It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.
— Mary Oliver, “Hurricane”
This summer won’t be shaping up to much for me. Still recovering from an April fall and subsequent broken bones, I’m aching and restless — and won’t be able to walk with both feet again for another month or more. I’ve learned to navigate the house in a rolling walker/chair — although my poor door frames have suffered. Any outings (once or twice a week for doctor appointments and/or my sanity) involve the use of a wheelchair, and people stare with the awkward, “Poor thing,” or the impatient, “Could you hurry up and get out of my way?” For the most part, recovery reminds me of the Covid lockdowns, stuck in my home for my safety — proper healing doesn’t happen standing up with such an injury. It’s given me an intimate look at life with a physical disability — the frustration of not being able to do certain tasks on your own, feeling helpless, trapped in your body with its limitations.
My 34-year-old brother KC has lived his life in a wheelchair, at the mercy of cerebral palsy — unable to do much for himself aside from grasping finger foods or a drink straw from his lap tray and pulling them to his mouth. Of course, I’ve thought about this through the years — when he asks what I’ve been up to, where I’ve gone, what I ate, who I saw. He’s always been deeply inquisitive and incredibly positive, but there’s always a strange guilt behind my answers knowing he’s not able to get up and experience the world in the ways that I can. Bound since birth to that life.
For the past 45 days, I’ve had a mere glimpse into it. And rain has fallen for me, blinding at times — my mind frantic and full with all the things I cannot do. Wasting away in bed — my leg elevated, required rest — waiting, waiting, waiting. A backhand to life as I knew it, knocked down by my own sort of hurricane. Fortunately, time will make me whole again, I remind myself. Not unlike the trees’ rebirth after violent storms tear away their leaves and limbs — my own stubbed limb, my miraculous body which knows what to do, slowly mends. Toward the end of the summer, I, too, will blossom again — my cheeks wet with silver linings and dreams.
