Left Neglected

Chapter 29





My mother and I have been watching Bob and Lucy ski together on Rabbit Lane from our booth in the base lodge for the past hour. After a lot of badgering, whining, pleading, and negotiating—and ultimately because he truly did master the basics last week over February school vacation—Charlie finally won his wish to leave the lesson hill. We catch sight of him every so often bombing around on Fox Run. I can never see his face, but I imagine he’s grinning ear to ear.

“I think I’m going to go back to the house,” says my mother, her eyebrows knotted, coping with some kind of pain.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing really. I think the sun is giving me a little headache. And I didn’t sleep well. I think I’m going to go take a nap with Linus. You want to come?”

“No, I’ll stay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. You sure you’re okay?” I ask.

“I just need to lie down. Call me if you need me.”

She collects the cans of Play-Doh, board books, and trucks Linus was playing with and tosses everything into his diaper bag. Then she slides out of the booth, buckles Linus into his stroller, and leaves.

It’s early in the morning, and the lodge is quiet. I look out the window, but I don’t see Bob and Lucy or Charlie. My mother left me with a sketchpad and pencils, the word search workbook, and the latest People magazine. But I’ve already combed through this issue of People, and I don’t feel like drawing. I should do a word search. My outpatient therapist thinks that doing word searches might help me get faster at finding the leftmost letters on my computer keyboard, and I need to speed up my typing if I want to go back to work, and I definitely want to go back to work, so I should do every word search in this book. But I don’t feel like it.

Without a particular destination in mind, I decide to go for a walk. There’s nowhere to really go on foot except for the parking lot, and that’s probably not the safest place to go wandering around for someone who doesn’t easily notice information coming from the left and who can’t readily get out of the way. But I’m tired of sitting in this booth and reason that the fresh air will be good for me.

My granny cane and I step outside, and I’m instantly perked up by the cold air and the hot sun. Without planning to aim there, and continuing to aim there even after I fully realize where I’m going, I walk over to the building next door. I pause only to read the sign over the door. NEW ENGLAND HANDICAPPED SPORTS ASSOCIATION. then I continue up the handicapped ramp and walk inside.

I’m surprised to see that it looks like a typical ski lodge— pine floors, wooden benches, clear glass bowls displayed on a counter filled with hand warmers, ChapStick, and sunscreen, a wire rack loaded with polarized sunglasses. I think I was expecting it to look more like a rehabilitation hospital. There’s only one person in the room besides me, a young man in a wheel-chair, I’d say in his twenties. From his crew cut and age, I guess that he’s an Iraq war veteran. He looks confident and relaxed, like he’s been here dozens of times before. He’s busy adjusting the straps around his legs and doesn’t seem to notice me.

“Can I help you?” asks a man wearing a red and black staff jacket and an enthusiastic smile.

“Just having a look around,” I say, trying not to make eye contact.

“You a skier?” he asks.

“I used to be.”

We both acknowledge my granny cane with a solemn nod.

“I’m Mike Green,” he says.

He holds on to his smile, posed in gracious cheerfulness, expecting to greet my name in return, but I’m more than a little reluctant to give up my anonymity. His big white teeth, made whiter by the contrast of his skier’s tan—golden brown all over his face except for the pale, sunglasses-shaped mask around his eyes, a sort of reverse raccoon—show no sign of backing down.

“I’m Sarah Nickerson,” I say, giving in.

“Sarah! We’ve been expecting you! Glad you finally came in.”

Now he’s grinning at me like we’re old friends, making me feel uneasy and like it’s time to excuse myself and take my chances dodging cars in the parking lot.

“You have?”

“Yup. We met your lovely mother a few weeks ago. She already filled out most of your paperwork.”

Oh, now I get it. And of course she did.

“I’m sorry, she didn’t need to do that.”

“Don’t be sorry. We’re ready to get you on the mountain whenever you are. But you’re right. You’re not a skier anymore. At least not for now.”

Here we go. Here comes the inspiring and persuasive sales pitch about the wonderful and miraculous ski sled. I start brainstorming effective ways to interrupt him and politely communicate Not in a million years, mister, without insulting him and before he wastes too much of his breath and my time.

“You’re a snowboarder,” he says, dead serious.

Not what I was expecting to hear at all. Not in a million years.

“I’m what?”

“You’re a snowboarder. We can get you on a snowboard today if you’re game.”

