Never Again

by Heather Starsong

  He chuckled.

  “Is that your life work?”

  “Now it is.” He waggled both eyebrows and I couldn’t help laughing. “I was a journalist for most of my life.” He eased himself into his chair.

  I looked at the card again. “Leonard Barrett. That’s you! I used to read your column a while back. I was sorry when my local paper stopped running it. You had an interesting angle on things and a great sense of humor.”

  “Oh, well.” He cleared his throat, looking embarrassed and pleased. “I retired seven years ago. Keeping up with this crazy world got to be too much. So I just settled on being a curmudgeon.”

  He had me laughing again. “Certified Curmudgeon. What a concept. Who certified you?”

  “Oh, there’s a special board.” He tilted his head back, laughing with me. “Now you. What does your card say?”

  “I’m a certified massage therapist. But I see only a few clients now. I also used to teach dance and yoga.”

  “Dance and yoga. I figured you were into something like that, the way you walk.”

  A nurse came into the room pushing a cart with trays, not the crisp young nurse, but a middle-aged woman, dark haired, heavy set. She picked up a tray, checked the card on it, and set it on Lenny’s tray table. “Here’s your supper, Mr. Barrett.” She turned to me. “You’re Ms. Norwood, aren’t you? You should go back to your room now. We’ll be bringing in your supper.”

  “No, no.” Lenny waved his arm. “Bring her tray here.” He paused and looked at me. “If that’s all right with you. Let me start over. I would be honored if you would take your supper with me.” He tilted his head, his left eyebrow up again.

  I laughed. “I would be delighted.”

  “Good. Bring her tray down here,” Lenny ordered the nurse. “And a table or something for her to set it on.”

  “All right, Mr. Barrett.” She went out, and we heard her voice in the corridor. “Bring Ms. Norwood’s tray down to 204. Mr. Barrett invited her to eat with him.”

  Another nurse’s voice. “I saw them talking in the hall this morning. Aren’t they cute?”

  We looked at each other, grimaced, then laughed.

  Over supper, we learned we had both grown up in Massachusetts and both attended Boston University, although he’d been a few years ahead of me.

  “My father taught there,” I said. “Sociology. He would have been there when you were attending. Did you know him? William Norwood?”

  “I did know him. In fact I took three classes with him. He was an excellent teacher, a fine man. There was a clarity about him.”

  “He was a fine man. I still miss him. He was my first love, and as I found out later, a hard act to follow.”

  Lenny nodded, his eyes compassionate under his bushy brows. “I should think he would be. Well, it’s a small world, as they say. Here we are, far from Massachusetts, in a Colorado hospital, and find we both went to the same university and even that I had your father as a professor.”

  We went on to speak of our lives, our marriages and children. He’d had only one wife who died of cancer eight years ago. He moved to Boulder after her death to be near his daughter and her family. He also had a son who was married and lived in Boston, and four teenage grandchildren.

  We commiserated about the terrible food and laughed a lot. Then suddenly I was exhausted, my head aching so intensely I could no longer ignore it.

  “Lenny, I’m crashing. I have to rest again. I’ve really enjoyed having supper with you.” I got up unsteadily and reached for my cane.

  “Wait a minute.” Lenny drew his eyebrows together. “You do look beat. Let me call a nurse to walk back with you.” He pushed his call button. “Sit down until she comes.” I sat down again. My head was swimming.

  “May I have your phone number?” he asked. “I’d like to check in on you tomorrow, see how you’re doing at home. Maybe whine about rehab.”

  “Sure.” I gave him my number. He wrote it on his napkin and folded it into the breast pocket of his robe.

  The nurse bustled in. “You called?”

  “Ms. Norwood is tired. I want you to see her safely back to her room.”

  I got up again. “Goodnight.”

  He patted his pocket. “I’ll call.”

  Chapter 12

  As we drove home from the hospital, I asked Greg how my garden was doing. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve been watering for you. You’ve got some pole beans coming in, lots of tomatoes. I found a big zucchini hiding under the weeds.”

  A small moan escaped me. “Weeds?”

  “Well, yes, Mom. I know it’s hard for you to bend over to pull them. I’ll clear it out some while I’m here.”

  Greg turned into my driveway and helped me out of the car. “Let’s get you settled. You’ll need to lie down after all the nonsense they put you through checking out. Dr. Martin says the best way to heal a concussion is to rest a lot.” He took my arm and led me toward the house.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I want to look at my garden.”

  He stood still, frowning. “Come in now. You can visit your garden later.”

  “I want to do it now.” I set off with my cane, first around back to the vegetable garden. There were the pole beans ready to pick, lettuce, tomatoes and kale, and the big zucchini. But it was a mess, all the work I’d done in the last year erased by the fold in time. I started to bend over to pull some of the grass around my carrots, but it was too hard. I wobbled, leaning on my cane, and felt like crying.

  I limped back to the patio. The flower gardens were the riotous jungle they had been when I first came back from the mountain a year ago. Bewildered, I stared at what had been perfect order and beauty only a few days before. How could it all be undone?

