​Last evening I got on a video call with my cantor friend for one of our weekly chanting sessions. One of my choices was Va’ asu li, a song drawn from Exodus. It speaks about the Jews wandering in the desert and about building a holy place in which to lie. The melody is simple and comforting, and ends with a climbing three-note series that follows me wherever I go. While we were chanting, a white tent appeared in my mind with me lying inside it. If I opened my eyes, I could see white fabric around and above me. In my mind, I was lying there, quiet and relaxed.
The sense of reassurance lasted as long as our chant. When we finished, I needed to retain the feeling Va’ asu li had awoken in me, so I wheeled myself through the kitchen and asked Eric to push me out. When I got on the deck, I sat behind the fence and looked at the green, fresh grass and the blooming lilacs while the song played endlessly in my head. And my body was full of peace.

​Every day in the afternoon Eric and I go for a drive out of the house. Driving has two purposes: dragging me out of my tendency to remain within the perimeter of our property, and giving Eric an opportunity to play with his new toy – an electric car that has every computerized feature you can think of and rides silently and smoothly.
            A few days ago, Eric asked me if I wanted to go to Long Dock. Long Dock is a park by the river built by Scenic Hudson (a non-profit organization whose goal is the beautification of the Hudson Valley) on land reclaimed from the river. I agreed right away; I had great memories of our last visit there not long ago, a visit that had been cut off suddenly. When the temperature had gone down and it was time to go, two new passengers had been added –  Nathan and Mickey. Nathan would walk the dog and join us for the trip back home. When we got to the park, Eric searched for the shady corner where we’d sat before, and Nathan set out with Mickey, leash on hand.
The spot was full of bright green grass and surrounded by rocks. If you looked ahead, you could see the river, gray and quiet, that reached the shore in small waves speckled with foam. Covered with thick vegetation, Denning’s Point’s tongue protruded into the water. In it were scattered wooden pylons, the remnants of an old, dilapidated pier. Eric showed me a cormorant sitting on a rock, ready to take off. Then I saw him spread its wings and fly, skimming the water. The color of the river changed to blue and then to gray again. A young man moved forward on his paddle board. He was standing straight, gripping a paddle that was level with the river.
Nathan arrived with Mickey and leaned on a rock, holding the leash. Families were sitting far away and chatting in low voices. A cool breeze blew by. I wanted to stay forever staring at the water, but it was getting late. Oh well, there always would be another time.

​A few days ago, I talked with my older brother’s wife over the phone. She was impressed with my progress (here I disagreed with her, but didn’t say anything) and my discipline (and here I disagreed even more). Then, she asked me what I was doing besides my exercises. I told her I was reading and writing, and also translating a book written by a mutual friend. I said that when I had just started, I would get really exhausted after translating barely a page, but now I could last much longer without tiring myself. Then I mentioned that a friend of mine had likened literary translation with an occupational therapy exercise in that it increased one’s cognitive ability.
My brother’s wife immediately agreed, and stated that people with brain injuries benefited from this kind of activity because it stimulated the development of new brain connections. Translating would help my brain restore his plenty of diversified neural pathways, and thereby give it the ability to reroute signals through different connections. That way, my brain would recover its lost mental functions – thinking, understanding complex information, and retaining facts in its memory. Exposing my brain to different stimuli (in this case, searching for the most accurate meaning of a word and for either the English translation or the English version of the original source of a quote) would result in the establishment of new connections.
Right after, she gave a great analogy of the success of this kind of activity: if people always walked in the same direction on the grass in the park, they would gradually erode the grass, and thus generate a single path. But if they took different directions, different paths would take shape.
As my sister-in-law was speaking, I imagined people walking leisurely in groups, chatting. They were walking on a lawn that was surrounded by trees. And they were walking endlessly. After hearing her, our mutual friend’s book acquired a new kind of appeal to me. I decided I would resume translating it as soon as I could. And as I tell the story, I see people walking in groups on the lawn.

​I always loved music, whether to listen to it or to sing. When I was in my twenties, I dreamed of writing and singing my own songs. I’m not a musician like Eric, but he and I always used to enjoy singing to the music of his ukulele. We owned several of Peter Yarrow’s folk-song books and CDs, and Eric bought a live looper. We had a lot of fun making music together. But what we would love most was singing Leonard Cohen’s Halellujah. There was no song that Eric and I would love to listen to and sing more than that song.
 Then I had my injury, and I felt that a whole world was shut to me. Little by little, one of the speech therapy exercises (blowing bubbles with water and a metal straw) helped my vocal chords to close, and my pitch got higher. Then my breathing exercises improved my volume. So, my voice got somewhat better, but singing at services had lost its appeal for me. The only one I want when I need a quiet, safe space to calm my anxiety and fear was the Havdalah ritual.
Since quite a few weeks, I’ve started to go on Zoom on Saturday nights (when I don’t forget about it), and Eric has been joining me. I’ve been following Ellen, my cantor friend, on the journey she’s mapped for the night. Singing those gorgeous chants and Havdalah blessings along with Ellen’s beautiful voice and the vibrating sound of the shruti box always takes the fear and anxiety away. Chanting is a deep sigh.

