Windshield shatters as a spider web rendition that augurs worse to come. A transforming moment, mind informs, a new normal launches now. “Damage report, Mr. Spock,” fills ears from St. Louis freshman memories of Star Trek when a ten-inch TV box peeked through dorm desk detritus to instill space flight fantasies beside what lectures handed down of conniving bishops and their kings.  I, as captain on the bridge while reeling from the life-saving air bag's thrusting chest punch, guide the 2007 Toyota Corolla car, my ship at sea, to curbside shore. Varied body spots proffer pain, but the other driver’s plight concerns me. Who, where, in what condition?

Sequenced questions from EMT, police and fire men dispel the reverie.  They try to pinpoint cause, but my truthful “no's” to drinking, drugging, smoking or the use of opioids confuses. My seatbelt was on tight. “You answer everything with clarity and confidence, but something just doesn’t add up,” someone says as I lie inert inside an ambulance where neck brace and straps across the chest and legs confine me as he checks my vital signs. I am cooperative and calm, grateful I’m alive, while juggling my cellphone; it won’t text my beloved as like a live fish it spins between my right hand’s fingers yet stays within my grasp. I ask the man before it falls beneath the gurney to write Sharon that I am hospital-bound from an accident near home.

I've seen death close in my mother-in-law's last breath, our family rescue dog’s humane euthanasia. Having eulogized my mother at her graveside edge, my father and stepmother at a southern Mississippi funeral home, and read obituaries of Elie Wiesel, Howard Zinn, the Berrigans – my heroes – death is neither abstract nor denied.  At age 71, my clock’s minute hand nears midnight, but death must wait its turn. I am wounded but resilient without lamentation or complaint. I will be a day-by-day and forward-looking patient once I have a prognosis and a plan.

A walrus-mustached firefighter of linebacker physique like the Oakland Raiders’ Ben Davidson, a football all-star of the '60s, slides me like a pizza pie through the Berkshire Medical Center’s emergency room entrance to Reception. As my mouth forms heartfelt thanks, he’s gone. I wonder how often he saves lives. Alone for hours in a room till my screening turns arrive, I withstand jokes from a young male nurse who tries to cheer me with my mind processing events. I reject his TV offer. It would amuse for merely minutes from its high up raven’s perch, its ceaseless sound distracting. I can be alone with silence.

Hours pass. “I’ll check your status on the list then tell you,” he assures, then disappears. A call button apparently calls no one. I press once, then twice, at last four extended times and wait. Paint dries, beard grows. Hunger gnaws, and I have bathroom needs. It's four hours since impact. Abrupt and fast procedures startle but their findings reassure. My left arm’s clean break at the shoulder suggests healing without surgery, there is no concussion sign, and while “acute whiplash” appears on exit notes, no other issue lives. I hobble to a bathroom about to vomit up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then alone on an outside bench in darkness await a car service for home.

A loosely hung white-fringed blue sling cradles my unwrapped left arm. I’ll await an orthopedist appointment. It unnerves me to note that the collision could well have killed me. Once mugged at gunpoint in the '90s while en route at night to return a Brooklyn Key Food store’s rotten chicken, and having a group drag me behind bushes in daylight to assess whether I was in their low-income Queens section in the '80s to seek or sell drugs, it’s been clear to me that precious life is fragile. We bravely dance down tightropes toward all we can’t control. Verbal dexterity in reflecting back to my armed assailants their risk as they accosted me, and documenting in the second case that I was a community organizer building traffic light and summer jobs campaigns saved me then from harm. Hindsight’s fear and rage pointed out death’s proximity.

In my 20s then with work to do, I talked it out with friends as life ensued. Now, I cherish days, each one a gift, hallelujah. In retirement I have no need to hurry need; morning and evening walks bookend when I read or write at length, the former to comprehend life's mysteries and truths, the latter to extract and shine the insights. Aware that the mendacity of greed and power profiteers will outlive me, I am selective in how I use my mind and heart for good.

Pre-accident acceptance that I will not change the world framed the Katal Center’s campaign to shut Rikers Island's jails and the Frederick Douglass Project’s virtual prison visits with men inside the medium security Bent Correctional Facility in Colorado as meaningful and realistic. Both venues through Zoom help me sow grace for others while my wounded wing bars me from nearby needs attaching shirt buttons or cooking meals. Swollen ankles make donning Skechers Slip-ins a challenge.

My beloved’s attentive aid with personal needs, household chores and implementing our decisions layers on our recognition that what we wear was made in Nicaragua, Bangladesh or Vietnam; that Iowa corn or Vermont cheese may grace our evening table; a Detroit auto plant provides the means to reach museums, shops and doctors; and the technological prowess of faceless Squarespace, Zoom, Submittable and X inside my cellphone magic box connect us with good folks far from home. Life’s vicissitudes and vagaries leave me hurt but humble, mindful of the normative suffering of many.

Human legs, snake-like, coil and stretch. Arms nudge plush crimson and powder blue pillows into an isosceles triangle that cradles head, yet couch comfort eludes. My sling-borne broken arm requires that I sit up to sleep, preserving its precise place on my chest.

The pain drain prepares me for bed before gripping NCIS or FBI episodes end. Nor do my eyes see sports’ third periods, fourth quarters, ninth innings. I dread night's approach despite sleep's appeal since I’ll shift spots, seeking solace in vain.

