“You should write about This,” my friends say to me, as they take it all in: the bulky blue splint with its five Velcro straps, the twee roller cart, the pajama bottoms I’m trying to pass off as trousers. (They’re brand-new and navy-blue: surely it’s not obvious!)
I’ve resisted Writing About This, until now, for many reasons, including: One, this is corrective foot surgery, not a disaster that befell me and would make for a really gripping story; Two, the prognosis is promising: This is not forever. And Three, I am getting all the help I need from my unbelievably patient husband. We are lucky enough to work from home, so these six weeks of being roller-cart-bound are not nearly as logistically daunting as they would be for most people.
I have absolutely nothing at all to complain about. Right?
Right. So I won’t. Instead, I’ll take a crack at the strangely surprising upside of it all:
I’m learning like crazy. It’s all stuff I’ve never had to learn before, like: how to be helpless and grateful (especially on those first few days); how to ask for help (still learning, but getting better at it); how to be patient with the mysterious, and slow, process of healing (ditto, with occasional colossal backslides); how to be humble (crawling or backwards-scooting really are sometimes the best ways to get from A to B, especially in a house with stairs). Re asking for help, my husband—who is now an expert on getting asked for help 50 times a day—has this advice: Be direct and to the point. Don’t couch everything in silly phrases like, “If you don’t mind,” or “If it’s not too much trouble” or “When you get a chance.” Also: “please” and “thank you” are always worth saying.
I’m reading like crazy. When you subtract real exercise, cooking, cleaning, shopping and driving from your day, you suddenly have a lot of reading time. You can read all of the Sunday papers, and even some of The New Yorker, and still have time for stacks of books. Here are a few of my May favorites: Elizabeth Strout’s new book of ingenuously linked stories, Abide with Me; Walker Percy’s stunning 1961 classic, The Moviegoer; Mirabai Starr’s memoir of grief and spiritual searching, Caravan of No Despair; Richard Ford’s memoir of his parents, Between Them; 
Finnish-American journalist Anu Partenen’s provocative look at life in Scandinavia versus America, The Nordic Theory of Everything; and Claire Dederer’s memoir of adolescent yearning, sex and marriage, Love and Trouble.
About Love and Trouble: Two different friends urged me to get to Dederer’s book as soon as I possibly could. I urge you to get to it too. It’s not an easy read. I also know people who say they won’t touch it. I wish they would, because it is an honest and unflinching reckoning with what it meant to grow up at a time when parents were often too busy with their own missions of self-discovery to pay attention to what their kids were up to. And Dederer’s writing is hypnotically engaging, especially in the chapter entitled “Dear Roman Polanski.” I won’t say more, except this: I forgot I even had a swollen, stitched-up, splint-encased foot while reading this book.
I’ve also had plenty of time to follow the super-hot new Sopranos-like soap opera, Our 45th President. I recommend Lester Holt, Brian Williams and Judy Woodruff when you need a break from having the news shouted at you. And if you haven’t subscribed to The Washington Post, do it now. (I’m not up on NPR’s coverage, since I’m not doing any cooking or driving.)
And, finally, I am deep into the Journals Project: which consists of re-reading and transcribing excerpts from my, um, nearly five decades of journals. This is a project that has been ongoing, off and on, for well over a year, but one which I now feel I may actually complete within the next month. Nothing like solitude and big chunks of time, time, time, for deep spelunking into my own past.
My motivation for doing this is to trace my spiritual life (or lack thereof) from age 13, when I began keeping an intermittent journal. It was a time in my life when I was fervent in my faith. I want to write about this. But first I have to remember it, and ponder it, and take it forward through the many decades between then and now. And having time to do that has been the second-greatest gift of this period of convalescence.
But there’s no question about what the first-greatest gift of this Blue-Splint Boot Camp has been: learning how to ask for, and accept, help. Many people have quipped that this is good preparation for old age. Yes it certainly is, and since my husband and I intend to tackle that project (old age) together too, aren’t we lucky to have this opportunity to rehearse? I only hope that when it’s my turn to be the butler/chauffeur/chef/caregiver, I can be even half as positive, uncomplaining and cheerful as he is.
Seattle-area friends: I’ll be reading from Her Beautiful Brain on June 17 at 1pm at the Kenmore Library.
Good, thank you. Joanng