I just spent the last half hour listening to various songs on YouTube to see if I could come up with one with lyrics to create a theme for this week’s post. I failed. Well, I enjoyed myself, but I couldn’t find the perfect song to encapsulate the belly laughs I had this week. There’s just not space for the context of why the senior baking cookies in my house yesterday told me, “I have pretty white boy hair,” or why one of my sophomores in advisory got a consolation package of soup mix after his brother inadvertently withheld an invitation to Taco Tuesday.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that Anja is trying to work out my whole body to help my brain focus on the legs while the other muscle groups compensate when necessary. The increased laughter with the return of my students has led to side splitting laughter as they regale me with stories of their various adventures. I laugh deeply – from the core. I’m also trying to pay attention to working out my arms with the hand weights my friend Doug years ago helpfully named “Hans” und “Franz” because they help to pump me up.
It’s weird to type that “years ago” bit – I’ve been at this recovery for a while. I had a student interview me for the school paper to give some context to the students who don’t know the story of my accident. This is the first year there are no students on campus who were in high school before my accident. All of them know me post-paralysis, and it’s a dwindling number of friends like Doug who have any memory of me before the Professor (my wheelchair is named Professor X, for those who don’t know) became my primary means of transit.
Tonight I had the joy of laughing and catching up with two friends from those pre-paralysis days as Heather and Brittany came to Kandern for a visit. I’m so grateful for the ongoing friendship with these two wonderful women who faithfully came to visit me in REHAB, who led worship with me on my first birthday in the wheelchair, who googled “clean fart jokes” to send me things to make me laugh as I laid in a hospital bed. It was so much fun to catch up with them, and I was especially excited to show them how well I could walk after they had been away for a couple years.
I shared some good laughter with them, and my abs feel nice and tired. If I’m being honest, my back is achy too, but that’s nothing new in the last several years. I’m still not satisfied, so, over three years in, I’m asking you to laugh with me, cry with me, pray with me, and never give up on me. This week I’m really hopeful to keep practicing my walking outside as much as possible, but there’s a lot of rain in the forecast, so I’m praying it will conveniently fall only when I’m teaching.
