Hello dear ones,
I texted my sweet friend Jaye when I was feeling an empathy overload & while she was driving, she replied via Siri: “Are you all in your fields?” Of course she meant feels, but it was a poetic moment of technological miscommunication. I was, in fact, all in my fields! I was all in the waves, the weeds, tangled in a bramble.
On Friday afternoon, I saw a doe limping across the road ahead of me. For once, I was grateful for the 25 mph speed limit & the other travelers who didn’t honk or hurry one another, as we waited for a herd of does & fawns to cross. Up close, I saw that the doe wasn’t bearing weight on one of her legs at all, except to climb up a small hill. My mind raced: who can I call for her? Not animal control. Not local wildlife rehabilitation. Not the police. For many reasons, these weren’t options. I began to cry.
I didn’t mean to, but I think I also saw myself in her. My right foot has really been hurting a lot this week in response to extra walking & bitter cold & the left foot, too, with my shifty hypermobile bones. I feel like I have a different body in the cold. I soldier on. I do my best. “What do you do for the pain?” my rheumatologist asked on Tuesday. I wrap my foot in heat, take an epsom salt bath, take my magnesium daily, & simply stay off of it. When I’m out & about, it takes less time for me to arrive at an 8 out of 10 on the pain scale. I must stop & sit in order to be able to walk back to the car & from there, I require a lengthy rest at home so I can recover & reset my nervous system. The truth is: there is no simple fix. There is no medicine I can take or surgery I can have that will ever make my foot stop hurting. When my doctor told me, after months of physical therapy wherein my progress had plateaued, my CRPS is not likely to go into remission, but that it had moved from acute to chronic, I was crushed.
Maybe someday there will be a cure! But until then, I get by. I do much more than get by. So I cried my tears for the deer, hurt by a car or a gun or some other twist of fate. I cried that I could not save or help her. Then, I thought of how she was surrounded by her family, maybe by her sisters & their collective babies. They let her set the pace - she crossed first. I thought of how she has adapted to move & not put weight on her injured leg, which must at least spare her some pain. I thought of how she still was limping into the blushing pastel sunset of a December afternoon, a sky that looked much like the paint my niece Margaret was joyfully mixing a couple hours before. “This one’s reaaallly pretty,” she said, again & again, pouring more paint into her little bowl, the colors changing like these winter sunsets, first soft pink, baby blue, lavender —then sapphire into yellow orange, the sky carrying the sun to bed after another short, miraculous day.
Who am I to say the life of the doe is less - that mine is less? Our existence doesn't just symbolize resistance, or an act of happiness in spite of circumstance we might not choose, but rather: we are complex, whole, & capable of experiencing the breadth of pleasure & pain life has to offer.
If you drive, please remember to slow down at dusk in rural areas. If you live in the country or have seen small critters around where you park, bang on the hood of your car from time to time to make sure those animals seeking warmth there can scram before you start your engine. Remember the worth of all living things. Remember your worth, too.
Until next week,
Annie
Soundtrack:
“I Think I Need a New Heart” by The Magnetic Fields
“Bug Like an Angel” by Mitski
“Easier” by Juliana Daugherty (a UVA Poetry MFA alum)
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