Hollis Kurman
A Summer to Recover
Let the protecting begin!!, I scribbled in my concussion recovery journal. It was a rare moment of brio. I naively thought, as we all did then, that Covid vaccines would shield us from infection. And that normal life—whatever normal life meant for me now, seven unhealed years post-concussion—was just around the corner. Driving to the massive vaccine venue at the edge of Amsterdam and then snaking along its assembly line, I let myself hope. By the time I rolled up my sleeve for the jab in my assigned booth, I was already picturing it. A real summer.
June kept us in a state of anticipation and preparation. For our daughter Aspen’s high school graduation. For her senior trip to Portugal with 80 unleashed and unvaccinated teenagers. For her countdown to college. For our return to the US, to our New York family and friends, for the first time in way too long. Choosing not to go home for a long stretch is one thing. Being unable to go home is another.
Vaxxed, masked, and armed with hand sanitizer, I headed to New York first with our son Skyler. It was surreal to get out and go. Even the hostile chaos, endless waits, and guaranteed headaches of JFK Airport greeted us like a welcome home. My people! We’re back!
Once we finally got out to Long Island, the two of us shuffled around our house and neighborhood in a daze. Everything felt good and smelled good. I ran out to the garden and buried my nose in the faithful mint, rosemary and basil plants. I cupped a blue hydrangea bloom with both hands and with such tenderness it might have been a baby’s face. The salty-sweet whiff of ocean, farmland and flowers on the breeze was intoxicating, and post-pandemic signs of life popped up around us like crocuses braving an early spring. My concussion symptoms cooperated by slipping onto the back burner, defying the post-flight head pressure and jet lag.
Gratitude wrapped me in a warm blanket. Everything became Every Little Thing. The sound of our Atlantic waves. The buzz of hummingbirds as small as cicadas and bump of fat bees in the garden. A spotted fawn, random wild goose, or even deer droppings drying on the lawn. Strawberries fresh from the farm stand. The tomatoes! The stars at night. The together again.
The reverie broke when Aspen called from Europe to report she had Covid. Almost half her senior class on the Portugal trip had contracted the virulent new Delta strain. I was terrified – and furious. I had warned her she’d likely get sick and had begged her not to go with the virus raging, everyone jammed into beach bars, sharing hotel rooms, and who knows what else. She’d flown back to Amsterdam and isolated herself, postponing her flight to New York and sinking into bed at home, weak with fever and alone. Though no detectable regrets.
Concussed heads, especially mine, don’t react well to worry. But instead of trying to relax and take deep breaths, I spiraled into a state of Covid stress and then shoveled new stressors into my brain injury vortex. Via FaceTime, I tried to nurse Aspen back to health and get her ready for her NY trip. I saddled myself with house repairs and grocery hauls. I did way too much driving in summer traffic with summer rain tap-tap-tapping on the windshield. Each tap and swish of the windshield wipers felt like a scrape across my scalp. As a grand finale, I ran out in the wet heat to buy a used car as pandemic disruptions hit the supply chain and car dealerships. What was I thinking? My concussion symptoms responded on cue and splattered my journal pages:
Yesterday I had two bouts of ocular migraine, seeing bright flashes not eased by closing
my eyes. Was this some cruel twist or a divine visitation? Alien signals? No matter
where I looked or what I did, there was no escaping these little lightning bolts and their .
flashing strobe. The lightshow triggered full-blown headaches all afternoon, capped off
with an evening of more headaches and ringing in my ears. I finally gave up and went
to bed with two Tylenol.
Once the skies cleared, I tried to clear my head, too, by focusing on the positive. The weather was gorgeous. I heard that my second book deal was a ‘go’. Aspen was feeling better and on her way to us at last. My husband Gert Jan had gotten his Covid shot and would arrive soon. Meanwhile, I had Skyler all to myself for a few days. ‘So there’s all that!’, I wrote in my journal, hoping the upbeat tone would fool or at least distract my body.
When Aspen arrived, the kids and I treated ourselves to a pizza picnic and long walk on the beach as the evening cooled. We curled together on the couch, interlaced our legs, and vowed to find movies all three of us wanted to watch. Or at least were willing to watch. One evening, Aspen and I went out for dinner just the two of us and sat talking for hours on a terrace overlooking the water. We reveled in our roasted farm-to-table carrots and brussels sprouts. We walked the pier on the cove at sunset, Aspen smiling and smoothing her short sundress in the sudden breeze. On the drive home, she tentatively proposed sharing a few songs, and we were both relieved when her playlist didn’t set my injured head on edge. As a reward for all the peace and good Bluetooth vibes, I slept deeply that night.
As summer progressed, though, my internal musings darkened and grew philosophical. What did it mean to be an American or a New Yorker after decades away? ‘Where does one belong, really?’, I wrote in my journal, ‘Where do I fit now?’ So much of my country, culture, and city had become unrecognizable to me. Political rage, polarization, and intolerance. The pandemic and its path of destruction, paranoia, and rebellion. The inevitable changes of people and places, regardless. I was at home everywhere and nowhere.