“But I don’t know how to snowboard.”

“We’ll teach you.”

“Is it a normal snowboard?” I ask, seeing the way out.

“It’s got a couple of extra bells and whistles, but, yeah, it’s a regular snowboard,” he says.

I throw him the same look that Charlie and Lucy give me when I tell them that broccoli is delicious.

“What’s normal anyway? Everyone needs equipment to get down the mountain. Normal’s overrated if you ask me,” he says.

Normal’s overrated. The exact words Ms. Gavin used when talking about Charlie. And I agreed with her. My face softens, like I’m considering how delicious broccoli might be with a little Parmesan cheese sprinkled on it, and Mike sees his opening.

“Come on, let me show it to you.”

My intuition tells me to trust him, that this man knows a lot more about me than my name and whatever my mother might’ve told him.

“Okay.”

He claps his hands together.

“Great. Follow me.”

He walks past the veteran in the wheelchair and over to the doorway of an adjacent room, too quickly for me to keep up with him. He waits in the threshold, watching me walk. Assessing me. Cane, step, drag. Probably reconsidering this whole snowboarding idea. Cane, step, drag. Probably thinking that the ski sled would be a better fit for me. Cane, step, drag. I can feel the veteran watching me, too, and he probably agrees. I look up at the wall in front of me and notice a poster of someone on the mountain sitting in a ski sled, his musher skiing behind him. Panic starts racing willy-nilly through my head, begging any part of me that might listen to reason to tell Mike that I can’t follow him, that I have to go, that I’m supposed to meet my husband in the lodge, that I have to get back to my word search puzzles, that I have somewhere else I need to be right now, but I say nothing and follow him into the adjacent room.

The room looks like a storage warehouse crammed with modified ski and snowboard equipment. I see lots of ski poles of varying heights affixed with miniature skis on the bottoms, wooden dowels with tennis balls stuck to the ends, all kinds of boots and metal hardware. When I come face-to-face with a long row of ski sleds lined up against the wall in front of me, my panic can’t take it anymore and whips into a full-blown tantrum.

“This is the one I’d like to start you on.”

As I scan to the left, trying to locate Mike, his white teeth, and the ski sled he wants to start me on, I feel increasingly light-headed. I should’ve stayed in the lodge with my People magazine and my word searches. I should’ve gone home with my mother and taken a nap. But when I find him, he’s not standing next to any of the ski sleds. He’s in front of a snow-board. My panic sits down and quiets itself, but it remains skeptical and on alert and isn’t one bit embarrassed or apologetic for the false alarm.

From what little I know about snowboards, this one looks mostly normal. A metal hand railing is screwed into the board in front of the boot bindings, extending up to about waist height, reminding me of a grab bar. But otherwise, it looks like a regular snowboard.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“It’s not horrible. But I don’t understand why you think I’m a snowboarder.”

“You can’t keep track of your left leg, right? So let’s essentially get rid of it. We’ll lock it in place next to your right leg on the board, and there you go, you don’t have to drag it or lift it or steer it anywhere.”

That does sound appealing.

“But how would I turn?”

“Ah, this is also why you’re a snowboarder. Skiing is about shifting balance left to right, but snowboarding is shifting your balance back and forth.”

He demonstrates, pushing his hips forward and then sticking his bottom out, bending his knees in both positions.

“Here, give me your hands, give it a try.”

He faces me, grabs my hands, and holds my arms out in front of me. I try to copy what he did, but even without a mirror in front of me to see myself, I can tell that whatever I’m doing looks more like Martin Short imitating something sexual than like someone snowboarding.

“Sort of,” he says, trying not to laugh. “Imagine you’re squatting over a public toilet seat that you don’t want to sit on. That’s back. Then imagine you’re a guy peeing for distance in the woods. That’s front. Try it again.”

Still holding on to his hands, I’m about to rock forward, but I freeze up, feeling funny about pretending to pee on Mike.

“Sorry, my description’s a little graphic, but it works. Forward and up on your toes, back and sitting on your heels.”

I give it another go. I send my right hip forward and then back, forward and then back. And, unlike when I move my right leg or my right hand, when I move my right hip, my left hip goes with it. Always. If this is how to steer a snowboard, then it seems as though I could do it.

“But what about stopping? How would I control my speed?”

“This rider bar here is for your balance, like how you’re holding on to my hands now. But to begin with, it’s also for one of us instructors to hold on to. If we go up today, I’ll snowboard facing you, and I’ll control how fast you go. When you’ve got your balance down, we’ll transition you to one of these.”

