May.

My sister came up. Whooo!, I said, I like the boots!  These boots?, she asked. Oh, they’re last year’s.

We went out for lunch. She sat back from her food and exclaimed, apropos of nothing we were discussing, I can’t believe it will be May next week!

I was struck dumb for a moment. I mean, I can do the sums. I knew the date, so I knew that April was almost over. But something about the moment and the way she said her sentence slammed it into me. May in a minute. A third of the year eaten up and gone forever. And what did I have to show for it?

February, March and April all over.  Three whole months, 12 weeks if you like to think of it that way, and I have been living with a damaged and operated on and healing shoulder. Three months of pain and disability and physiotherapy and exercises and discomfort and dependence and frustration and boredom. But what had I done?

I didn’t mention this at our lunch. I let it sit for a while. I stewed on it.

Time has gotten blurry for me. I’ve stopped counting the days and weeks. Some days, I’m at a loss to remember if it’s a Thursday or a Friday. I mislaid the ability to rattle off how long it had been since I dislocated my shoulder or had the surgery. It was said, around the date of the surgery and by several medical people, that it would take about 12 weeks to recover. But some short while after waking up in a hospital bed my mind decided we wouldn’t count down. Maybe it happened when I tried the first exercise, the one where I had to hang my arm down as straight as I could and try to swing it about. It was so impossibly hard and excruciatingly painful my thoughts may have seized up. Or perhaps it was the first shower, the first time I tried to eat a meal one-handed, or the first time I almost begged for pain killing.

I don’t think I could imagine my arm recovering. I had to shield myself from hoping.

And yet, and yet. Over the weeks and months I have had my physiotherapy sessions and dutifully applied myself to the  exercises until they no longer caused such searing pain and became just a simple routine. Swing my arm for you? Hang it down straight? Piece of cake!

The things I have learned to do one-handed amaze me. The things I can now do with my faulty, struggling, damaged arm do too. Sometimes I have to stop and pay more attention – look at me, I can fossick in my bag now! I can open my wallet! I can hold a cup of coffee and bring it to my mouth!

I can drive the car again and at last. Just small trips, my arm gets a bit sore holding onto the steering wheel for too long. But look! Now I can do my own seatbelt up on the crook side; now I can use the hand brake; now I can reach over to the heating controls.

I can hold things in the hand that belongs to the arm that comes from the ravaged shoulder. Heavier things. My lower arm reaches out so my hand can turn taps on and pick things up. I can almost fold washing properly and I can make my own bed. I can hold the phone to my ear, I can use two hands at the keyboard, I can pull my earlobe. I carry my sling in my bag in case of an imagined emergency, but I don’t wear it any more.

The physiotherapist said the other day that we just need to work on strengthening my arm. It won’t be long now, she said in her encouraging way. I asked her what that meant in her language and she said, oh, maybe a few more weeks. I wanted to scrunch my eyes closed and block my ears. It felt that if I depended on her time frame I’d be disappointed. Don’t count! I warned myself.

I once met a little boy with a big smile who asked me if I knew what he had been doing that day. I told him I didn’t and he said, in a very happy way, turning five!

If someone asks me what I’ve been up to this year, will it be enough to tell them I’ve been getting my shoulder and arm back?

Or will they ask where the novel is?