My walker has mostly gathered dust for the past 20 years. That changed after I fell a month ago and fractured my right humerus at the crown, where it fits into the shoulder socket. My fear of falling again overcame my annoyance at announcing my movements with squeaky wheels, and trying to fit the walker’s handlebars through the insanely narrow doorway between my dining room and the family room. In fact, I have to face the fact, after several bad falls in recent years, that I’m ready for more wheels—as in a chair or scooter. I’ll be trying out both in the next few weeks. (Advice about that is welcome!)
Let me share a few salient facts about falling.
Now, if you want to set a dilemma for your next party game, have your guests get down on a wet tile floor and ask them to get up with their dominant arm tied behind them. Now splint their other arm so that they can’t bend it or brace with it. I promise you, hilarity will ensue.
Apparently, however, not everyone sitting on a cold tile floor with a multiple fracture in one arm laughs about it. The EMTs told me so.
They asked if I could tolerate them putting me on a body board, which would require them letting my broken arm hang suspended for a moment as they positioned me for the walk to the stretcher in my front yard.
My son suggested that he could use the cardigan my husband had thrown around my shoulders to cradle the broken arm as the EMTS lifted me.
Or would you rather I come over and lift it as we move, asked the calm, rationale EMT.
No, I said, let my son do it. I won’t hit him.
Later, I heard the EMT telling a nurse what I had said. Laughter trailed me down the hall.
Truthfully, this mishap has put a major crimp in my writing plans. Our lovely Book Mavens group has been very patient with my minimal input as I battled the first few weeks of intense pain. I hope to get back to sharing chapters of my new novel with them in the next week.
Writing has been a matter of using dictation software to make notes and draft poems. Yet it’s hard to concentrate, because this complex fracture at times overwhelms me with a need to sleep, as my body tries to combat the trauma and build up new bone structure. I have a hematoma the size of Brooklyn at the fracture site and the surgeon just delivered the news that I can expect that to remain for at least a few more months. On the other hand, my body’s remarkable ability to heal is revealing itself once again, and he has all but ruled out surgery.
So here I am, sleepy, traumatized, and unable to type with more than two fingers. So what is a girl very old lady with a penchant for words to do! Read!—at least, when a nap isn’t at hand.
See my short review below. And happy fall to you!
I wanted to read the third and final novel in the "timely and evocative" (NPR) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning New York Times-Bestselling author Attica Locke, because early reviews mentioned that Locke infuses the main character’s dilemma with all the trauma, confusion, and chaos of the Pandemic and the Trump administration. Intrigued to see how she might have done this without making politics central, yet illuminating how recent events have affected so many institutions, I eagerly fell into Locke’s plot.
In this volume, retired Texas Ranger and soon-to-be-indicted detective Darren Matthews reckons with his life’s purpose, forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good. His estranged mother makes an impassioned plea for him to investigate the disappearance of a local college girl, Sera Fuller. Darren doesn’t trust the mother who, he feels, abandoned him, but he also distrusts the fancy rhetoric out of a Texas corporation that claims to have solved the housing and health crises of the region through their new company town, where workers receive health care and housing as part of their contract. Sucked in and under fire, Darren battles a frightening array of Trumpist donors and elected officials, while he struggles to understand why no one seems to be looking for the missing girl—even her father.
I’m happy to report that Locke manages just fine this feat of merging political commentary with an absorbing mystery.
One of the ways she does this, for example, is by laying bare some of the shortcomings of Obama’s Affordable Care Act for a Black community struggling with low pay, uncertain employment, and rampant medical neglect. Sera Fuller’s father feels betrayed by Obama and frustrated by his inability to provide for his family, and he is lured by the corporate rhetoric and the special status he gains as a Black man at Trump rallies. Darren is frustrated by Mr. Fuller’s failure to understand that the Texas Governor, none other than Gregg Abott, is the one at fault, for failing to accept expanded Medicare for poor people offered at little cost to the state under the Affordable Care Act. Yet Darren must enlist the defiant father’s help if he is to find his child.
This is only one example of how Locke weaves her political analysis into the story line. All in all, she has given a master class that many of us may want to study for our own writing purposes.
Also, thank you for the reading tip. My Kindle isn’t full—yet.
Well said, my friend. I’ve been a wheelie for four years now, and the foray into SF for my mate’s medical care told me one thing. I’ve neglected my upper arm strength. No stamina to navigate a long hallway. I hope you find the right equipment to set you free to explore.