Happy today, very
On Friday at Beth Israel Deaconess, I saw the surgeon who replaced my left knee. First they X-rayed both knees, both legs, both feet. Dr. Davis was friendly, agreed my right knee was bone on bone and very painful and actually asked me when I would like to have the surgery. I told him my best day would be Monday June 23rd, the Monday after I finish my juried intensive poetry class. He said it was fine with him. Tuesday I would get a call from the hospital to say yes or no to that date, depending on all the surgeries scheduled for that day. So at least unless I hear otherwise on Tuesday, I’ll get my bad right knee replaced. By now it hurts like hell to walk across the room. He examined my left knee, the one he operated on, and was surprised by my range of motion. Woody told him I did the exercises every bloody day. He said many of his patients don’t do them because they hurt. I said there’s a difference between useless pain, the pain I’m experiencing now, and useful pain – pain that leads to a desired outcome. He liked that and asked my permission to use the phrase with his other patients. So there’s an end to this pain in sight, this debilitating immobility when I who have walked miles every year of my life – walked from one end of Paris to the other, walked the Robber’s Road in Scotland, etc – walked four miles at least four times a week all the years I lived here until my treadmill accident – cannot no longer walk farther than a city block and that with difficulty. I know about the pain after surgery and the pain of the exercises, but so what? After a couple of months, I should be able to start real walking again. I dream of it. I dream I am on one of the paths in the woods we used to walk regularly. Sometimes in dreams various walks I’ve taken in various places get mashed together in weird ways. I dream I’m walking by the ocean or bay. This is not seldom but frequently, dreams of walking again hours, miles. Today I hope to plant more herbs and then plant a bunch of perennials I bought, especially shade loving perennials. Woody planted the remaining winter squash Thursday; I’d already planted three rows of butternuts on Tuesday. He started making the teepees with string attached for the pole beans. Tomorrow he hopes to do the last three, then plant the six teepees of beans. We had much worse traffic on Tuesday when we drove in to see my wonderful eye doctor, Dr. Gorn, who saved my vision years ago and who is retiring this month. My last appointment with him. Today, we were expecting terrible traffic but actually, once we got on the Southeast Expressway heading out of Boston, we did very well. Only about a half hour more to the trip than usual. I’ve read and annotated half the poets’ manuscripts, the poets who will be in my June workshop. The next few days I won’t get back to them, but then I should be able to. We need to finish up the spring planting and then get to some other chores: weeding, harvesting, freezing, pruning, feeding, etc. I am awkward in the garden with my bum knee, but I still love working outside. Some new bird has arrived whose call notes are foreign to me. I’m curious but haven’t caught sight of him or her yet. Perhaps it’s one of those warblers that pass through this time of year, far more easily heard than seen. Loud voices from small bodies. It’s so great to be eating salads and spinach salads right out of the garden, and very soon I’ll make a stir fry from the bok choi. My friend Helen Wilson who lives across the marsh from me will come by today or tomorrow to get some bok choi. She left me a dahlia from her garden – one that mulitiplied amazingly. Dahlias grow well for me but since I don’t have a basement, I haven’t found a way to store them over the winter. I only managed to save one this winter.