The West Commences: June 17, 2013

I turned 67 today. Fortunately turning doesn’t demand too much energy because when I got out of bed this morning, I was in no mood to leap. However, my right arm was able to reach up and pull on the cord to raise the blind and that’s more than it’s done in 3 months. On Wed., June 12, three months and one day after I dislocated the shoulder, I was surprised to find my hand above my head. Eunjung and I were preparing dinner, and she said or did something funny, which is not unusual for her. I threw my hands in the air, and they both actually went. We looked at each other in surprise, and she raised her arms to give me a high five, MILAGRO! Well, maybe not. I thought so for about a day, but then realized that what had probably happened was that my bicep which is getting quite developed thanks to the physiotherapy I’m doing had probably done the heavy lifting, not the atrophied deltoid. There are still a lot of moves I can’t make, and I don’t have a deltoid that can be seen, just a skinny arm with a bump of a bicep that’s about the size of a dinner roll, but quite hard. Thanks to Jay, I now know where the ‘lats’ are and that I don’t have any of those either. The triceps are the other muscles I’ve been working. But, I might have 2 working arms again soon. I exercised some uncharacteristic common sense on the hike on Sunday and decided not to go down into the area of broken volcanic rock and columnar basalt. I had done it last year and remembered as I approached that it was difficult to get solid footing there. I’m going to exercise (that seems to be the word of the day) that kind of restraint more often because I want to continue being able to do what needs to be done when living alone.

I certainly don’t feel alone on this day. I have very thoughtful friends and family. Mo and John had a surprise birthday dinner for me on Friday evening and Mo gave me a picture of the Wakefield Covered Bridge that she painted from a photo she had taken when she and her mom visited Wakefield last fall. I went to Bert and Peg’s last night for a birthday/Fathers’ Day dinner with them, Jules and Carol and Jean. Today, Barbara Chase and Cathy Van de Vyvere phoned to wish me Happy Birthday, I received some birthday e-mails, mom and dad just called and sang the song, alternating lines as neither had the breath to do two consecutively and at 5:30 I will Skype with Jay.

Thinking about Wakefield reminds me that I heard on the CBC news the other night that Senator Lavigne has finally been sentenced to 6 months in jail for fraud and breach of trust. It’s taken a long time, but the Faulkners must be happy that they pursued their case.

The recent interviews with Joni Mitchell have been another reminder of the past. I was interested to read in an article about her by Brad Wheeler in the ‘Globe and Mail’ on Saturday that it was while reading Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King on an airplane, that she was ‘moved’ to look at the clouds below her and immediately started writing ‘Both Sides, Now.’ I’ve always loved that song and I must have read that book just a while after she did. I’ve thought of it often since, especially the refrain that frequently runs through Henderson’s mind, “I want, I want, I want.” This has prompted me to get that book from the library and refresh my memory of it. Maybe the recurring thoughts I’ve had about it have been wrong, maybe not. Anyway, it gave me a kick to discover that a novel that I’ve thought about more than a lot of books I’ve read was the inspiration for one of my favorite songs.