Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

Some­times the slight­est things change the direc­tions of our lives, the mer­est breath of a cir­cum­stance, a ran­dom moment that con­nects like a mete­orite strik­ing the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direc­tion on the strength of a chance remark.”    (Bryce Courtenay)

 

I made smoked salmon chow­der on Sun­day after­noon. Sautéed onions and red pep­pers, tossed in pota­toes, car­rots, and parsnips, kept an anx­ious eye on the clock. It wasn’t the best time to start cook­ing. I need­ed to leave the house by 3:30 to make it to Vil­lage Books for my Beyond Belief author friends’ read­ing. That watched pot need­ed to boil – fast.

As soon as steam curled from the red cast iron, I snapped the burn­er off. Car keys and wal­let were in my hand when the phone rang.

Joel’s voice was gar­bled. “I’m in an ambu­lance. I blew out my knee.”

I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

The dri­ve from our house to the ER is 8.2 miles. A dis­tance that’s noth­ing for folks whose bian­nu­al com­mute is a 1000 mile cruise up the Inside Pas­sage, but a wide open range for thoughts to tum­ble­weed in a life-alter­ing emer­gency. With every twist of the road, my thoughts shift­ed from fear for my beloved (A knee, fuck, sweet­ie, I’m so sor­ry) to the prac­ti­cal details of our liveli­hood (There are six weeks between now and when we have to be under­way to Alas­ka, the boat’s nowhere near ready, and the mon­ey from last sea­son is gone). The sun beamed bright­ly that after­noon, as we slipped into every self-employed fisherman’s worst nightmare.

I found my sweet­heart on a stretch­er in the hall­way. Whether influ­enced by shock or the high traf­fic sur­round­ings, his expla­na­tion was remark­ably calm. “I was play­ing pick-up bas­ket­ball at the gym. When I stopped fast, my knee kept going. I heard a ‘POP!’ and it just went out – I was on the floor. I couldn’t see my leg, but I could see every­one else’s faces… They all looked sick.”

His team­mates ral­lied, link­ing arms to car­ry him out to wait for the ambu­lance. A near­by vol­ley­ball play­er brought him some water. Anoth­er man found his lock­er and passed his things along to the medics. One of the medics was fun­ny, with an Aus­tralian accent. Every­one was kind.

We’ve both been work­ing out to pre­pare for the sea­son, jok­ing that our gym mem­ber­ships should be write-offs, pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance for our line of work. It’s the respon­si­ble thing to do, right – to be fit, active, before mak­ing such extreme demands of our bod­ies? So there was the rub: Joel hadn’t been doing any­thing “wrong.” As he reflect­ed, “I wouldn’t have done any­thing dif­fer­ent­ly. I just got real­ly unlucky.”

After X‑rays and an eyeball/finger poke assess­ment, the hos­pi­tal sent us home with a brace, pain pre­scrip­tion, and ortho­pe­dic refer­ral. With three stairs to get in the front door, fol­lowed by anoth­er three up to the kitchen and four down to the bath­room, we got a swift les­son in how poor­ly our house is designed for folks of lim­it­ed mobil­i­ty. (“This is not the house that we’ll be grow­ing old in,” Joel mut­tered.) We made him a new home on the couch – pil­lows to keep his knee ele­vat­ed, a table with­in easy reach – and rolled out a sleep­ing bag on the floor for me. Nei­ther of us slept.

That was five days ago.

Tuesday’s MRI led to Wednesday’s diag­no­sis. A torn ACL. Torn? Com­plete­ly snapped – the doc­tor point­ed out the ligament’s stump in the pic­ture. A sprained MCL. Car­ti­lage dam­age. Bone bruis­ing. Surgery required. Four to six months – min­i­mum – to recover.

One of Joel’s nurs­es was a man who’s trolled out of South­east Alas­ka for the past 15 sum­mers. He shook his head with com­pas­sion. “I’m sor­ry, man… As soon as I saw your MRI results, I knew you wouldn’t be fish­ing this year. Your knee’s hashed.”

From our first con­ver­sa­tion in the ER hall­way to every phone call to friends, Joel had made his best “It is what it is” nois­es. He planned for the worst, telling me, “Mar­lin still needs a sec­ond deck­hand. If I can’t fish this sea­son, you’ll go with him – he’ll have the best crew in the fleet between you and Mikey.” He embraced his friend Dan‑o’s pol­i­cy of iden­ti­fy­ing three pos­i­tives for every neg­a­tive: “Thank god I have cat­a­stroph­ic health insur­ance. Home­made mac & cheese for din­ner! And even if my knee’s fucked, at least I still have legs!”

