​The days have started to get sunny and warmer, and the snow has melted on the deck and the backyard. You can see the green grass, and green buds have slowly sprouted from the trees and turned into leaves. So, I’ve made going out on the deck after lunch part of my daily routine. Bright colors surround me, for the bushes and the peach tree have blossomed. My computer and my Kindle are on my garden table, and while I read and work, I enjoy looking at the life around me. A friend had recommended a book to me, Braiding Sweetgrass, and I’ve started listening to it on YouTube.
The author is Native American. She’s a poet and an ecologist. Her book compares this culture with Western culture: their traditions, their cosmologies, their relationship to the land (both connected), and their notion of property and the consequent economies. But the book is more than that: she also compares scientific (Western) and Indigenous ways of knowledge; she writes about Indigenous culture and language, especially about language as a way of knowledge; and most importantly, about the oppression of Native Americans and the elimination of their culture and language (and, therefore, of them as a people) by the US government.  
The book really struck me and resonated with me. I knew about the US government’s attitude toward the Native American peoples (very similar to the Argentinian government’s), but not in such detail. And it resonated with me because since we moved to Beacon, my relationship to nature has significantly changed. At first what appealed to me about my new home was the quiet, the river, and the mountains. Then it was the green and the multiplicity of colors in the spring, the summer, and the fall. Yet after the injury everything changed. Ever since I’ve started going on the deck, the backyard has become my friend and my source of solace. That’s why Mary Wall’s definition of plants as sentient beings stirred many feelings in me. As I was listening, I pictured a forest full of trees laden with leaves, full of life that will create life in further generations. I saw myself surrounded by trees and felt a strong sense of comfort and protection.
And that’s why I welcome this season and the gift of peace she gives to me. That’s why when I finish eating lunch, I’m always eager to go out with my Kindle, computer, and earbuds. I’m ready to receive my gift and thank her for it.

​When my nurse aid gets here every morning, the first thing she does is preparing my breakfast, which consists of a fruit and yogurt shake, prune compote, pieces of bread pudding, and water. For quite a while, swallowing the shake was an operation: to avoid it to go down the wrong pipe, I had to take half a spoon on my tongue, push it down with my tongue muscles, and tighten the muscles of my swallowing apparatus to send it through my pharynx. Since my hemangioma’s bleeding, I’ve lost my ability to swallow hard solids and liquids, especially thin liquids. That’s the reason for the operation. And when I’m swallowing water, I have to focus on each step and do it very slowly so as not to choke (I talk about it in the Water chapter).
Recently, my nurse aid brought me breakfast, shake included. I stirred it and started the steps of the operation: I filled half a spoon, put it on my tongue, and pushed it down with my tongue muscles. But when I was ready to concentrate on tightening the muscles of my swallowing apparatus, they tightened on their own without my effort! I was both happy and doubtful. Didn’t I need to make a big effort? Maybe just a tiny one?
After breakfast, it was time for speech exercises: breathing, flexing my mouth against the resistance of face flexors, blowing water with a metal straw, saying “a” and “e” for seven seconds or longer, sing a song, and read an excerpt of a book. Every exercise after the first two requires the use of my diaphragm to push the air I inhaled across my open mouth. And after the “a” and “e” exercise, I have to practice swallowing water (a thin liquid) four times. When it came the time to swallow water, I did the first steps (put the water on my tongue and pushing it down with my tongue muscles) veeery slowly. But when I was about to focus on tightening the muscles of my swallowing apparatus, they tightened on their own!
Ever since my success in swallowing liquids, I’ve been waiting for the tightening of the muscles to come, ready to tighten them; and every time, the muscles have tightened by themselves. I’m still doubtful, but despite my doubtfulness, and despite my need to verify the restored ability to swallow, deep down, I feell a quiet happiness, and a sense of achievement goes with me wherever I go.