Lately my sister had taken up knitting with a home machine and was producing sweaters and socks for the poor by the truckload. If she had been smarter, I would have tried to induce the bankers to use some of the trust money to invest in a needlework specialty store and let her try to manage it. As it was, she was merely the best customer of one of the local shops. They had taken her under their wing and continued her training in needlework until she was quite good. I had a closet full of sweaters and mufflers as testament to her knitting talents. This was to be the environment in which I was to learn to overcome my disabilities. My sister had a spare room so there was no problem with putting me up for an extended period of time. It was the thought of eating my sister’s cooking that made me so depressed. Cooking was not one of my sister’s talents. She survived from day to day eating TV dinners and eating the produce from her garden when it was in season. I had gone to great lengths to dissuade her from canning the produce from her garden. It would take only the smallest mistake to contaminate the jars with botulism and turn her jar of healthful vegetables into a container of deadly poison. Instead of canning, she gave her excess produce to a church who distributed her nutritious largess to the poor. Until I could find an orthodontist who could fit my small teeth with a bridge, I would be forced to endure countless bowls of oatmeal and mashed vegetables. When the vegetables were in season the flavor would be barely tolerable to my Epicurean taste, but when the season was over, I would find myself trying to swallow mashed vegetables from cans. The thought of spending months, perhaps years of ingesting insipid meals made me want to cry.
The next morning my sister arrived to take me home. I had called the University and arranged to take a sabbatical of indefinite duration the day before. I had also called the bank which managed the trust for us and explained that I had been injured in an accident at the University. I had asked them to move my belongings and books into storage for me and sublet my apartment until the lease ran out. My car was to be sold on commission at a used car lot and my outstanding debts to the credit card companies were to be paid from my bank account. They assured me that they would see that the utilities were paid and phone disconnected before the end of the month. A bank officer was assigned to see that the paperwork for my disability was properly filed with social security. They told me they would come by my sister’s house the next day with the requisite forms to grant them power of attorney to manage my affairs until I could resume control of my life. I felt like I was an observer at my own death. The only thing that was missing was the eulogy and burial. My former life as a University professor was over, my new life as a dependent child was only beginning.
My sister came into Pediatrics with a confused look on her face. I could see her clearly through the open door of my room from my crib. Apparently the doctor’s explanation of what had happened to me hadn’t made sense to her and hadn’t sunk in. She thought that I was confined to a wheelchair because my legs and arms had been hurt. She told the nurses that she had brought a blanket she had crocheted to keep me warm in the car while we went home. The fact that it was late spring and the weather was warm hadn’t made an impact on my sister’s plans. She had seen people in wheelchairs on TV with travel blankets so she had brought one for me. That was my sister, all heart and not the slightest crumb of common sense.