He shows me another snowboard. This one doesn’t have a grab bar, and at first I don’t notice anything special about it. Then Mike loops a black cord through a metal loop attached to one end of the board.

“Instead of me pushing against you from the front, I’ll hold on to this tether from behind you to help regulate your speed.”

I imagine a dog on a leash.

“And then, from there, you’ll do it on your own.”

He whips the tether out of the loop as if to say Tada! A normal snowboard!

“But how would I keep from crashing into other people on the trail? If I’m concentrating on anything, I can’t see things on my left.”

He smiles, recognizing that he’s got me imagining myself on the mountain.

“That’s my job until you can do it on your own. And when you try it without the rider bar, you can transition to using an outrigger if you want,” he says, now holding up a ski pole with a small ski attached to the bottom. “This would give you an additional point of contact with the ground, like your cane does, offering you some extra stability.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

I search around for another but, but I can’t find any.

“Come on, let’s give it a try. It’s a beautiful day, and I’d love to get out there,” he says.

“You said that my mother filled out most of my paperwork?” I say, turning over my last stone of possible resistance.

“Ah, yes. There are a couple of standard questions we always ask that only you can answer.”

“Okay.”

“What are your short-term winter sport goals?”

I think. As of a few minutes ago, my only goal for today was to go for a walk.

“Um, to snowboard down the hill without killing myself or anyone else.”

“Great. We can accomplish that. And how about long-term goals?”

“I guess to snowboard without needing any help. And eventually, I want to ski again.”

“Perfect. Now how about life goals? What are your short-term life goals?”

I don’t quite see how this information would in any way affect my ability to snowboard, but I have a ready answer, so I offer it to him.

“To go back to work.”

“What do you do?”

“I was the vice president of human resources for a strategy consulting firm in Boston.”

“Wow. Sounds impressive. And what are your long-term goals?”

Before the accident, I’d been hoping to be promoted to president of human resources in the next two years. Bob and I were saving to buy a bigger house in Welmont with at least five bedrooms. We planned to hire a live-in nanny. But now, since the accident, those goals seem a little irrelevant, if not ridiculous.

“To get my life back.”

“Alright, Sarah, I’m so glad you came in. You ready to go snowboarding with me?”

Spent from all the unnecessary distress, my panic is now snuggled in a soft blanket and sleeping peacefully. Pre-accident me isn’t jumping up and down about this idea, but she isn’t arguing against it either. And Bob isn’t here to weigh in. So it’s up to me.

“Okay, let’s do it.”



MIKE PULLS ME BY THE rider bar onto the Magic Carpet lift, and we move, both standing on our snowboards, up the slight but steady incline of Rabbit Lane. The Magic Carpet is like a conveyor belt, and the people on it—mostly young children, a few parents, a couple of instructors, Mike and me—remind me of pieces of luggage at the airport or groceries at the supermarket riding along a ribbon of black rubber, waiting to be scanned.

I look around for Bob and Lucy, both wanting them to see me and praying that they don’t. What is Bob going to think when he sees me on a handicapped snowboard? Will he think I’ve given in to my Neglect and given up? Have I given up? Is this accommodating or failing? Should I have waited until I’m recovered enough to ski like I used to? What if that never happens? Are my only two acceptable choices sitting in the booth in the lodge or skiing like I did before the accident, with nothing in between? What if someone from work is here for the weekend and sees me? What if Richard is here and sees me clutching on to a grab bar, guided by an instructor from the New England Handicapped Sports Association? I don’t want anyone to see me like this.

What am I doing? This might’ve been a really impulsive, really bad decision. As we approach the top—which isn’t the top of anything but simply the arbitrary end of the Magic Carpet, visible from the booth I was safely sitting in back in the lodge before I had to go nosing around—the anxious chatter in my head grows louder and stronger, blooming into a full-fledged panic.

I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to snowboard. I want to go back to my booth and work on my word search puzzles. I want to be at the bottom of the hill. But we’re at the top of the lift now, and there is no Magic Carpet ride to the bottom. And unlike the kids who freeze up and freak out for their own legitimate or irrational reasons, I can’t decide to abandon my board and walk the moderate distance to the bottom. My granny cane is back inside the NEHSA building, and I can’t imagine that Mike would agree to assist me down the hill on foot without at least my giving the snow-board an honest try.

