HEALING HANDS

Morning. I awoke with  a start. Something was wrong. No. Nothing was wrong. That was it. Nothing hurt. The sensation lasted a few moments. No longer. Then, at a low level, the pain which has been with me since November returned. With it came a string of memories, clarifying the action I needed to take.
It was about 2 o'clock in the morning and we were on a course NNW across the Celtic sea. The wind was high, a gale, but fair. and we ran on a starboard tack, reasonably well reefed down for a racing boat, on a broad reach. Perhaps it was that our course was far enough off the wind to allay fears, perhaps it was just a piece of incautious seamanship, but no preventer had been rigged. The helmsman was an old salt who'd been around boats most of his life. But something jolted his attention. Perhaps it was an especially large following wave, and as the stern came through the wind, the boom crashed terrifyingly across the boat. I was on the port side of the cockpit and with my head mercifully low when the gybe happened and I heard the scream straight away. The crew on the starboard side, a Scottish girl whom I'd christened Hiberni-Ann had her hand on  the track. The mainsheet itself grazed her face, but the real problem was her hand, now trapped beneath the mainsheet block. I reached forward and grabbed the mainsheet tackle to free her hand. As I did so, with mayhem on deck now, the startled helmsman managed to gybe the boat back again. Again. fortunately my head was low, but this time the mainsheet block snapped over on top of my thumb. The skipper and mate appeared, and took the injured lady below. I pulled out my thumb to realise that it was now the size of between a golf and a tennis ball. Thus it stayed for two or three more days, until we hit shore. Then I went off to stay with some friends, one of whom was a reiki practitioner.
"Shall I give your thumb some?" she asked.
"Why not?"
She held it in her hands with an unusual intensity of care. And so continued for perhaps two hours.
Reiki. Schmeeki. That would be my prejudice. But the swelling subsided, and the thumb never again hurt.
Mumbo jumbo?
What do I know?
But there's the evidence of the thumb.
And so it was I realised what I needed to do with my currently painful shoulder.
"Dear shoulder", I said. "I am so sorry. I realise now how hard I have been on you, blaming you rather than me for your pain when its me who has caused it falling on you like that - a clumsy oaf. I see now that all this time I've been saying its your fault when its mine. I am sorry. I now understand dear shoulder, what a remarkable bit of machinery you are, how beautiful in all your movements, how irreplaceable, how sublime a design. And I see now that I have been trying to shirk the blame and shove it off on you, when all you want to do is join in again the fantastic party going on in the rest of my body - your body, dear shoulder. Here. Have some care."
And I held my shoulder gently, with love. With, in fact, all of the love and high regard I can muster. With real compassion. And I admit to a tear or two realising how horribly I had treated my poor joint.
And my shoulder is better.