Getting personal: Writing-stories

Halloween, 1972. My face was broken, the cheekbones, the jaw. My head had gone through the windshield of the Volkswagen bug and then my leg, as the seat broke backwards, and then my face again, and my pelvis and my ribs hitting things, or being hit, ricocheting. I have a body memory of my right eye out of its socket, lying in wetness on my cheek. And then there was blackness, unconsciousness, coma. Once the kind-faced doctor tried cheering me. ‘‘You’ve only lost about 10‐15% of your I.Q.,’’ he said. ‘‘There’s plenty left.’’ Did he not know that his patient who could not do her times tables was a professor of sociology who taught advanced statistics at a major research university? She had not the slightest idea now what ‘‘10‐15%’’ meant, but she could hear, feel the word, lost. What had I lost? Much more than I.Q. points. I had lost access to my brain. I had lost language: my sword and my shield.My habitual routes for naming things weretorn up, blocked o¶ ; paths to words and formulae were gone. I could not locate where anything was stored in my brain. I could feel my mind searching ‐ this way, no, that way, up here, try there ‐ searching, searching in my brain, as if it were a computer, searching for words, thoughts, connections, searching for memory, endless searches. Sometimes I could sense the place where a word was ‘‘hiding,’’ but I couldn’t make it come out, be recognized, be spoken. When I could e nd the word’s e rst letter, I felt grateful. I still do.