Mike yanks me to the side so I don’t cause a pileup at the end of the conveyor belt. He then turns and faces me and places his hands outside of mine on the rider bar.

“Ready?” he asks, his teeth all excited.

“No,” I say, clenching mine, trying not to cry.

“Sure you are. Let’s start by sliding forward a little.”

He leans downhill, and we begin to move. Whether I like it or not (and it’s decidedly not), I’m about to snowboard.

“Great, Sarah! How does it feel?”

How does it feel? It feels like excitement and terror are tumbling around inside my chest like clothes in a dryer. Each second I’m overwhelmed with one and then the other.

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s try turning. Remember, peeing in the woods to go left, squatting over the toilet to go right. Forward and up on your toes, back and on your heels. Let’s try forward first.”

I rock my hips forward, and we begin to turn left. And that feels horribly wrong. I lock up my knees, stack my hips over my thighs, and stand upright. I lose all control over my balance, but then I feel Mike correcting for me, and he keeps me from falling down.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I don’t like turning left. I can’t see where I’m going before we’re already there, and it scares me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye out for where we’re going. I promise we won’t hit anyone or anything, okay?”

“I don’t want to go left.”

“Okay. Let’s slide a little, and when you’re ready, go back on your heels and turn right.”

He nudges backward on the rider bar, and we begin sliding down the hill together. After a few seconds, I go back onto my heels, squatting over the imaginary toilet, and we turn to the right. I return my hips to neutral, and we slide forward. I decide to do it again. Squat, heels, neutral, forward. Squat, heels, neutral, forward.

“Great, Sarah! You’re snowboarding!”

I am? I release my concentration from the death grip it’s got on the separate steps of what I’m doing and begin to realize the whole of what I’m doing. Slide, turn, slide. Slide, turn, slide.

“I’m snowboarding!”

“How do you feel?” he asks.

How do I feel? Even though Mike is maintaining my balance and checking my speed, I decide when we turn and when we go downhill. I feel free and independent. And even though I’m holding on to a handicapped bar and normal snowboards don’t have handicapped bars, I don’t feel abnormal or handicapped. Walking with Neglect is so belabored and choppy, requiring miles of effort to drag myself a few miserable feet. As we glide down the hill on our snowboards, I feel fluid and graceful and natural. I feel the sun and breeze on my face. I feel joy.

We come to a stop at the bottom, still facing each other. I look at Mike’s smiling face and see my reflection in his polarized sunglasses. My teeth look as huge and excited as his do. How do I feel? I feel like Mike hurled a huge rock through the glass wall of my preconceptions, hitting it dead center, shattering my fear into a million glittery pieces on the snow around me. I feel unburdened and beyond grateful.

“I feel like I want to do that again.”

“Awesome! Let’s go!”

Now on flat terrain, Mike pops one of his boots out of the binding and tows me by the rider bar over to the Magic Carpet. Because he’s with NEHSA, we’re heading to the front, cutting the entire line.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

It’s Lucy, standing next to Bob in line ahead of us. And Charlie is with them. Mike pulls me alongside them, and I introduce him to my family.

“Look at you!” says Bob, surprised to see me, but beaming, not a trace of disappointment or judgment in his words or in his eyes, where I can always see his truth.

“Look at me!” I say, bursting with childlike pride. “I’m a snowboarder, just like Charlie!”

Charlie looks me up and down, inspecting the validity of this statement, lingering on Mike’s gloved hand, which is resting on my rider bar, deciding if my declaration needs qualifying, if my enthusiasm needs a reality check.

“Cool!” he says.

“She just had her first run and did awesome. She’s a natural,” says Mike.

“We were about to do one more run before lunch,” says Bob. “Can you join us?”

“Can we jump in here?” I ask.

“Sure,” says Mike, and he pulls me into line behind Lucy.

We ride the Magic Carpet and gather together at the top.

“Ready?” Mike asks.

I nod. He leans back, and we begin to slide. Slide, turn, slide. I smile as we’re snowboarding, knowing that Bob and the kids are hanging back to watch me, knowing that Bob is probably smiling, too. I’m at the top of Rabbit Lane instead of the summit, and I’m on a handicapped snowboard instead of skis, but nothing about this experience feels less than 100 percent, less than perfect. I’m on the mountain with my family. I’m here.

Slide, turn, slide. Smile.