“Well, I’m goin a warsh everthing I can reach,” he said.
Once again, under the shower, my thoughts returned to Ennis*, as I awkwardly and carefully lifted my right shoulder to avoid a surge of pain.
Pain! How could this ever arrive to invincible me? It doesn’t suit my chosen role, defined by model good health and a great, upwardly oriented moral disposition. I’ve survived falls, minor surgery, and punishing gym subscriptions since I was able to vote. Somehow I’d never known persistent, nagging on-and-off pain, adult pain, such as this.
Finally due to the shutdown and unable to check with my usual MD, I self-diagnosed this as tendonitis. I was advised to check out a Youtube video to retrain the shoulder function. I really think it was excellent.
So after the first week of low-stress stretching movements on alternate days, holding a filled plastic water bottle – one week which I pushed to ten days – yesterday I tried to gradually bring some upper body movement into my Confinement Days Routine of cardio and resistance work.
My Grandpa Zillman, or “Fufa” to me, loved to tease us kids with improbable jokes or riddles. In his most woeful voice, he complained “Yesterday I could raise my arm way up to here,” (reaching to the ceiling) “and today I can only up reach to here!” (mid-arm level). Children laughing. We all loved the endless joking and pranks by that incredibly tall man, his Buster Keaton sobriety, and his real and obvious pleasure to be with his grandchildren.
But, woe is me, for the last two weeks, I could also ‘only reach up to here…’
Well, yesterday, after those ten days of training and strengthening, came a breakthrough. Pain seemed to be released, totally disappeared really. By doing some knee bends, halfway down, butt out, but not a full crunch, I picked up a rhythm and began to instinctively swing my arms forward and back. The forward motion was led by my kinetic movement, not by conscious effort, and in seconds I was swinging both arms up, way over my head. It felt great.
Encouraged, I proceeded to perform other arm movements, cautiously, and at the end of the séance was even back doing pushups, totally as off-limits as shaking hands or riding the subway, all strictly prohibited for the last few weeks.
My beautiful gym and pool will be closed until at least May 1st. How many other simple pleasures have we lost, along with our sense of free movement, and this shared loss of orientation? Yet I am aware there is bottomless pain going on, real people losing their lives and the lives of loved ones, and the massive struggle is only beginning. Speaking of shoulders, it’s very, very strong ones we will require.
Now back to my book. I’m half-way into Guy de Maupassant’s ‘Bel-Ami,’ a discovery, an enrichment, a joy.
*‘Brokeback Mountain,’ published in The New Yorker, by Annie Proulx, October 6, 1997