Old Hands, part 13

During the spring my riding teacher, Elena, moved to a much nicer stable, and most of her students followed her. This place was big and clean, with many privately owned horses and plenty of school horses. There was a nice office, a tidy bar, and reasonably pleasant grooms to help you get your horse ready.

My three-woman class started a rotation schedule. One week we’d do dressage in the ring, the next week we’d do a little jumping, and the third week we’d go out for a trail ride. I was enjoying the variety until the day when my horse shied at an insect and threw me. I landed hard on my right shoulder.

I was pretty shaken and decided to go home, but I found that my shoulder wasn’t working too well—I couldn’t move the gearshift of the Alfa. I was suddenly stricken with fear. Mike was away, some friends were due to arrive from the States the next day, and I couldn’t drive.

I worked out a way to shift gears two-handed—not too safe, but effective enough to get me home. I went into the house, took a shower, and called my friend Clarice to say I wouldn’t be coming over for lunch as planned.

“You know, you should really come here now,” she said. “My friend Lili is here, and she can work on you.” Lili was an Italian friend of Clarice’s, a healer—so Clarice said—who had special talents to help injured people. “Amy Levine was coming over to have her shoulder worked on, but she canceled.” Amy had been in physical therapy for a shoulder problem, and her recovery had been slow, so she overcame her natural skepticism and was ready to try Lili.

By now I was in a lot of pain and similarly ready to try anything that might help, so I used my two-handed shifting method to drive over to Clarice’s. Lili was a pleasant-looking, friendly woman around my age who took me back into Clarice’s spare room and started to ask me questions. We struggled with our languages—she spoke Italian and Portuguese, and I had Spanish, English, and a little French—but somehow we were able to communicate. We did some deep breathing, and she put her hands on me very gently for a while, and then I was sent home.

I was anticipating a miserable night with my swollen arm, and I expected that it would be even worse in the morning, but it was much better. I called Clarice. “I’ve got to see her again!” I said. “My friends are arriving this afternoon. I have to be able to drive them around!” She told me to come ahead, and I had another treatment, and that was it. I was fine!

“Lili is really something,” I told Clarice later.

“Yeah, she’s amazing,” Clarice said. “She was just a regular physical therapist, but she was always getting better results than anyone else. So she started studying with different healers. She’s very gifted.”

A few weeks later Lili was along when both we and the Scarritts were over at the Liepmanns’. The men were playing tennis, and Mike wrenched his knee badly. “You should let Lili help you,” Clarice told him. He rolled his eyes, but we badgered him till he let her try.

“How do you feel?” Clarice asked after he’d been treated. “I don’t know,” he said. “Fine.” He looked unconvinced, but he stayed fine.