One month since the traffic accident that fractured my left arm at the shoulder as the life-saving airbag assaulted my chest, I doze daily on couch, bed or chair, filling in night’s lost time. I might will myself to stay up to prompt seamless rest when in truth I'll writhe between sheets as if dancing the Twist on Chubby Checker's 1960 after-school TV show where my age 7 self saw teens contort themselves to songs and enjoy it.

An Ace bandage wraps my wing as if a takeout sandwich tucked in the white-bordered blue sling. My arm, swollen, hurts. The orthopedist cuts my wedding ring with a butcher’s precision to shrink the surrounding bubbled skin that I fear would rupture. One slice drops it, another my Greek ring with Athena’s owl. The polis symbol, it joins a peace-meaning olive sprig to embody the democratic precepts of the city’s Golden Age. I’ve worn both rings plus a peace symbol necklace for decades.

Pain radiates. Motrin moderates. Insurance forms for the hospital, clinic and car are welcome distractions with physical therapy three weeks away. I am a patient healer, having done this before. My left wrist broke last winter when a burly Brooklyn ice skater knocked me down from behind. “Don’t put out your hand,” God’s mythic voice warned in the instant that seemed a slow-motion descent, but reflex held sway. Urgent Care stuffed my arm in a sling, with the rink’s first aid site closed.

Four years before, a silent bike sped against Joralemon Street’s bustling one-way traffic as I crossed to Borough Hall, the hands-free rider’s dark glasses and earbuds distractions. Impact drove me prone and hands-first down pavement as if ball field base-stealing, ironically three blocks from where Jackie Robinson in 1947 signed his first Dodgers contract in Brooklyn.

I’m resilient with misgivings because I am old. Does a recurring nightmare attend my left side? Are there precautions to take on the right? Will flashbacks prevent my taking the wheel in my now rural setting, or would therapy surmount my car fears? Inch-worming into the passenger seat for my good hand’s vise-like grip of a door handle on clinic trips helps me withstand stops, starts and speed bumps.

Worse, does this foretell a broad health decline months from the physical exam when my Brooklyn doctor declared that “the world would be better off if all 71-year-olds rolled how you roll.”

Sit-ups, stretches and weight lifts at home before two-hour walks kept me fit. So did a Mediterranean diet of moderate volume with beans, tofu and fish ensuring adequate protein. Now, the bathroom mirror shows atrophied shoulders as I gyrate like Houdini to extricate from a buttoned shirt and sling for a scorching shower’s sake.

Still, I’m grateful that I’m alive, my beloved near.  Injury limits mobility, actions and drive, but my good hand washes dishes, tidies where I’ve slept, can balance a book on my knee or, with help from my left index finger, the cellphone keyboard I write on. That right hand brushes teeth, washes face and lifts a seven-pound weight.

With grocery runs no longer my realm, childhood images of anticipating a grandparent’s gift flood my mind when Sharon returns home from markets with breakfast yogurt, granola and blueberries before brewing coffee.

I pray that the other driver has fared better than I, insurance having settled his claims.

With physicians scarce in our Berkshire County (MA) of looming mountains, quaint towns and vast fields, my fifteenth phone call lands a cordial practitioner who will – voila! – welcome new patients. Sharon and I have an expert to ask whether the fluid build-up that swells ankles and feet reveals urgent heart or blood clot concerns.  His EKG finds that my heart functions well, my lungs sound clear to his stethoscope, and the hospital’s blood and urine tests, all negative, reach him in days.

I pass through this process with a Zen master’s calm despite eagerly awaiting a nap. “The two most important days in your life are when you were born and when you discover why you were,” Mark Twain’s quoted claim on the reception room’s wall assures us we’ll be in good hands.

Good folks emerge in a crisis.

The doctor, thoughtful and thorough, explains his plan for morning medicine, nightly compression socks and two-pillow leg elevation to reduce fluid blockage and swelling.

The hospital’s receptionists and technicians were with one exception efficient and cordial. That I could not raise my left arm angered the older of two X-ray technicians who, while grumbling that “doctors always expect us to do the impossible,” tries to force my arm up.

Eyes flash, brow furrows, cheeks flush. “Don’t touch me,” I warn as I withdraw. Her poised lab partner finds an acceptable stance for arm and image.

“Sorry that I’m taking so long for the bloodwork,” the next technician declares. “No need to hurry on my account, in fact, you shouldn’t rush through this for anyone,” I confide.

Faux crises abound. Measured breaths soothe souls.

Sharon and I within ninety minutes are home where at 11:10 a.m. I feel done for the day. I rose at first light with 5 a.m. bird calls from chickadees, cardinals, house finches, robins and crows before morning prayers. Then an hour’s inside silent walk until Sharon rises for coffee and reads aloud from Rabbi Debra Robbins’ New Each Day book of psalms we discuss.

Birds flock to our outside seed bell. Broccoli-shaped, immense maple trees loom through glass doors in the background.

I can’t fathom how I’ll eventually retake the car’s wheel while knowing that’s a far distant date.

The radio honesty of Emerson Boozer, a 1968 football star of the New York Jets’ Super Bowl, impressed me at 15 when he confessed anxiety at returning to the Kansas City Chiefs stadium where he’d in the year before been injured. I’d expected bravado, that he’d grit his teeth, talk tough and play on as my Dad modeled for me. Boozer’s forthright remark that “I had many reservations about coming back” was instructive. It meant more than the touchdowns he scored.

When the time comes, I’ll find the right way to proceed. Self-care is now my priority.