They tried to make me go to rehab, but the man said 'no, no, no'
I've had the Amy Winehouse song circling my head for hours, not that the rehab route recommended for me entails the kind of rehab she imagined: this would be more raffia mat making and relearning how...
View ArticleMoving on
The progress I have made through my recent therapy sessions is remarkable to me and almost incomprehensible to my nursing team. It has been a tremendous and terrifying experience to be here in rehab,...
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Balance
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.' I make no claims to a...
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Time
"It will take time to heal," they say - all of them. The therapists, the doctors and the nursing staff; the hospital rector, concerned relatives and wise friends. "Just give it time." And those who...
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Wonderland
Iola and I have been reading an illustrated, abridged version of Alice in Wonderland. It misses out many of the weird hallucinatory sections I half-remember reading to Maya while she coasted on...
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Follow-ups, or a taste for hospital drama.
I'd only met my surgeon - let's call him Dr. M. - once: he was in his operating scrubs with a white mask covering his mouth and his hands suspended in sterile awkwardness. We were only moments prior to...
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More on Dr. M.
It might be worth beginning with a few background facts:Seventy-five percent of Vermont is forested, making it the fourth most forested state in the US. (If you can imagine that Vermont is one tenth...
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Life Lessons
My stiff upper lip English-ness, which tends to keep chin wobbles firmly in check, has taken a bit of a beating recently. I have cried through a variety of teen movies and go all misty-eyed at the...
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The Start of the Fall
A series of days when the sky is paintbox blue and the breeze is soft among the trees. I'm regaining some of my energy and can stay awake long enough to see the sky packed tight with stars and the...
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The problem with history
It was Iola who started the conversation with the man at Shelburne Museum. We were in the museum's printing shop: a real-life museum exhibit with an authentic assortment of large cast iron presses,...
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The mountain
No longer broken but not yet quite whole, I accidentally climbed the mountain.Sunday was a good day for a walk: the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the mountain was at her most fetching. A...
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Words, faces and electric shocks
Some things seem inevitable: the stiffness in my neck and shoulders; the constant low-level pain; the restrictions in my movements; the itchiness around the area where my scar is healing (my scar, by...
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Faith
I've been reading a lot lately: Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies; Barbara Glasson's I Am Somewhere Else; Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines, and a heap of memoirs besides - accounts of misspent childhoods...
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Yoga greed
The yoga studio is stylish: stripped wood floors, exposed brick walls, ambient music playing in the background. Among the comfy sofas in the waiting area, a wide selection of expensive yoga clothing is...
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Thanks Giving Thanks
I've always told my girls that we're rich. We have money enough to eat what we want to eat and to help a few of those who don't. That's my definition of wealth. To have too much is, in the words of a...
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Cold
I've been wanting to write a blog about how it feels to live in Vermont in winter. I thought it would be easy to describe, but the words 'cold' and 'freezing' don't really do justice to what it feels...
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Disability
I've been taking skiing lessons. Downhill, cross-country, Nordic - it's all the same at the moment as the terrain is necessarily flat while I learn to balance, and balancing is something I now find...
View ArticleMonday Morning
It began as a fairly typical Monday morning: Nathan left at silly o'clock (at the start of each week his taxi picks him up at 4 am which, in our past lives, would have constituted Sunday night rather...
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The Curious Incident of the Sirens in the Night-time
There was another winter weather advisory last night - snow storms and strong winds. For several months now Vermont has been breaking records for the lowest temperatures ever recorded in the State....
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And then there were 5...
As a family, we've never been people to let the grass grow under our feet. We like change, we thrive on the new, we believe in grasping every opportunity with both hands and shaking it, just to see...
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"It's been a funny old year..."
When I was growing up my family used to watch a sit-com called 'Open All Hours'. At the end of each episode the main character, Arkwright, reflected upon the events of the day while clearing away his...
View ArticleGuilt
He wasn't with us for long: a foster child, a troubled teen, a child who can't read or write, a future statistic of poverty and social exclusion.I'm required by law to keep his identity secret, but his...
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Running
My writing buddy Isha's early morning run through Lodi Gardens in New Delhi, India. Since moving to America, I have become a fan of Facebook. I love checking in at the start of the day and finding...
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Rage, pathos, pity and skiing
Until recently, I have been able to treat my spinal cord as a difficult adolescent: I have lived with it, endured it, and trusted it to either bugger off at some point in the future or to start...
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Brain research and buoyancy and blacked out boxes
Every Monday evening I attend a compulsory foster training course for three hours. We're a fairly large group of people who represent a wide range of society: there are single parents, newly married...
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