Luck

March 11, 2013 started off well.  It was sunny and already starting to get warm when Mo and John picked me up to go cross-country skiing from Silver Star to Sovereign and back.  We took the Comet Chair to the top, and I was one to the 2 in our group of 4 who didn’t fall on the outrun getting off.  That seemed to bode well. The runs were still a bit icy, but I had put on the perfect wax and was feeling like a real skier.  We had crossed over to Sovereign on a blue run which seemed easy, so I decided to stay in the ruts for the downhill; they don’t put ruts in the really steep hills.  But soon I was going faster and faster and BANG!  PAIN! FURRY!  My right shoulder was dislocated again.  If it had been anything less than a dislocation, I’m sure my anger would have far surpassed my pain.  I remembered Jim saying as he drove me to the hospital in Thunder Bay after my first dislocation that he would probably have to spend his old age looking after me.  I miss him for many reasons, not the least of which being as companion who put the wind in my sails but also knew how to trim them.  Mo stuck by me again.  This time John was there too.  They are very good friends.  We had to wait about 20 min. for the ski patrol to arrive, and by that time I was cold and bent over.  I just couldn’t straighten out to lie on the meat wagon.  Don, the patrol, was a wonder.  He could see that my legs were fine, so he got me up and I put one leg over the snowmobile.  He got on behind me and we drove down that way.  When I moaned or screamed with pain, he said to lean back on him, which I did and felt better.  We made it out of the woods to the ski patrol shack.  This time there was no doctor to call to give me morphine and allow Mo to drive me to the hospital, so we had to follow official procedure and wait ages for an ambulance to arrive from Armstrong, all the Vernon ones were occupied.  The woman on the team was a heartless harridan.  Fortunately, she drove and I sat in the back with the man, who did his best to make me comfortable.  But the back of an ambulance is about as swingy as the tailgate of a truck, so the trip was not pleasant.  I finally got morphine at the hospital and then a brief anesthetic.  I awoke after a total of about 4 hours of pain to the bliss of painlessness.  Now I have to get the arm moving again.  I have an appointment with the same physiotherapist who helped me so much last time.  I hope he can work his magic again.  Mo stayed with me the whole time, her neighbor, a miracle worker was the nurse in the emergency ward that afternoon.  Mo and John drove me home.

We arrived to see Bill sitting on the front porch sipping a beer in the evening sun.  They all came in for a drink; I was still high on drugs, so we had a good time.  Bill stayed for dinner and the night.  He left around noon on Tuesday to continue his trip to Vancouver Island to see friends and visit mom and dad.  On Wednesday, the furnace conked, but I was able to get someone to check it right away, the same man who gave it the biannual check in the fall.  He had warned me of a possible problem, but I had done nothing.  He was able to get it going quickly, and now I will have the chimney liner replaced this week as he had suggested I do last time.

This week I’ve been looking for signs of Spring in preparation for an equinox party on Wednesday, March 20.  Everyone is supposed to show up with pictures of signs of Spring to entertain each other with.  Until today I had little other than a few pathetic photographs and a couple of short stories.  At Starbucks this Wed. with Lucia, I saw my first pair of really precarious platform sandals on a young girl with long, bare legs and a short skirt, but I didn’t have my camera.  Lucia tried to tell me something funny about that kind of shoe.  Many English words are used in Korean everyday language.  Their pronunciation only approximates that of English because of the differences in the alphabets.  There is no Korean sound that exactly duplicates the ‘i’ in ‘kill’.  The closest one sounds more like the double ‘e’ in ‘heel’, so they think ‘kill’ is pronounced ‘keel’ and thus call those wobbly high heels, ‘keel heels,’ thinking it’s a funny, rhyming English expression like 'kill Bill', two words that don't rhyme when spoken by a Korean.  She made the little joke so confidently that I was truly sorry I didn’t get it instantly and had to put her through the agony of explaining.  However, her explanation made us both laugh.  I remember reading that in the year 2000, English became the first language to be spoken more as a second language than a first.  Now, not just England and the USA, but the whole world can experience the phenomenon of being separated by a common language.  Imagine the difficulties I'm having learning to pronounce Korean in a way that even approaches being understandable to anybody but the most understanding friend.  The other incident that would have to remain a story occurred as I was walking home from downtown in the blazing sun of Friday afternoon.  I saw 3 people ahead.  One was an unremarkable woman standing on the sidewalk.  Next to her was a policeman in shirtsleeves taking notes.  On the road in front of them, pulled up to the curb and leaning on a shopping kart, was a shirtless, skinny, wired-looking man,.  He appeared to be a street person who’d been living on cigarettes and sweet coffee for quite some time, but as I passed them, I heard him tell the cop that ‘they’ were moving.  I don’t know if the cop thought that sufficiently explained the fact that in the kart, aside from some miscellaneous stuff were two very new looking motorcycle tires on pretty nice brushed chrome rims, but I found it a bit far fetched.  This time I had my camera with me but couldn’t imagine trying to give them some lame explanation for why I wanted their picture.  Certainly shirtless and short sleeves are signs of spring and the idea that that guy was doing anything other than shift some lifted wheels from one street to another and yet thought he could convince the cop he was moving seems like a good example of the old saying, ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast,’ but again I had no picture to show at the party.  I’ve finally decided that I’ll never get good pictures.  I have two stories to tell and today I went to a piano concert at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre that gave me the most glorious feeling of Spring, so I’ll mention it too and that will be that.

 My friend Marie gave me her ticket because she couldn’t go, so I went with her husband.  The pianist was a young Russian, Sergei Saratovsky, who is now living in Vancouver.  I’ve never heard such wonderful playing.  He seemed to have mastered the technical difficulties and to be free to fly over the keyboard with all the variety and vitality that his imagination and youth could command.  The concert itself was the most uplifting sign of spring I’ve experienced so far this year, and when he played as his encore, a short piece entitled ‘Lilacs’ from a longer work by Rachmaninoff, I was transported.  Lilacs were Jim’s and my flowers.  I’ve caused my self some bad times lately, but I still believe that sometimes you’re lucky; I certainly was to get that ticket from Marie.