News, minor tears and moving furniture

My friend Whiskey Gray subscribes to the Mayo Clinic Health Letter, which sooner or later ends up at my house, the better to read up on my various ailments.

Whiskey and I used to share the occasional beer or a long ride through the countryside looking for possible column sites that over the years included cemeteries, meatless slug burger markets and a worn place on the creek bank called Whit Bruton’s Worrying Spot. Just good investigative journalism.

Now we share information about torn rotator cuffs and bruised heels. But I get ahead of myself in this woeful tale of aches and pains and general geriatric malaise.

My little sister, Sheila, recently stumbled on a steep staircase at her daughter’s new home, hitting every step along the surreal way down. She tried to break her fall with an outreached arm and a loud curse but failed. The pain in her shoulder was so bad she passed out. Might be a rotator cuff, one doctor said. I knew a little something about the subject, because my husband already had been dealing with cuff damage, which sounds like a problem you should point out to the dry cleaner when leaving a dress shirt for pressing.

I drove up to Kentucky to help her out, which, in her case, generally always means shuffling heavy furniture around a consignment store that she runs on weekends. This is not to be confused with her desk and day job or her barn chores keeping up with six horses.

My little sister has more energy than Kim Kardashian has selfies.

I, on the other hand, am a certified slug. Let’s just say that sitting in front of a computer for hours each day does not condition one to heft antique fainting sofas into display windows, or giant ottomans up two dozen stairs. Those were a few of the tasks I found waiting.

I did my best, feeling for a short while virtuous and useful, but soon enough there were two of us wincing in pain. When I got home, my heel was as bruised as my ego.

It wasn’t that long ago that Sheila and I could move every piece of furniture in a big room just to see how the 10-ton sofa would look cattycornered, or find out how much a piano with half its keys missing would bring in an August yard sale.

We embraced change. Especially if it was change we wrought by grabbing up the respective ends of major appliances or heavy furniture left busted and curbside by professional movers with less stamina than we had.

So here we were, virtually sidelined as the consignment store prepared for something called Oldham County Days, one of those contrived community extravaganzas that brings people to town and into its stores in theory if not reality.

I hopped about on a sore foot while Sheila tried to lift things with one arm. We’d fix a display window and pray nobody bought what we’d struggled to put there. By the time I got home, I was ready for shoe inserts and a new edition of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter, which I planned to read while waiting my turn for a colonoscopy.