  Roses were blooming in the midst of the tangle. I picked a blossom off the pink rose, sniffed it deeply. The pink rose had the sweetest fragrance of them all. That at least was unchanged.

  Greg had gone into the house with my bundle and come back out again. He stood on the porch. “Stubborn woman.”

  “I’m coming.” The porch steps were hard for my legs. I had to pull myself up with the railing.

  In the house, I put the rose in a vase and walked around, opening cupboard and closet doors. Everything I had cleared out was back again, the closets cluttered, the shelves full. My shoulders drooped. All that work for nothing. Could it have been a dream after all? A lightning-induced delirium, as my children believed?

  As I turned away from the front entry closet I almost stumbled over my pack. It was leaning against the shoe shelf, my staff and boots beside it. I eased myself down onto the floor and opened it.

  Tucked in the top was the silver blanket. It was real. They had slipped it under my cheek after they folded time and left it with me, gift of their love.

  Hands shaking, I pulled it out and shook it open. Light and iridescent color filled the entryway. I laid my face against the silken fur, warm with an unearthly radiance that I had known only when the Elirians embraced me. It seemed almost, not quite, as if I could hear their song when I touched it to my cheek, the way you hear the sound of the sea in a shell taken far from its source. Loss and gratitude poured through me. I gathered the blanket into my arms and pressed it against my heart.

  Greg squatted beside me. “Mom?”

  “See, here’s the blanket.” I held out a corner to him. “Feel how silken it is. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  He touched the corner, ran it between his fingers. “It is. It’s very unusual. Where did you get it?”

  “I told you. The Elirians gave it to me.”

  He pressed his lips together and frowned. “Let’s get you to your bed. You’re looking pale.”

  He helped me stand. I gathered up the blanket and followed him. As I walked through my office on the way to the bedroom, I saw that the calendar on the wall said 201
1. My engagement calendar lay on the table beside my desk. It, too, said 2011. Beside it was a list of phone messages I needed to return more than a year ago. My head ached and swam. I leaned on the back of my office chair.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Just tired.”

  “Well, yes. Are you now ready to rest?” He took my arm and led me to my bed, pulled off my shoes, helped me lie down, and covered me with the silver blanket.

  I lay quiet, holding a corner of it against my cheek, still reeling from the realization that all I had done in the past year was erased. But it wasn’t a dream. The warmth of the blanket comforted me. I took a long breath, remembering the words of my Buddhist teacher, “Do not be attached to the fruits of your actions.”

  In the next few days, I began to transition into life as an old woman. It was hard at first. I kept starting to jump up as if I could. I almost fell down the porch steps, forgetting to hold the rail, expecting to be able to run lightly down. My limbs were still heavy, my head ached all the time. But the worst was how weak I was. The least effort exhausted me.

  I poked at the things in my cluttered cupboards. How am I ever going to get this all cleared out again? I asked myself despairingly.

  Greg stayed with me for five days, watching over me, helping me as I began to take up the tasks of my daily life. I moved slowly around the house, using my cane for balance. Often I would start something, then need to ask Greg for help. The basket of wet laundry was too heavy to carry down the porch steps, the pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter too overwhelming. After each single effort, I needed to rest.

  “I don’t know why I’m so tired,” I complained to Greg.

  “Mom,” he said, standing over me as I sat slumped in my rocking chair, his voice edged with exasperation. “You took a very long hike. Then you got hit by lightning, fell and bonked your head and got a concussion. Then you lay soaked and paralyzed all night with temperatures below freezing. Any other woman your age would be dead. You’re doing great. You just need to heal.”

  I looked up at him, tears of frustration running down my cheeks.

  He squatted in front of me. “Hey, Mom. It’s okay. You’re really doing great. You’re going to get strong again. You’re already able to do more today than you did yesterday.”

  Lenny did call, the first night I was home. “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Pretty well. My son is here helping me get oriented. How’s rehab?”

  “Brutal. I should have warned you, curmudgeons don’t just whine. They have sometimes been known to bitch.”

  I laughed. “Bitch away.”

  “They wore me out. No sooner did I get settled in my room than they had me in their gym doing exercises on their machines. It’s hard to lift my arms; it pulls on the scar. Then they had me walking on a track that must be ninety miles around. After I had lunch, they made me do it all again. I’m wiped. I hate being so weak.”

  “I do, too. Any other bitches?”

  “The elastic stockings strangling my legs. Do you have to wear those?”

  “Not this time. But after my hip surgery I did. When they said I didn’t have to wear them any more I made a celebration out of dropping them in the trash can.”

  “I’m going to burn mine—slowly.”

  “They’ll stink.”

  “They sure will. Oh, God, here comes that nurse with all her gear to prick and poke and pump me. Gotta go. Take care, pretty lady. I’ll call you tomorrow. You didn’t bitch much. It’ll be your turn next time.”

  “Who was that?” Greg asked when I hung up.

  “Lenny. A man I met at the hospital.”

  “You picked up a man at the hospital and he’s calling you your first night home?”

  “I didn’t pick him up. I met him.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Older than I am, I would guess. Though it’s hard to tell. He’d just had heart surgery.”

  “How’d you meet him?”

