The Sunday Letter #9: Road trips and gratitude
When you read this, I’ll be driving through the Adirondacks, counting down the hours until I reach the coast of Massachusetts. I left for the coast on Saturday morning, and hope (fingers crossed) to reach the coast by mid-Sunday afternoon. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve never driven through the States before and even though I know it’s irrational, I’m a little bit nervous. Crossing the border! Training myself to look at the miles on my speedometer instead of the kilometres! All tiny things, for sure, but together they add up into something that’s…still quite small. It will all be fine.
Anyway, what’s adventure without a little bit of thrill, right?
Last week, I went in for a long-awaited strabismus surgery to correct the slight turn-in of my right eye. It’s something I’ve carried forever, but it’s gotten more prominent in these last few years and has carried with it headaches and occasional split-second topsy-turvy vision, which is never fun.
My reasons for getting the surgery, though—even accounting for the above—were mostly cosmetic. I hated watching recordings of interviews that I’ve done and panels that I’ve been on and seeing my eye turn in; I hated taking umpteen shots for a photo that was supposed to go on Instagram only to abandon the idea because my eyes could never focus in the way that I wanted.
Mostly, though, I hated that all of that still bothered me. And over the last two years as I’ve waited for the surgery, I wrestled with so much guilt about doing the surgery in the first place. Wasn’t Disfigured, after all, about needing to accept and celebrate all of the different ways that we move through the world? Couldn’t you argue that that also, then, applied to me, wanting to change something about myself that was on the one hand necessary but on the other also for looks? Haven’t I also, coincidentally, spent the better part of the last two years revelling in a newfound appreciation of and for myself? Hypocrite, thy name is Amanda.
Or, you know, not. Because as it turns out, having disability freedom in an ableist world means being able to make decisions for yourself and your body that feel comfortable to you. It means having the agency to do so in a way that is also accessible—financially and otherwise—and bolstered by support.
But this isn’t a newsletter about ableism, is it. This is a newsletter about space. Kind of.
The nurses at the hospital were wonderful. Calm and professional and tender. As I was waiting in the hallway outside of the operating room my surgeon came to say hello. She had a scrub cap with planets and stars on it and when I told her how much I liked it she stuck her foot out, like she was about to do a pirouette, and said, “I have matching booties too!” And there they were. She was keyed up with excitement for the surgery, you could tell. Excited to step in there, excited to get her hands on those optic nerves. When she was referred to me as a surgeon the person recommending her said, “Strabisumus surgeries are her passion. She really loves the work.”
And I sat there on the stretcher in front of her last Friday and knew what it was to be held by someone else again, even if that person didn’t really know you and wasn’t really holding you, so to speak. The way that we can choose to believe in someone else’s care and judgment and expertise and know that it will all be okay.
The way that my mother, who drove me to and from the surgery, was there in recovery when I woke up. The way that she drove me back to my parents’ place and sat with me over the next few days as I slept and took Tylenol and ventured out to the garden at random moments. The way that the Dog of Doom parked herself outside of my recovery room door at my parents’ place (she’s not allowed in the bedroom) and laid there, dozing on and off, until I finished sleeping and came back out to join everyone.
What I am saying, I guess, is that you never know how many other people will come to orbit you for the briefest or the longest of moments. And vice versa.
I spent my first few days of recovery steeping in gratitude. There’s really no other way to say it. I was so thankful—for the care I received at the hospital, for the care I received from my mother, for the salad that my brother brought me 24 hours after surgery when I started to feel like eating again. For the garden that is focused on being its merry garden outself outside my parents’ house and is overflowing with good things to eat.
Grateful to the friends from north of Belleville who came all the way down to Hamilton to pick me up a few days after surgery and take me for a whirlwind 48-hour trip to the north for a previously-arranged book club visit. Grateful to the woman at said book club visit who told me, There were times when your book frustrated me so much that I had to get out of my nice warm bed to write down my feelings about it—only to find that I agreed with you by the next morning!
I don’t think I’ve ever received a better compliment as a writer. At the end of the book club she hugged me and went out the door and I’ll probably never see her again, just as I will probably never again see the nurses who prepped me so calmly for that surgery, or the porter who rolled me into the OR, or the anesthetist who cheerfully assured me I was in good hands before bringing me that oxygen mask.
I know not everyone has good medical experiences. Disabled people especially. I feel lucky and grateful (again!) to have had good ones, both as a child and now. To be in a time and place where I am reminded that people can come into your life for the smallest of moments and still care for you tenderly as though that moment is all they have—which, of course, is true. It reminds me that I can also be that person for others. We don’t all get to be anesthetists or nurses or even parents who are nursing their children back to health, but when your orbit passes that of a random stranger, why not reach for them with care? Why not say, this moment is all we will have, so I’m going to make it a good one?
As we all likely know by now, I think about orbits a lot. I’m thinkng about them especially today, as I drive through the hills and make my way to the coast to visit Jess’s family. A family that is also mine now. Here are some orbits that I was not expecting and yet also feel inevitable. I call them my in-loves: my sister-in-love, my brother-in-love, my mother-in-love, my father-in-love. The Dog of Doom and I will be visiting for a whole week (which may or may not be a disaster, given the DoD’s wariness around other dogs, but a week will be enough time for her to get used to these new friends! Or so I’m hoping!), and we will walk along the beach and look for signs from Jess (like the compass on the notepad in our hotel room last night, or the two dreams about Jess that I’ve had this week that both involved us meeting for a trip) and I will think, again, about how strange and wondrous a thing it is that we all get to be on this tiny rock in space together. Whether it’s for the briefest of instances or longer moments. How are we not all dancing out of our doors every day, drinking in the magic of the world? What orbits will I come across today, puttering along with the Dog of Doom in Stella the Red SUV? Isn’t it unbelievable, that we exist on this rock around this star, in this solar system, in this galaxy, with untold galaxies spread out each night in the sky above us? Isn’t the infinite nature of love—to know some one and care for them in whatever ways you know how, in all of your fallible, imperfect splendour, to pirouette in and out of each others’ lives with joy and hands out to hold each other aloft—a way of touching the infinite nature of the universe that rolls around us?
Big questions, small hearts packed as dense as neutron stars. I am grateful for all of it today. I wish you a week—and more—filled with gratitude too.
Currently Reading: Infinite Life, by Robert Thurman.
Currently Watching: Foundation, Season Two (am I going to pass up an opportunity to see Lee Pace in an emperor’s clothes? No I am not).
Currently Eating: A burrito bowl and churros from Quesada. Life is good.
Good god, Amanda, I had an eye-related partially-medical-partially-cosmetic procedure done this year too. Are you sure we aren't the same person? Also, absolutely grateful for all of this beautiful, mysterious, dizzying everything we call life.