​The word “routine,” a “habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure,” as the Merriam-Webster dictionary specifies, perfectly describes my everyday chores. I wake up; Eric makes and gives me my meds; I eat my breakfast; the nurse aid helps me navigate through my daily exercises: speech therapy (breathing, exercising my mouth muscles, singing, and drinking), physical therapy (walking), and occupational therapy (arm and finger exercises); she prepares my lunch, I eat it, and she leaves; after she leaves, I read, write, and meditate; in the evening, Eric makes dinner, and he, Nathan, and I eat and chat; Eric makes and gives me my meds; he helps me brush and clean my teeth; he makes me a hot pack, if I need one; I meditate and fall asleep. And I repeat the same things every day, over and over. And I keep repeating them; and repeating them; and repeating them.
But when I wake up in the morning, my left leg is so tired that it can’t support me when I try to transfer to the wheel chair (my nurse aid has to be alert in case I fall); and my arm and fingers are still unable to move, so I can’t take a shower and dress by myself, or make lunch and dinner, or pick up a tray, or wash and manicure my hands; and I feel frustrated. Granted, I’m impatient, but progress is very slow. I try to remind myself of the phrase Eric made up to encourage me, “the three Ps” (be Patient, be Positive, and Push), but it doesn’t help.
When we’ve finished dinner and Eric is giving me my meds, I picture myself meditating and falling asleep, and in my mind the circle is rolling and rolling with no end in sight. And yet, I keep waking up, having my meds, and going through every part of my routine.

​Meditation requires that we devote part of our time to non-time; to do nothing. Being a freelancer, I was constantly at the beck and call of my clients, because keeping my client base was my major concern. Besides that, there was taking care of Nathan and of the house, and community work, and activism, and reading and writing. That’s why I would always feel I had no time to carve out.
After my brain injury, unfortunately (or fortunately, I haven’t decided yet), I’ve had plenty of time; Eric has taken up all the house chores (as well as caring for Nathan and me, and his job). Besides, I’ve given up reading any email related to job hunting or new jobs, whether from old or prospective clients. All I read are friends’ emails. So, I’m certainly free enough to meditate, if I make space in my mind. Since I never learned how to do it before, I’ve resorted to the help of a guide.
I meditate in the afternoon and evening, before going to sleep, always under the guide’s directions. But when a daily concern affects me, my mind resists meditation – it escapes through meandering thoughts. I try very hard to let the guide’s words envelop me and isolate me from the world of the present. Sometimes, my mind is so overwhelmed by current concerns, by fear and anxiety, that I can’t hear any of his instructions, and when I’m finally there, I realized I’ve lost him. But other times I’m successful; I close my mind to the outside, and the only external voice I hear is the guide’s. For a few minutes, I submerge into my inner world, concentrating only on my body. And when I reach the end of the recording, my mind feels rested, open, grounded. It’s as though a splitting had happened that separated my inside self from the world outside, and my mind were immune to every external onslaught. So, meditating has become my new anti-seizure activity, and I practice it at least twice a day.

​Last Sunday some friends of ours had dinner with Eric and me on our deck. We sat outside and kept our social distancing according to pandemic regulations. Our friends brought Sri Lankan take-out food, and we ate and chatted. We strolled along a variety of topics, all of them interesting: the upcoming presidential election; the wife’s new job, both exciting and unnerving; their children’s vicissitudes; mutual friends; and a description of the husband’s book project, which included unique features of the places he had visited, and their history and its protagonists.
The sun set without our noticing. It was starting to get dark and cool. Suddenly, the husband started to feel mosquitoes flying around him –  it was time to go. We said our good-byes and set on our different paths: we, toward our living-room, where my bed is located; and they, toward their car.
It was a fun evening, filled with everything I always yearn for: engaging conversation, laughter, enrichment, mind stimulation, and good company. It left a smile on my face.

I was talking to a friend who had decided to implement a marketing campaign to expand her client base. So, she asked my advice on how to put together a website. I told her that, given it had been so long ago, I couldn’t recall how I’ d done it; that she should look at it and then ask me any questions she had.
The conversation prompted me to look at my “offspring.”  The morning after, I picked up my computer, went on Google, and typed the URL of my old blog, Word Creations / Crear con palabras. That blog used to contain my translations of Latin American poetry into English, and bilingual versions of novelists and poets/translators’ thoughts on literature and on writing and translating poetry respectively. It was a journey toward the past – the past when I was able to walk and translate without being tired or having seizures.
It was a pleasant and, at the same time, nostalgic journey. I closed the computer right away, but the yearning stayed with me; what beautiful things I had been able to create and pursue! I couldn’t recover the work I used to do with that blog – I had neither the password nor the will, nor the strength to look up poetry worth translating or useful, appealing thoughts about writing and translating. I was no longer on Facebook. I no longer had the interaction with Argentine and worldwide poets or with poets and translators.
This was something else with which to come to terms. Maybe I would eventually choose to go back; maybe I wouldn’t be able to choose, and have to resurrect as a different “me.” So far, I’m still choosing to look ahead and avoid turning backward. What if I turned into salt?

