Home

Well, we're home. We are home. It feels good, and it feels a little strange. I'm still floating in some space between where I needed to be to get Vivian (and me) through the halo and the surgery and where I normally live. Yesterday I went to my office briefly to print something, and I ran into a few people. It was nice to see them and to chat with them, and afterward I felt exhausted and a little hollowed out. I think that's just going to be how it is for a while, and probably my stamina will return a little each day, and then there I'll be again.

When I was in my mid-20s, I became aware of my tendency (ability?) to dissociate from time to time, only I didn't immediately recognize it as dissociation. I was a little worried about it and a little intrigued by it, kind of like how you feel in a lucid dream. Over time, I went to therapy and practiced mindfulness, and I filled my life with people I actually wanted to be there, and now it rarely happens. In fact, it may never happen--I haven't noticed it for a long time. It's good to occupy one's own body. During a period of intensity, it's also wearing. Is there such a thing as hyper-association, where you focus so sharply upon what you're experiencing that the rest of the world falls away or, if it doesn't, you wish it would? This is sort of what happened to me while we were in the hospital.

So now we're home, and I'm slowly reorienting myself to the people and the details that I put on fade because I felt compelled to.

Vivian is coming back, too, and really much more quickly and ably than I am. I was very worried about flying home with her because while she could walk on her own at that point, she was very wobbly, and her movement was slow and restricted. I feared the airplane lavatory! She also hadn't sat up for more than an hour or two at a time, and that only once, so I didn't know if she'd be able to take 4-5 hours of sitting. The days immediately after surgery were very difficult. She was in pain, but even so we had to move her from time to time, and it took 2-3 people to do so, none of whom was Vivian herself. On the second day she had to walk, and it was challenging and not at all intuitive because her brain hadn't yet made sense of the new configuration of her spine and her muscles. Because of the pain and because of the pain meds, she didn't sing and she didn't laugh for several days, maybe even a week, and that was weird to experience. Most of us laugh a lot, I think, and when someone stops you notice. It's the same with the singing: my kid sings all the time--last spring her t-ball coach told us she liked to stand near Vivi in the field because she spent the whole game in song--so it was concerning when she stopped.

But, really, each day she has improved markedly over the day before, and now she's walking on her own, and I think we will try to bring her to school for a few hours on a few days this week. We're still managing her pain with meds but only minimally. My hope is that she can return to school full-time after this coming week. It's also my worry because her bones haven't yet healed over the screws, and I want desperately for her not to get knocked by some kid or to trip or fall and so dislodge the rod.

I return to classes this coming Monday. To begin to explain how I feel about that, allow me share this image:

To the left of the frame, my bra. Toward the center, the underwire, which is to say, the support, the very backbone, of my bra. While I was on the plane on the way home, I noticed this state of affairs. You see the correlation here. The bra : my breasts :: my ability to support anyone : anyone. I am that bra! I am interested to find out how all of this will play out in the classroom. Thursday's arrival of a box from Wacoal (a rush order) suggests that, at the very least, come Monday I will appear strapped in and ready to go.

Speaking of apparel, here's another thing: I threw away two pairs of shoes because I walked across the central activities room so many times wearing them, and that walk meant so many different things to me, was so laden with worry and fear and anger and love, that I could not bear to look at those shoes again. So I am down one pair of flip-flops and one pair of slip-on sneaks. My sister-in-law, who stayed with us this week to help us with our transition back home, tells me that Vans are in again (I knew this day would come!!) and that I need a pair of ankle boots. Kristin also helped me to purge enough stuff from my house to be able to incorporate the many gifts Vivian received while we were in the hospital. On Wednesday I drove a carful of items to Goodwill, an errand that felt simultaneously good and bad. I love clearing out unused things from my house, but I also feel the weight of consumerism and waste even after I've shaken it off. My mom will arrive today for a 10-day stay, and I will enlist her help in getting the new things put away. Bill lowered Vivian's bed and pushed it against the wall--we're guarding against falls--and I'm finally writing this update for all of the people who have been so kind as to ask how we're doing, to offer their help, and to give us some time and space to recover.

The calendars in my house still read July when we came home. Bill had never flipped the months while we were gone.

You may be able to make out that little magnet on July 31st that says, "Doctor," and has a bandaid on it. That was the day we were admitted to the hospital. Now it's mid-September, and all of that is behind us. It's also in front of us because, you know, we will be back there in the spring for another surgery, and one day they will almost certainly put Vivian in a halo again. But for now we're not looking at that.  Today it's sunny in Tacoma, and when I look outside the lines seem crisp.