He did a her­culean job of being his most pos­i­tive, accept­ing self. But to receive the offi­cial word that he real­ly was so severe­ly injured, and there tru­ly would be no going to sea for him this year… The real­i­ty was noth­ing less than dev­as­tat­ing for a man who’s spent every sum­mer of his entire life fish­ing in Alas­ka. A 30 year streak bro­ken, leav­ing him unsure of what – who – remained.

We’ve seen oth­er fish­er­men allow this kind of news to destroy them. For so many of us, our work is not a mere job. Releas­ing the dock lines, tilt­ing our heads back to take a deep, salty breath, feel­ing our bod­ies become one with the sea and our ves­sels… We find our­selves whole out there, while we wan­der, incom­plete, on land. Out there, we know our­selves in a way that, on land, we often aren’t quite sure who we are or where we belong.

Joel’s knee is too swollen yet for surgery. He’s got a pre-op appoint­ment in two weeks, with surgery to fol­low. The doc­tor warned him that the first week after surgery will be the worst. I’ll be here to take care of him for that peri­od, then trans­fer care­giv­ing duties to his par­ents. As Joel com­mits him­self to a sum­mer of phys­i­cal ther­a­py, I’ll spend the sea­son crew­ing for Mar­lin. The Ner­ka will sit patient­ly. This will be a first for her, too – the first sea­son that she hasn’t spent in South­east Alas­ka, since her 1979 launch. Bear the Boat Cat will be Bear the Not-Spend­ing-This-Sum­mer-on‑a Boat Cat. (She, of all of us, will be pleased.)

As soon as Joel post­ed this news on Face­book, the kind wish­es began rolling in. Friends urged him to keep his atti­tude up. “I firm­ly believe that adverse cir­cum­stances can pro­duce pos­i­tive out­comes,” said one who knows. Wrote anoth­er, “Life alter­ing moment, be open.”

Strand­ed on the couch as he is, Joel has a lot of time to con­sid­er these wise words. He’s squar­ing his shoul­ders, brac­ing for what’s ahead. Even in intense pain, even know­ing the worst pain is yet to come, he’s look­ing to the dis­tant hori­zon, try­ing to see what he’ll wel­come into his life this sum­mer, in place of what’s always been.

I’m cer­tain that my sweet­heart will expe­ri­ence the great pain of his injury – phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al – and move through it, find­ing valu­able lessons and new oppor­tu­ni­ties in hard­ship. This is with­in his abil­i­ties. When he took the helm of the Ner­ka as a 22 year old kid, he had a tri­al by (every­thing but) fire debut that was noto­ri­ous­ly, epi­cal­ly rid­dled with dis­as­ter. As I’ve said pre­vi­ous­ly, if I’d gone through every­thing that he did, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to face anoth­er sea­son. But Joel did – because he loves fish­ing that much, and because he’s sim­ply a per­son who won’t be cowed by adver­si­ty. I know he’ll per­se­vere here, too.

This sea­son, Cap’n J’s job will be to repair him­self. Next sea­son, he’ll be back – he, me, Bear and the Ner­ka.

I know some of Hooked’s read­ers have had your own health scares, seri­ous diag­noses that you’ve had to bat­tle your way through. If you’re com­fort­able shar­ing what helped you get through, we’d wel­come your guid­ance. How did you keep your out­look pos­i­tive? How did you han­dle the times you weren’t able to be pos­i­tive? What made the dif­fer­ence for you? When you weren’t able to be very phys­i­cal­ly active, how did you occu­py your time and mind? Thanks, friends.

 

Cap'n J, Down

 

A post­script for those of you in the Belling­ham area… The day before Joel’s injury, his sis­ter and I set up his first pho­tog­ra­phy show. Eleven framed pho­tos and many greet­ing cards are avail­able at the Book­Fare Café, upstairs in Vil­lage Books. (I hear one pho­to is already spo­ken for… Thank you, dear patron!) Book­Fare has long been a friend of ours – while you’re check­ing out the images, order the North­west Sal­ad to enjoy Ner­ka-caught smoked salmon – and we’re grate­ful to own­er Charles Claassen for gen­er­ous­ly pro­mot­ing local artists. Though this show was sched­uled many months in advance, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote Joel’s back-up career now seems quite for­tu­itous­ly timed. If you’re not able to vis­it his show in per­son, you can check out Joel’s pho­tos here. (It’s very easy for us to make 4x6 greet­ing cards from any image — just ask!) Thank you all for spread­ing the word to your land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy-lov­ing friends.