Lucky Me

1/18/17

lucky me

had an extra session with Sara

to help loosen me up for tomorrow’s big travel to Miami

Jackie is in with Sara right now

Tracy just stopped by with airplane snacks

Micah is sacked out in the sofa bed watching t.v.

I’m at my spot at the kitchen

now Howie just got home from school

I just got a text that my chauffeur was on location in Ft. Lauderdale

so I called them, they had the wrong day, now rebooked for tomorrow

now my friend Marc is calling from Durango

at the start of my session with Sara

she noticed my left hand scars

burned badly when I was 2 years old

she burned her hand with hot grease the other day

and had a bandage over it

she focused on my middle finger, dry and peeled

with a split fingernail

she was focused on the trauma, the first trauma of my life

and the confused feelings that must have gone with it

not just the crazy physical pain, but the emotional –

how you must have been so conflicted, and your mother

I am feeling a lot of pain coming from that finger, Sara told me

I told her the story, the invented memory of a 2 year old

in the basement watching my mother iron sheets

the phone rings, my brothers yell downstairs, it’s Dad

my mother turns off the iron goes upstairs

my brothers come downstairs

I walk over to the mangler iron

like a giant rolling pin

with a hot bar over it

turn it on and stick my left hand in

it grabs my hand and I scream, somehow I am able to pull it out

before it got my thumb

adrenalin or a miracle or both

my hand was white as a sheet

my mother’s face was white as a sheet

she rushed me around the corner to the doctor

his face turned white

he bandaged it up and I screamed and howled and screamed

my poor mother

two surgeries when I was two, skin graft from my butt

two surgeries when I was fifteen, mostly cosmetic

but I was lucky, didn’t lose any use of my hand

until now

years later I was watching a t.v. movie

about the one armed outfielder Pete Gray

in the movie a young teenage boy was playing at home

he turned on a mangler iron and stuck his hand in it

he lost his arm

lucky me

I told Sara that it has occurred to me

that the trauma of burning my left hand

is maybe where this all began

but who knows, it’s not worth even going there

Thich Nhat Hanh says we need to forgive ourselves

for whatever it is that has caused us despair

embrace that troubled boy

in the middle of writing this I took a nap

Ashley stopped by with more food and her daughter, Piper

who gives the best hugs, she was hugging me in the bed

and Buddy jumped up on top of her

the guys staying with Howie and Micah show up and walk Buddy

and will then get all the house instructions

college friend Chris from Boston started texting me

I’ll be seeing him in Florida on Saturday!

Acra and Chris visited me for half an hour

they were grabbing Howie’s ski stuff for this weekend’s Snowbird comps

I told them what’s been going on

Acra is praying for me and that in itself makes me hopeful

there are so many people praying for me

I am blessed

it is 8 pm and we are still packing

haven’t had dinner yet

somehow we will get packed and be ready

and get some sleep

for a 3am home departure

for the 5:45am flight