Nose
The brief essay below describes events that took place on Memorial Day weekend of 2009. Some folks in my personal life have heard parts of this story anecdotally in the years since, but June 2019 was the first time I wrote about it and shared it more widely. I originally drafted “Nose” on June 19, 2019, as a five-minute story I shared at the Carleton College Class of 1994 Reunion “Telling Tales” panel session. The draft was written and edited in haste the afternoon before I got on the plane to Minneapolis. For more background context on how the piece came to be, check out the postscript.
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I’ve broken my nose four times.
The first time, I was six, the result of an indoor mishap between a ball, a glass ceiling light fixture, and my face. The second time, I was 11, showing off how well I could dive into Thorndike Lake in New Hampshire, which was much lower than usual that summer due to lack of rain. The third time, I was a senior in college, playing rugby, and my nose got between the ball and the cleat of an ogre on the opposing team. I kept playing. I don’t recommend that. I also started a new relationship later that day. I don’t recommend that either.
This story is about the fourth-and I hope, last-time.
Fort Lee Historic Park in New Jersey is an eight-mile coastal stretch of trails on the Palisades cliffs along the Hudson. River Road, the park’s paved route, is open to cars, but it’s windy and narrow, so it’s used mostly by campers and athletes.
By May 2009, I had cycled that road more than 100 times. I knew every turn-where the light is dappled, what time the heat is unrelenting. That spring, thunderstorms hit every few days. River Road, already an obstacle course of potholes, was littered with downed trees, leaves, rocks, and branches.
Its beauty aside, River Road appeals to cyclists because of its hills. It also has long descents, stretches where you can let go at 20 to 35 miles an hour.
That’s what I was doing when I broke my nose the fourth time. One moment I was streaking downhill, the next, my bike bumped over a stick, slid out from under me, and I hit the ground at 25 miles an hour.
It was a strange fall. I was wearing cycling shoes, and I didn’t have time to clip out of my pedals, so when the bike went down, I went with it.
I can only reconstruct the crash based on the injuries I cataloged later. I tried to break my fall with my left hand and elbow, slammed my left knee. Despite wearing a helmet, I took most of the fall on my face-my chin, nose, and cheek.
What I recall is my sunglasses cracking in half over the bridge of my nose, which started to gush. I remember being annoyed that I didn’t have a bandana, so I used my cycling gloves to staunch the blood. I tried to stand up, felt dizzy, and flopped back down. I dragged myself and the bike to the side so I wouldn’t get hit by oncoming cars or cyclists. I leaned against a boulder, kept my head back. Before I thought to call anyone, two cyclists came by. They slowed down, asked if I was okay. I have no idea why, shock probably, but I said yes. I said my friend Frances was trailing by a few miles and would be along any minute. They looked dubious, and may have asked again, but I waved them on.
I don’t recall if Frances or I called 911. I recall the ambulance arriving. Standard procedure for a head injury, even if you’re fine, is to put you on a spine board and get you to the ER for scans. Someone took my name and age, and two strapping young men helped me onto the board. As they lifted me, I heard a voice ask, “Joe, does this say she’s 30? Or 36?” They think I could be 30, I thought. “Man, she’s light,” one of the guys murmured. They think I’m thin! They think I’m thin and 30, I thought, as they sped me off to the Englewood ER.
The rest is a blur of pokes and prods and pain. I called my wife, and wasn’t able to reach her. The attendant who did my head scans treated me like an anatomical marvel. “You took most of this on your chin; it’s wild you didn’t shatter your jaw.”
It wasn’t until I got ready to check out that I realized I wasn’t 100% okay. I went to the bathroom and caught a glimpse of myself. A sunset of bruises and blood on a swollen, lumpy face. If I had any doubts how bad it was, Frances and later my friend Terry who picked me up and drove me home, dispelled them. “Jesus fuck,” Frances kept saying. “Oh honey,” said Terry. “I thought you were exaggerating when you called. Get in the car, you look like a cautionary poster for domestic abuse.”
I spent a week home, tending the wounds. My other injuries were so prominent, I didn’t figure out until later I’d also dislocated a rib. I couldn’t fully inhale until one night three weeks later, when the rib popped back into place, loudly.
My face, two weeks after my ill-timed Memorial Day 2009 bicycle crash, at the wedding reception for Fred Speers and Chase Skipper, June 6, 2009. Photo credit: Brad Fowler.
I’m not a fan of stories with heavy-handed meanings. Of course I’m lucky. And grateful to have survived. But I can’t explain it. Not the crash or what did and didn’t happen. I can’t explain why or how I was on my bike a week later, doing another 65-mile ride that included River Road.
Two weeks later, I officiated at my best friend’s wedding. My healing was so rapid, all signs of injury had vanished. Aside from a dab on my chin, I didn’t need makeup to hide anything. As far as the world knew, the crash had never happened. I think of that often now. How so much of our worst pain and suffering and vulnerability-for myself, for those I love, for all of us-are invisible to everyone else. Until we share it.
EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT: Over the years of teaching, writing, and editing (including a bunch of bestselling public speaking books), and then eventually during years of public relations work, media coaching for leaders, and various other types of professional work, I have learned to become a strong public speaker in more contexts than I can enumerate here. Classroom lectures and workshops. Fiction and poetry series readings. Corporate presentations and events. Organizational training sessions on advocacy and activism. Media prep for organizations and executive leadership teams. Press conferences and event planning. Media spokesperson for organizations I have represented.
It’s a learned skill. I’m not a performer by nature. I’m an almost even split between extroversion and introversion, which makes me a stealth extrovert out in the world and a stealth introvert to those who have mostly seen me in extrovert contexts. Both pieces are real. Left to my default comfort zone, I like and prefer the page.
The impetus for me to get on a stage was multifaceted. The initial catalyst after decades of never being the person who wrote in to an alumni quarterly for anything much less went to reunions, I not only went, I helped plan it. A dear old friend who had been making a gentle, long-term push to get me involved for over a year got me to jump in by pitching it as a good chance for us to hang out over the course of a long reunion planning weekend in August 2018 now that she lives in Chicago rather than New York City. I went in to the weekend open but noncommittal, per usual, and happy to spend some quality time with someone I only get to see once every year or two.
Before I knew it, I returned home to find I was not only signed up to attend reunion, I was now planning and curating not one but two reunion events-an art exhibit and a storytelling session panel.
Take note, young folk: If you want to try to get friends and old classmates, many of whom you haven’t seen in at least 20 years, to share themselves in adulthood in an authentic way, it helps if you’re willing to do it yourself, too.
For the “Telling Tales” panel event, eight participants, myself included, were seated onstage in a semicircle of chairs as we took turns sharing our stories. Because I am me, I even made a last-minute edit from my chair onstage right before the first speaker launched into her story.
Originally published at http://deroom.wordpress.com on October 7, 2019.
