Today is the
opening day of Ubmejen Biejvieh - the Sami Week - here in Umeå. My friend Eva
is the project manager coordinating this festival featuring cultural arts,
intellectual nourishment and a lot of plain fun celebrating the Sami culture in
Sápmi: the name of the cultural regions of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Russia inhabited by the Sami people.
I know it’s going
to be a week filled of colorful food for the soul: Eva is a rock always
bringing it together! I can’t be there though, but I trust Eva giving me the
stories in her debriefing-after-festival-mode. I will also miss out of
Norrlandsoperans (NorrlandsOperan, the opera house of Northern Sweden) winter
production La Boheme. They premiered Puccini last week, but feeling the music
in my body doesn’t quite take me there.
I am used to this
now. Umeå is a great city when it comes to all kinds of cultural arts and
festivals, but it’s been many years since I was able attend the events and
venues. As I can’t trust my body at all times, it’s too risky buying tickets in
advance, and therefore I need to make peace with experiencing the variety of
Umeå through reviews and friends big hands on Facebook.
I am still
suffering from my back crashing back in November. I spend practically all time
at the house on my couch and I still have home care and the safety alarm is the
ornament on my arm. I often feel like there is no progress at all, but that’s
actually wrong. It’s happening so slowly I have a hard time really noticing it,
but yes, it is happening. Little by little. Baby steps. But it’s a lesson in
patience and not aiming for the Big Foot.
At Christmas I was
able to dismiss the night patrol watching over me. I can’t even express the
relief I felt about that! And at the beginning of the semester I could start
singing again! Looking back now, that wasn’t a baby step: that was a pretty big step!
Only sitting up with my back support at a chair for 2,5 hours on Wednesday
evenings is like running a marathon. Add singing to that. But although I am crashing
on my couch exhausted afterwards I am so grateful and happy that I can do it.
Will I be able to stand up for our next concert that happens in three weeks
though? I have absolutely no idea!
Some time after
New Years I could also start taking baby walks. 100 meters. To Alida’s house
and back, 160 meters. To my new neighbor Ondina’s, 200 meters. At the end of
January I could even walk all the way to the creek, 400 meters x 2 (half a
mile)! I was so happy I could do that already, celebrating the accomplishment
on Facebook! Well, since then I haven’t walked a lot. There are weeks when I
can’t walk at all. So, that part isn’t going too well. Today though, to Alida’s
apple tree, 180 meters.
Since 1,5 week now
I am sitting at my kitchen table having breakfast!!! There are days when I
can’t do it but most of the time I can, and it’s so incredibly wonderful! I am
reviving my routine of listening to one of my morning records (there are
different music for different times of the day in my world), and the early spring-winter
sun is saying hello to the morning paper. And suddenly I found myself sitting
down in my naprapath’s waiting room! Until now I have been waiting for my turn
standing up, glancing longingly at those chairs impossible to reach. But all of
a sudden my body felt like it wasn’t dangerous to sit down, and so I did! It
took three months to get there, but I am there now and I’m so grateful.
Last week I also
quit moving the walker from the bed in the morning to the couch. I can now
stand up from the couch only supporting myself putting my hands on the couch
and table! And I am now allowed to watch TV without enjoying my favorite shows
THROUGH the walker, what a treat!
So, my great room
now doesn’t show any signs of a handicapped woman except for my couch campsite.
I am still mostly lying down, good days half sitting or sitting. You might ask
if I’m not bored? No. I am always busy. There is always work to do, and I have
even had client meetings here at my couch office! As a matter of fact, I even
feel stressed out at times.
So, not bored. But
oh how I wish I could go to the opera and enjoy Puccini’s Rodolphe and Mimì.
And it would be so much fun sharing The Sami Week IRL with my friend Eva,
experiencing her hard work and all her efforts for real. But this is where I am
at today.
And it’s not too
bad. I am in a lot of pain of course, but pain isn’t dangerous. Although it can
be scary, it’ just a drag. Peter from Civil Care was here a couple of hours ago
fixing me a tasty dinner. Oh, and shoveled some snow. And tomorrow Trouble 2
will arrive from Paris for a weeks visit. I think he will note my progress
clearer than I do, as he hasn’t seen me since Christmas. He will probably
measure my steps on a different scale and tell me that many baby steps might eventually
add up to one Big Foot!
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