​Yesterday I was talking to a friend who had decided to implement a marketing campaign to expand her client base. So, she asked my advice on how to put together a website. I told her that, given it had been so long ago, I couldn’t recall how I’ d done it; that she should look at it and then ask me any questions she had.
The conversation prompted me to look at my “offspring.”  The morning after, I picked up my computer, went on Google, and typed the URL of my old blog, Word Creations / Crear con palabras. That blog used to contain my translations of Latin American poetry into English, and bilingual versions of novelists and poets/translators’ thoughts on literature and on writing and translating poetry respectively. It was a journey toward the past – the past when I was able to walk and translate without being tired or having seizures.
It was a pleasant and, at the same time, nostalgic journey. I closed the computer right away, but the yearning stayed with me; what beautiful things I had been able to create and pursue! I couldn’t recover the work I used to do with that blog – I had neither the password nor the will, nor the strength to look up poetry worth translating or useful, appealing thoughts about writing and translating. I was no longer on Facebook. I no longer had the interaction with Argentine and worldwide poets or with poets and translators.
This was something else with which to come to terms. Maybe I would eventually choose to go back; maybe I wouldn’t be able to choose, and have to resurrect as a different “me.” So far, I’m still choosing to look ahead and avoid turning backward. What if I turned into salt?

​After my, third?, discharge, Eric heard from friends of ours that there was a new rescue dog at the animal shelter next to us. The husband told Eric this dog was great; Eric had to meet him. So, one day, Eric and Nathan were walking and met Mickay, fell in love with him, and decided to buy him. They brought him home when I was still healing, so it took me a while to get to know him. But when I did, I realized how smart and obedient he was, and how sensitive and loving.
He always licks Eric or Nathan’s feet, hands, and face, and asks to go out with them (in dog language, it means jumping and barking insistently). He immediately notices when a visitor is upset and gets close to them and licks them. If Eric and Nathan fight, he intervenes (that means, he gets in between them and barks). And, most important to me, when I’m lying in my bed (that means, all the time) he always begs to get on it (that means, he whines and wags his tail). If he sees me wheel myself in the chair, he thinks I’m going to go out and starts jumping and barking. If he’s right, as soon as Eric or my nurse aid pushes me outside, he gets really excited and stars jumping and biting my shoe, so much so that I have to order him to stop. Then, he chooses a spot to lie down and keeps me company.
I’m a city girl; I was born and bred in Buenos Aires, the New York of Argentina. We couldn’t have a dog because our apartment was too small. So, I’m not used to dogs. But little by little, Mickay grew on me. At first I said yes when he begged to climb up on my bed. Then, I got used to feeling the weight of his body on my feet. Now I miss him – I enjoy his company when Eric and Nathan are in separate rooms. He and I are great friends.

​When we’re learning how to make a movement, we carefully repeat each step that makes up the movement. Then, when we’ve mastered it, we can make it automatically. It’s like learning to play a piano sonata or dance a choreography. Once we’ve memorized the movements of our fingers or feet, we make them without thinking. Same thing with toddlers: when they’re starting to walk, they look at the ground and take their first steps slowly and carefully, supporting themselves on anything they can find on their way. When they start to drink, they use sippy cups. Then, they stop looking down to the ground, and waddle; and they leave the sippy cup. And when they become adults, they walk and drink automatically.
When I started walking with the crutch, Eric followed, ready to catch me if I fell. And he had to catch me quite a few times. I thought and thought, but couldn’t find out what was causing me to lose balance. Yet, Eric had a quick answer –  it was because my right leg was getting ahead of my left. I had to think carefully beforehand to make sure I took small steps.
Then I started walking with the harness and the crutch, and I almost fell again. My nurse aid also had an easy answer: If I wanted to avoid falling, I had use my right shoulder to support myself with the crutch while I lifted my left foot.
So many things to think of… to keep my balance, I had to pay attention to every move before I made it, and then breathe, and then make it slowly. And this applies to drinking water from a glass as well – to avoid coughing, I must pay attention to the amount of liquid I pour into my mouth and to the way I move my tongue to push down the liquid.
Whether I’m walking or drinking, I should move very slowly, recalling each direction I was given so as to get it right; I have to restrain my natural compulsion to rush; and repeat the movements I’ve learned over and over again. If I do so, when I grow up, I’ll be able to walk and drink without thinking.