Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty [126]
You’ve carried Wally for so long, your back may not realize that earth and sky now carry the weight. I visualized Wally on the floor beside his bed, and you bending over him, buckling on a harness and leash. You stand, and slowly lift him on his hands and knees and then higher, until he’s dangling like a little dog. At first you think he’ll be much too heavy to lift from this awkward angle, and he’s worried, too, but it turns out you can manage just using the muscles in your arms. He’s light, so light that his bones must be hollow, his flesh consecrated bread. You practice raising and lowering him (the harness might need a little adjusting) and then you’re ready for some fun. Wally loves the feeling of swinging in the air; he stretches out his arms and legs like a child playing Superman. You go outside and swing him in circles, until his eyes are parallel with yours again, his weight counterbalancing yours, making you both weightless. Effortless play, your back straight—you’re both encouraged to try some yo-yo tricks, swirling and arcing—somehow Wally’s soaring body has freed you from gravity so that you’re flying too, the leash connecting you. If you feel frightened, you know you can always climb on Wally’s back; this is his element. He can hold you.
Love,
Nancy
And I do feel, really, that the part of me that resides in the world Wally inhabits now, outside the boundaries of time and space, can soar. It’s here on earth I’m having trouble.
And it is time, increasingly, to be on earth. I return to teaching, at the beginning of September, at the end of what seems a long period of inwardness. Driving to school, the first day, I almost turn in the other direction. It’s been so long since I turned outward, directing the activities of others, putting my energy into meeting people, leading a group. I’m not sure I still can; have my resources been drained away, every ounce of me taxed?
Work turns out to be, in fact, fine, and welcome. There are times I feel I’m translating, in my head, from one language to another; I’ve become a citizen of grief’s country, and now I find I don’t always easily speak the old tongue I used to know so well. Some days I don’t feel I have the strength or attention to be a good teacher, and sometimes I think I’m just going through the motions, though if the students notice this, bless them, they don’t say so. The best days are affirming, energetic; I like climbing to something outside myself. Teaching poetry feels interior and external at once, personal and yet outer-directed, social yet real.
Working again means I have health insurance, so I go for a CAT scan to give my doctor a better look at my back. The radiologist, who’d usually just write a report, calls in some alarm, saying if ever he’s seen the scans of a patient who needs a neurosurgeon, I’m him. It’s the first time the diagnosis is firmly pronounced: ruptured disk.
But I am, strangely, feeling better, despite the grim picture and the definite terms; the sciatica that left me prone on the path a month or two before seems to be receding, gradually, though I dimly recognize that I’ve also gotten used to a draining level of pain. I make an appointment for a consultation with a neurosurgeon, though I feel relieved that it takes a couple of months to even get to see him. Meanwhile, more acupuncture, more massage.
And I turn myself, for the first time since Wally’s death, resolutely outward: teaching, readings, travel, a schedule so full that I hardly know where I am, or when, and somewhere along the way I realize I’ve done it on purpose, that what I wanted was a break from my inner life.
Of course we carry ourselves with us everywhere, no matter what, but working and travel and busyness can make for a very effective drug, a temporary screen. All through the fall, I keep myself swirling, staying on the road.
Whenever I stay in hotel rooms on upper floors, I keep my distance from the windows.
Before I know it I am driving to the clinic outside of Boston