We don't know what we have until it's gone

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. 

One does not love breathing.”

Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird

LATE MARCH: Even as I was pounding away at the last of the winter ice, I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. Due to an old injury, my right shoulder is susceptible to heavy jarring and sharp movement. But I persisted. I wanted winter gone and spring to be here.

TODAY: I am paying the price for that persistence. My shoulder is inflamed (supraspinatus tendinopathy, said the doc) and, while spring is definitely here, I am not digging in with abandon. I am having to play it safe, take it slow, and try to work around the pain that comes from lifting and forward motions with my right arm — my dominant arm, the arm I most rely on for most things. Without even thinking about it. 

I hadn’t ever paid much attention to that arm or any of my limbs, really. Other than always being too short to reach the top shelf in the supermarket and having to always ask a nearby tall person for assistance, I’ve been able to make my body do what I want and need without much thought to the wonder of it all.

But, today, now, I see that wonder and I lament the loss of the free use of one limb, albeit, I hope, only for a short while. (I'm doing physio to address the issue.)

In the final months of her life, my mother dealt with similar limitations. I watched her inch her arm across the table to reach the butter or Marmite for her toast; I realize now that she was supporting her arm that could no longer easily reach across open space to grasp what she wanted due to her own shoulder pain. In the very end, I served her meals in easy-to-eat bite-sized pieces so she wouldn’t need to cut anything up — that action being no longer possible for her right arm. She even allowed me to brush her hair, for she could no longer reach up and over to do that for herself. I am in that same boat these days, brushing my hair awkwardly with my left arm, reaching and lifting and moving things with my left arm — and learning with each movement how challenging it is to work with a non-dominant limb. This is an eye-opening lesson in the price of taking things for granted.

I don’t think it’s possible or even desirable to live every waking moment with the sharp awareness of what is but may not always be; life is too short and fragile for that constant prick of consciousness. But I think it is essential to know, to know within our core, that what we have in hand today may not always be so easy for us to grasp (metaphorically and literally). That what we presume to be the no-hassle norm for us may change in the blink of an eye. Anyone who has experienced the split-second shift from safety to danger, from secure hold to smashed glass on the floor can — and, likely, should — take that experience into their daily life. For me, the pain in my shoulder and the loss of easy movement reminds me of this just about every minute of every day at the moment. 

As I complete my exercises twice a day, I am learning that no day is long enough, really, for multiple sets of shoulder exercises in among everything else I want to be doing. But I know the exercises must be done and I know this means that other things must take a back seat — another (boring but necessary) life lesson: Compromise comes in many forms, including changing my plans for digging in the flower beds and planting annuals in pots. Meanwhile, the Lillies of the Valley are growing rogue up through a boardwalk they have no business in, but I can’t tackle them at the moment. Wish me luck — and strength — for the hard weeding job that lies ahead of me. One day soon. I hope. When my right arm will, once again, do my bidding without me having to think about it.

NOTE: Why a picture of goldfish in a bowl to illustrate this post? "Fish don’t know they’re in water. If you tried to explain it, they’d say, 'Water? What’s water?' They’re so surrounded by it that it’s impossible to see. They can’t see it until they jump outside of it." Source: https://sive.rs/fish 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Maryam Rostami on Unsplash