It’s a Wednesday morning. My son comes to the house for breakfast before going to work. This has become our routine. We chat. Catch up on life. He asks me about my week. I ask him about work. We put the dishes away, hug and slap backs, walk out the kitchen door together and his truck roars up the hill.

The air is cool. A nice day for outside chores. That’s my plan, anyway. I walk down the steps and head up the hill to my shop. Today I’m going to mow grass.

There are weeks when Marion and I are so busy that it feels like I visit my house just to take care of the place. It’s like I don’t really live here. When I got home yesterday I had to dismantle six massive spider webs just to get into the house.

“He’s not coming back,” they said. “We’re taking over.”

So spiders the size of half-dollars built webs the size of queen bedsheets all across the entrance to my house. Threads that connect to the roof, the porch post, the tree across the driveway. The kind of webs that, if you’re not paying attention, you walk into one and herniate your L5 trying to get it out of your hair.

I checked the whole house. They were hanging over the steps to the side porch. They blocked the way up to the back porch. They were hanging across the front door. They even tied one off at the end of the house where I walk around to the back yard.

This is what happens when you stay gone too long.

The other thing that happens when I’m gone is that the grass and the leaves get out of hand. Since it’s about to get cooler, this might be the last cut of the season. While I’m at it I’ll blow all the leaves towards the woods to make everything look clean and neat.

Until the leaves fall again while I’m gone this coming weekend.

I’m on my mower headed down the driveway to start mowing out at the road and work my way back toward the house. Understand…I can’t see the road from my house. It’s long ride on a small lawn tractor with the speed of a snail. I have a cherry red MTD that’s at least 15 years old. Maybe it’s 20 years old. It’s old. But it works.

The end of my drive has a pretty decent hill that rolls off down to the creek, crosses the pipe, and turns out onto the county road. About halfway down this hill I notice a few big limbs that have fallen out of the Tulip Poplar next to the drive. I stop the mower to get the limbs out of the way before I start cutting.

Remember I’m halfway down the hill. On asphalt.

I put the mower in neutral and lock in the parking brake. I sit still for a few seconds to make sure she’s not gonna roll on me. She’s steady as a rock. I get off the mower and before turning away to get the limbs I inspect the mower for any sign of movement. Not a twitch.

While I’m tossing the last limb into the woods, I catch a red flash in my peripheral vision. My riderless mower is headed for the creek.

In that very second I considered my options. I could stand my ground and watch it disappear over the bank and into the water. I could try to stand in front of it and slow it down. It’s not a big mower. It really didn’t have that much momentum going for it. Pretty sure I could have stopped it. Or I could do like one of those rodeo cowboys that run and mount the horse in mid-stride and get on the mower to take the reins.

My brain chose option three.

I mounted the mower awkwardly but successfully. Within seconds I brought the free spirited machine under control. I was feeling pretty good about my cat-like reflexes. I was also hoping no one saw me.

After I collected my wits and determined that all was okay, I reached down to engage the blade to start mowing. That’s when I noticed that my right hand hurt. I looked at it. Nothing out of place. There was just a little pain in the hand and wrist when I shifted the lever.

I went about my business mowing. I’d turn the wheel. Put it in reverse. Look back over my shoulder. Move a low limb out of my way. Hang my butt out over the side of the seat on the slopes. And with each move my right wrist hurt more.

I wasn’t gonna stop until I was done. Finish the grass. Blow the driveway clean and blow all the leaves off the grass. The grip and trigger for the blower is a right-handed operation. And after hours of use, by 2pm my right hand and lower arm are going numb.

I ice it. I wrap it. I take the muscle relaxers. And I try not to use it the rest of the day.

Here’s the thing. My world is a right handed world. My right hand is stiff. It hurts to wave bye-bye. I have it wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy.

When I got ready to go to bed that night I had to brush my teeth left-handed. You know how hard it is to get the toothpaste inside your mouth with your left hand. It’s like this hand doesn’t even belong to my body. It wanted to brush out my nostrils. It had no idea where the center of my face was located. And once I got it inside my mouth it couldn’t find my teeth.

I had to take a one-handed shower and take a one-handed approach to drying myself off.

I have no idea what I did to my hand. I know my landing on the mower wasn’t as smooth as I may have wanted it, but I can’t recall hurting myself. I wasn’t aware of any moment where I bent my thumb backwards, or folded my wrist the wrong way, or jammed all my fingers into the steering wheel. I just don’t know.

I just know that drinking coffee with my left hand feels dumb. I know that the fly on a pair of men’s pants is not designed for left-handed access. The part in my hair from the brush that I normally use looks like a toddler combed it for me. And trying to put deodorant under my left armpit is dang near impossible.

The worst one. I probably shouldn’t mention this. It’s a delicate subject.

After my left-handed coffee and my left-handed cereal this morning, it was time for my daily constitutional at the reading seat.

I’m trying to be gentle here.

Anyway, I got there. The belt was left-handed. I held my reading material left-handed. And in no time I was done. Then it hit me. I was gonna have to clean up left-handed.

I faced my fear with one thing on my mind.

I hope this goes better than it did with the toothbrush.