Note: 4 years ago today, we were in Vancouver, in the middle of a global pandemic, dealing with the aftermath of John’s bilateral hip replacement surgery. He suffered a surgical injury during this time, resulting in a paralyzed right foot. He has adjusted to this, manages to do almost everything he did before the injury (firewood, regular swims, building projects, walking cobbled streets in beautiful European cities), but I remember the days when he was in a room at the UBC hospital and I was staying nearby, alone, because I was advised to think of him as medically fragile as he recovered; this meant no contact with friends or family. I remember those days, their darkness, and their moments of light.
Note 2: When we were driving down to the lake just now for my swim (John is back in the pool but I don’t want to give up the lake just yet, even though it’s cold!), John said he’d read this post and that he thought his surgery had been in October, 2020, not September. And he’s right! So I am ahead of myself, looking back. Ah, time’s metaphysics…

Because John is in hospital and visiting hours are limited, I am spending a fair bit of time in my rooms nearby. It’s very quiet here. I brought the wonderful Topeka School to read (Ben Lerner’s new novel) and I also brought two quilts to work on. Reading is best at bedtime, to sink into Topeka, Kansas, and the lives of the protagonist Adam and his parents; and quilting is good by the window in the afternoons when the weight of what’s to come in the next few months is heavy, not just in a metaphorical way but in my limbs, my thinking. I anticipate that John will make a very good recovery from his bilateral hip replacement surgery. It’s the unexpected thing that presents uncertainty. Will he regain the use of his right foot or will he have to learn a whole new way of moving in the world, compensating at every step for the loss of feeling, the damage to his nerve. Whatever happens we will do our best. When it’s light out, the trees brilliant gold and deep orange, the house finches busy at the work of opening maple seeds, I am ready for anything. But when the weight settles, I pick up my quilt and stitch free-hand spirals into the sashing between the log-cabin blocks. The process of moving out from the centre and then letting the thread find its way out into the open space is calming, in the way I suspect meditation might be. My meditations are of the practical sort though; they always have been. Kneading dough, weeding, watering tomatoes and easing their unruly stems around strings leading them upwards. So I’ll stitch and hope that the threads will take me–us–in the direction we need to go now. Sure-footed or not.

Why are you so afraid of silence,
silence is the root of everything.
If you spiral into its void,
a hundred voices will thunder
messages you long to hear.
                      –Rumi