as if every different case presented me with a foreign language in an alphabet I didn’t know, like Russian or Chinese. It was only after a few weeks that I could approach a strange route’s case and sort the mail for that route into the shelves and dividers of the case without being completely clueless.
It was thankless and tough work, standing in one place for hours trying to figure out the progression of addresses in a case. The shoulder would ache through the day and in the evening felt like it was on fire. The days passed slowly. I found myself watching the clock, as I had at jobs in the past. I would see that it was 12:15 and work diligently, hunting and pecking at addresses. Thinking a great deal of time had passed, I looked again only to find that just 22 minutes had passed.
I was ready for the surgery when it came up on January 27, something to break the monotony and end the pain in my shoulder and put me on the road to recovery. The first week after the surgery is something of a dream to me. The drug haze and the trauma of a long and difficult operation taking its toll on me and my body. The second week after the surgery wasn’t much better.
I saw the doctor again the second week of February. He cleared me for work with very limited restrictions, so limited, in fact, that I have spent the last two months at home, living on Workers’ Comp and trying to be patient with the pace of recovery.
When I took the doctor’s note to work and found that I wouldn’t work for a while, I set my sights on writing every day. I had a book manuscript I’d been working on for months. At that time, it was only about 22,000 words and had been very frustrating. My 14-mile walks every day left my head empty as a soap bubble in the evenings. Days off were often given over to recovery from the week
Then, suddenly, I had time. The first two days off work, I disassembled my work and put it back together in a way that was coherent and made sense. It was the key into the writing and the story. From then on, I was able to write every morning, putting down a thousand to 2,000 words. I wrote until I didn’t have anything more to say, confident that the fermentation of ideas the rest of the day would set me up for the next morning.
And it worked. Within three weeks, I had finished the rough draft of the book. A good week of rewriting and smoothing things out gave me enough confidence in my work to send it out to my readers, who are doing their work right now. As I E-mailed that file to my readers, all good people who wouldn’t hesitate to give me a bad review, I thought, hey, I accomplished something.
Since I finished the manuscript and started waiting for my readers, I’ve been lost, or feeling so. I can’t shake the feeling that something awful is going to happen. Nothing like this ever happens to me, I think. Having the time to write, to walk, to think without the worry of work or rigors of the job. I’ve never had this much time off work. It’s wonderful but vexing at the same time. Something awful is sure to ruin my happy streak.
What could happen? In my mind, I’m fearful of losing my job, that the surgery won’t, in the end, be successful. I have taken to worrying about things I can’t do anything about. The terrace wall in the backyard is falling in, but rebuilding it isn’t on my to-do list due to the injury. The soffit on the back of the house needs attention, but I’m not getting on a ladder and hefting things for quite some time to come. The forms and whether or not I’m filling them out right is a constant worry. I have the feeling all the time that I’ll be found out to be a fraud.
But these are the things that have plagued me for a lifetime. When I sit down to think about my situation, I know that I’ll follow the doctor’s and physical therapist’s directions. My arm will become useful again. The pain will subside and I’ll return to my route.
And I can see an end. My retirement pushes further into the future with every day I miss work. A month or two off is another month or two I’ll have to work before I can sign my retirement papers at the Post Office. But I know that it’s just a few years. And time at my age passes so quickly that I’ll soon look back on this time as ancient past.
I can’t figure out whether this injury came at the exact right time or if I’ve just made the best of it. There’s probably a little of both in there. The key to my future is to keep writing. Was I born to do this or have accustomed myself to the writer’s struggle? It doesn’t matter. What matters is the discipline I’ve forged for myself at this moment. I know work will come and I will spend much time wringing my hands over not being able to get to the work.
So, soak it up, I tell myself. Take the naps. Read the books. Walk the dog. Spend time with friends. Heal. Recover. Time is running out.
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