  “We met in the corridor getting our exercise with our walkers.”

  “You pick up this old guy the minute you’re out of bed? You don’t miss a beat, Mom. What kind of guy is he?”

  “He’s nice. A former journalist.” Greg’s face was a study. I started laughing. “And I don’t know what kind of car he drives, since I only visited with him in the hospital, or what kind of shoes he wears, since he was wearing slippers.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Those were the questions you asked me about Zachary.”

  “Zachary?”

  “Never mind.”

  Four days after my return from the hospital, Greg took me for a trial drive to the grocery store. I found my old driver’s license in the little purse in the glove compartment of my car where I had left it on the morning of my eightieth birthday. The driving went fine and I managed well enough in the grocery store.

  Satisfied that I could take care of myself, Greg prepared to leave. “I’ve gotta get back, Mom. You’re gonna be okay now. Rob’ll be by to check in with you this afternoon. Just remember to rest.” He threw his bag into the back of his car, hugged and kissed me. I stood in the driveway and waved as he drove away.

  As long as Greg had been there, I had relaxed into the comfort of his presence, his talk, his caring. I hadn’t asked myself how I was. After his car disappeared around the corner, I turned up the walk to my back garden, my cane tapping on the flagstones. I lay on the grass under the maple tree, looking up at the sky between the leaves, watching the sun flash off the wings of birds flying over me.

  How am I, I asked myself, compared to how I was the morning of my eightieth birthday? It was hard to remember. Even though time had folded and my children remembered nothing of what had happened in the fold, for me it had been a year. I was weaker for sure. My knees were swollen. But they would have been anyway, I reminded myself. They always were after a long hike, sometimes for a week or more. On that morning my head had not ached as it did now; that was the result of the lightning and the fall. But my heart had been unsteady and now it wasn’t. That was a big plus. I sent a prayer of thanks across the galaxies to Kiria.

  I sat up slowly. Maybe I’m not so bad off, I told myself. The headache will eventually heal and I will get stronger. Before, I grew old gradually—one misery at a time—but this time it was all at once. I must be patient. I will get used to it.

  Some weeds were poking up in the ice plant along the edge of my flower garden. I hitched my way over to them, pushing with my hands, sliding on my bottom, and began to pull them out. I can get this all cleaned up again, I promised myself. A little at a time. Maybe I’ll hire some help. A strong young person, like I was, who can dig and carry and help me clear out my house, too. At least I remember what I did. I won’t have to make all the decisions again.

  Lenny stayed in rehab five days, and we talked several times. Once he got home he started calling me every night around nine. I could tell he was lonely and struggling, as I had been at first. We exchanged bitches, then chatted. He always made me laugh. I looked forward to his call, to sharing my day, and to having someone say goodnight to me.

  I often thought of the Elirians, treasuring the memories of them, hearing in my heart the echo of their songs. I must write the story, I thought. But I didn’t feel ready yet. There was more to come that might help me understand the whole better. How will it end? I remembered the smile in Merilea’s eyes as she had told me there was another piece to my ulada.

  In small increments I found my way back into yoga, beginning with the simplest stretches, coaxing my still-sluggish limbs into bending and lengthening. There were postures I would never do again, never again the glorious wheel with hips pressed up to the sky and fingertips touching heels, but many that I could do. I knew I would gain more with time, as I had after my hip replacement.

  The five back porch steps p
resented a daily challenge. I felt a sense of triumph each time I discovered how to overcome what had initially seemed physically insurmountable. I figured out how to carry grocery bags in—set them two steps up, walk up to them, and lift them to the top step. How to set the laundry basket on the top step of the porch, walk to the bottom, then reach back and swing it down. There was always the option of the dryer, but I loved hanging the laundry, reaching up to pin it to the line, looking into the sky, gathering it in fresh and sweet-smelling from the autumn wind.

  I could no longer squat in my garden, but I could sit and, thanks to the flexibility of years of yoga, reach across a bed. Or I could take a little folding canvas bench between the rows and perch on it to weed and trim. I could no longer mow the lawn running barefoot behind my push mower. I had hired a lawn company to take care of it, had cancelled it when I was young again, and now wondered how that would be affected by the fold in time. My question was answered a few days after Greg left, when two men with their big, loud mowers came roaring through.

  The pace of my life became gentle. I sank with relief into slow mornings, lying abed for a half hour or more after I woke, no longer pushed by the energy of a young body to be up and doing. I watched the sun come into the leaves of the cottonwood, counting each morning how many more had turned gold. Often I would get up, still in my nightgown, and wander into the kitchen for tea, then come back to bed to drink it, write in my journal, meditate.

  The frequent rests I needed during the day, stretched out on my bed under the silver blanket, gave me time to return to those ineffable processes that had been interrupted for a year—dreaming, musing, sorting the experiences of my life as the old do, laying flower petals on the path toward death.

  If at times I felt frustrated by my weakness and the awkward difficulty of accomplishing the simplest things, I comforted myself. It’s only aging. Aging is never easy. It’s the toughest challenge on top of all the challenges of incarnate existence, and comes at the end when, hopefully, we have accumulated enough strength of spirit to handle it.