Dear Readers,
This month's newsletter arrives in your inboxes later than usual, but alas, these days everything is later
than usual in my life. My recovery from hip surgery has been a challenge, to say the least.
Earlier this week I saw my surgeon for my six-weeks-out follow up, and while my recovery has been excruciatingly slow from my point of view, he said, it has progressed as it should. The hip, according to him, "clings to inflammation," which means it takes months to heal. Unlike other ailments,
"working through pain" is the worst thing I could be doing. So, I have learned to pace myself. When discomfort manifests itself, let alone pain, I have to back off and take a break. I still can't sit for any length of time, although I have definitely progressed since my July newsletter when my sitting interval was 30 minutes. All that counts is that there is progress from week to week. Admittedly, every week I can do more: sit a little longer, think a little more, walk a little farther. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless.
Our porch has become a lifeline for me this summer as most days it was the only way I could be outside. I am so thankful to my daughter, who not
only planted all the flowers, but also took care of them when watering plants was out of the question for me. I took this picture today, when it's raining softly in Chicago, and I can feel fall's coolness wafting through the air.
I am looking forward to fall. I hope nobody asks me how my summer was when
school begins next week, and I return to my day job of handling communications for my kids' former school. As we were driving to my check-up appointment, my husband and I talked about what a tough summer this has been for us: dealing with my surgery, coupled with plenty of emotional upheaval with our kids (alas, such is life as parents), and my uncle's death just before my surgery. Of course, it could always be worse but I have found that to be little consolation when I'm the doldrums. I
have been amazed how much this recovery dragged me down. Strolling through Jerusalem's Abu Tor neighborhood with my son, August 2015 (Amazing how he was still shorter than me back then!)
Jerusalem is on my mind as tomorrow will be our younger son's first Shabbat there on his own. He left this past Sunday to spend his gap year between high school and college at a yeshiva (Talmud school) in Jerusalem. A bittersweet milestone for us parents: the youngest
has flown the nest!
I'm thinking of the past three summers when I always spent time in Jerusalem (probably because I'm not going anywhere far away this summer!). In particular I'm remembering the summer of 2015, when I first embarked on my Hebrew studies while my son attended sports camp. It was such a hot summer (above 100F every day), that we only ventured out in the evenings, such as on a stroll through the neighborhood of Abu Tor, around the corner from where we
lived in the little old house below.
I haven't been entirely idle in terms of writing. Once I was off the pain killers, I managed to pick up my work-in-progress (my book on how to write family history), managing an hour now and then. Thanks to all of you who volunteered to be beta readers; please bear with me as everything is going slower for me now. But I'm happy to report that I also breathed life back into my children's book project and got it off to a book editor. It's funny how a project can gain speed without my
planning. I embarked on a new knitting project (see this Colina top by Quince & Co.), as I can knit reclining halfway, and because I never can just watch TV. This top looks simple to knit but really isn't because it is worked in a seamless style. As I
struggled to comprehend the pattern, unraveling several times, I was reminded of my friend Mimi; she first told me about this way of knitting. I met her at the Kenyon Writers Workshop in 2013. Sadly, she passed away from breast cancer three years
later (see When a Friend Dies). Our friendship was only granted a short time on this earth, and yet she left such a lasting impression on me.
When I met her, Mimi had survived her first round of battling cancer, and she had decided to grab life by the horns and do all the things she always wanted to do (such as buying an apartment in Paris, traveling to Machu Picchu, or creating an art book to chronicle her family history, which is why I met her at Kenyon).
As I
knitted along and thought about Mimi, I asked myself, what were the things I still wanted to do? What have I left undone that I would regret not doing if I were facing death like Mimi was? One answer: Get my children's book out there. So I'm following Mimi's example--what's stopping me? Lying down, resting my hip, I read up on publishing a children's book. Stay tuned on that! It's daunting, but it's exciting.
My blog has been a great way to be out in the world throughout this recovery. It always felt good to publish a new blog post at the end of a week:
Now it's time to press the Send button on this newsletter so I can get off my butt and back to bed. I wish you a great rest of the summer and a wonderful beginning to my favorite season: autumn.
Greetings, |
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