Recovery Is Everywhere

Are you pulling yourself together after the midterms? Doing some bouncing back from any disappointing results, from the onslaught of ads over recent weeks, from fatigue at the whole business?

If you’re moving on past something that caused some edginess or worse– real distress, you’re not sorry to see it in the rear-view mirror.

Recently, like a bird-watcher, I’ve been spotting examples of “recovery” all over the place. Each brings a fresh reminder that the same word can describe very different processes or, in some cases, one-pop events. The common denominator? Forward movement — away from some kind of adversity, or loss, or maybe just a taxing effort — towards a state of replenishment.

I won’t go so far as to say these are opposites, but they sure do make a kind of Recovery Rainbow.

1. The Kind You Do When You Already Feel Better Because of What You Just Did

My first example is the one that got me thinking on this whole topic. Not having enough resistance in my life, I’ve started going to a weight room in the same cavernous facility where, when summer’s over, I play tennis. On my first visit with this particular group of machines, which looked similar but not identical to ones I’d used elsewhere, I wasn’t shy about asking a teenager (with ear buds on, naturally) who looked like a regular to advise me on a few particulars. He was courteous in helping me out, and after I thanked him for his demonstrations, he added, “After you finish, it’s a good idea to go get a protein shake or something to help you recover.” Looking out for my welfare already! He must have thought I was really planning on knocking myself out.

Fact was, spending that half an hour in there, trying reasonably hard to lift, feeling my muscles stir themselves and a kind of renewed strength afterwards — this was actually pleasurable in itself. I’ll consider the protein shake for the future, though, because a week or so later, when my daughter checked me out in there, she said, “C’mon, Mom, you can do more weight than that.”

2) The Kind You Do When You’ve Just Been Through the Ringer, Medically (Human)

Spending time in a hospital room, or a sick bed at home, however, generally does not provide anything resembling a glow. When you’re here, or someone that you love is here, you can only wish that drinking some concoction might be the solution to whatever is the trouble. In this kind of recovery, you often have a whole range of feelings: fear, relief, exhaustion, boredom, determination. A good friends of ours is currently working doggedly every day to do things she used to do easily. When something has knocked you off your game, you mostly need to know that you’re at least starting to head in the right direction, that this particular set of circumstances will soon, or even eventually, shift.

3) The Kind You Do When You’ve Just Been Through the Ringer, Medically (Dog)

We’re still in serious territory here, but it’s canine country. Instead of showing you a picture of the animal hospital where our Rocky spent a whopping five days in late September, I’m offering up two items that I thought might never come out again (for this dog) on our lawn, but recently did — showing how much of a recovery he made. The illness, diagnosed as “vestibular disease,” struck him all of sudden: poor dog couldn’t walk straight, like a drunk, and felt wretched. He had to stay in a cage, with IV in his paw, until he trusted his limbs enough to get up again. His recovery was as gradual as his decline was precipitous: slow motion for many days, no jumping in and out of the car, then perkier walking, then back in the car, then…spurts of running. What a champ.

In human years, he’s about 91 now. So, he’s not quite at Jimmy Carter status, but he’s right in there with 89 year old Chuck Grassley, who just won another term in Congress. Show me the ball, I’ll show you fire.

3) The Kind You Do When You Accept That You Need Outside Help

More serious terrain here, with a few different characteristics on the landscape. While there’s definitely a physical/medical aspect to this kind of recuperation, it’s generally about facing the damn problem of addiction: starting to take those initial steps towards claiming a better, freer way of life. It’s hard to say whether the fact that we see these signs way more frequently on our daily drives than we used to means that many more people are grappling with this issue…or just that we as a society are owning up to it more openly. Either way, people who are brave enough to reach out for help sure benefit from finding that help.

4) The Kind You Do When Some Lost Thing Is — Hallelujah! — Found

And then there’s the much lighter kind of recovery — not requiring a great deal of commitment, and also not resulting in a significant degree of internal change. But still, in its own way, wonderful. I’m talking about when you lose something (generally an object), feel the disappointment of not having it anymore, and then — lo and behold — it re-appears and is back in your arms. This happened to me recently when I misplaced my “Day Timer” calendar: a clunky book with seven rings that holds daily pages. Some of us still prefer not to put absolutely every bit of information in our phones — call us old-fashioned. In there I have addresses for my kids, stamps, a card with passwords (probably now changed) along with a copy of a diagram from a book showing how to take a “Fun Audit” of my life. At first I couldn’t believe this treasure wasn’t somewhere within reach, but after several days looking, I began to despair.

In a moment of brilliance, though, I realized that it just might be at the post office where I’d mailed a package to my son more than a week before. When I ventured back to the counter and asked, the woman there said, “Just a minute,” knowing exactly where to check. When she returned with my book, I literally jumped up and down. All that had happened, of course, is that I was back to where I’d started from, but it felt as if I’d flown miles ahead.

No time here to go into all the other kinds of recoveries you run into out there. Soon, at our school, students will get a chance to circle back to work they didn’t do the first time: credit recovery. My husband, who’s getting in his last rows of the reason, reminded me that every stroke of the oar includes a moment of recovery.

And then, in a couple of weeks, after we put the leftover turkey in the fridge, we’ll likely be recovering from Thanksgiving. No, but wait — let’s all do what we can to make that an event that actually replenishes us in the doing, one that provides something maybe even better than the glow we can get from the gym.

Best not to think about Christmas yet, right?