With the pandemic in our way, it had been 1 ½ years since our last visit to the U.S. My friends had moved on with their lives, and who could blame them? New Yorkers are notoriously bad at waiting. No one was hanging around waiting for me to re-insert myself into their days. I reminded myself that they were ‘released’ earlier than we were in Europe from the lockdown, vaccinated far sooner than we, and already making plans while we could still only whisper the idea. Besides, my post-concussion status had already made me socially challenging for years.‘Isn’t that restaurant going to be loud?’ ‘Sorry, I still can’t handle concerts or movies.’ ‘I need a nap.’ Covid considerations just added another few degrees of separation. Now I wasn’t just a party pooper, but a paranoid one. How could I explain the terror of getting saddled with ‘Long Covid’, its symptoms almost a mirror menu of my years-long concussion symptoms? Mask up or risk compounding my brain fog, fatigue, headaches, dizziness, and anxiety? I’ll take the mask, thanks.
Do you guys remember when I used to be fun?’, I asked a group of friends at a dinner party. I heard myself trying to sound casual, but anyone really listening surely heard the ache and desperation underneath. So, they were moving on. All understandable, but it stung.
Not for the first or last time since my accident, we celebrated Gert Jan’s late July birthday with me at half-mast. There is an expression in Dutch, ‘doen alsof’, which means ‘acting as if’ or basically pretending. For my husband’s sake, I would act as if I felt fine. I would ignore the days of bad sleep, bad naps, bad head and muster the energy to celebrate him fully. Sometimes, this approach tricked me into feeling better. Sometimes the opposite. In the still-dark hours of his post-birthday morning, I tried not to wake him as I scribbled:
‘04:00am, awake with pain, on the verge of weeping. This migraine is a leaden cap with
screws drilling into my skull…gnawing down from my scalp to my
eyes. I want to crawl out of my skin. Help.’
The pain followed me up to the Berkshires when we went to visit my mother in her new-since-Covid house a few days later, but I tried to ignore it and focus on my excitement at seeing her. Doen alsof! Besides, Gert Jan was the trooper who volunteered to make the five-hour drive from Long Island. Skyler and Aspen fell asleep in the back seat of the car as they’ve done since they were little. Their shared innocence and vulnerability at these moments tug at my heartstrings every time, and I can never resist snapping a picture of them in this unguarded state. When we finally pulled into my mother’s driveway, she was already pacing outside, not sure which of us to hug first after such a long separation. I pre-empted the decision and ran into her arms. We spent an easy, few days together, taking woodsy walks and catching up in the unhurried way that can only be done face-to-face or side-by-side. As always, she had filled the house with everyone’s favorite foods and baked enough of her signature granola to feed a village. We met her new neighbors and breathed in the fresh mountain air. ‘You’re going to be OK here, Mom,’ I said, tearing up.
I felt my shoulders relax for the first time in a long while. Shoulders are uncanny. Like a canary in a coal mine, they let you know when something’s not right – but you need to be paying attention. Dance teachers insist we hold our shoulders low and pulled back. Yoga and Pilates instructors remind us to shift our shoulders down away from our ears. Just thinking about it makes me adjust my posture. I suspect it’s a vicious circle, though. Tension in our minds and bodies pulls our shoulders upwards and forwards, and tensed shoulders exacerbate tension in turn.
With summer ending, plans for Aspen’s departure for university grew nearer and more concrete. The Empty Nest beckoned. She would be joining Skyler in Boston, which softened the blow, but now they’d both be across the ocean from us. And with Covid still raging, transatlantic visits in either direction were uncertain. My head racing with worry, my days unproductive, and my heart echoing with anticipated emptiness, I reeled. And wrote:
‘Awake since 3am. Nothing can still my wired mind. Just 2 more days before this intense
phase of motherhood is officially over! All this time, I kept thinking we’d have special talks
and meaningful last moments together before the children go. Now I realize they’re already
gone. Too late. And my worst fear has come true: they’re leaving home before my concussion
heals, with no clear memory of what I was like before the injury. When I was a whole mother.
A whole person. But that’s my mourning to bear, not theirs.’
The life buzzer rang. Our time was up.
We crammed the car with their stuff and our hopes and headed north. I opened the window and tried to breathe. After settling Skyler and Aspen into their respective campuses, we took a last family walk together around Boston Common and the Public Gardens. The late August weather was achingly perfect, with skies a cartoon blue and the magnolia and weeping willow trees framing every view. We didn’t speak much. For me, at least, it was because my heart had lodged itself in my throat. I tried to lighten the mood by pointing out the ‘Make Way for Ducklings’ scenes at the pond and the bronze ducks statue paying tribute to the classic children’s book I loved. In the end, we just hugged and clung onto one another, letting our separating bodies do the talking. AQ