The Year of Jazz Gloria Blizzard (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution gloria blizzard and jazz, lake ontario, canada | photo by heidi seirekidis [End Page 26] This essay takes the form of a jazz standard. Nestled within the intro and outro are alternating A and B sections. I am sustained by John Coltrane's music and the company of a dog named Jazz, as I liken the experience of lockdown to that of a bizarrely acquired concussion. Intro The alpha puppy, I learn later, is untrainable. Determined. Feisty. Smart. Bossy. Mischievous. An improviser. Will not fetch. The dog trainer gave her back after a week of residential training. He never cashed my check. My daughter and I named her Jazz. Life is complex. The child says, Jazz, short for Jasmine. I say, the puppy's name was Coltrane's fault as she was to become one of My Favorite Things. His version of the eternal tune. Precious and unfathomable. A When the tent pole first went up my nose, it shook up my brain and me so much that it took a bit of a break and went off to Bermuda or was it Brazil. I had not traveled to Brazil yet at that time, so it must have been Bermuda. A place that I've never been drawn to and never wished to go. I pulled the tent pole from my left nostril. Blood gushed out onto the sands of Sunnyside Beach. I turned quickly away from my daughter and the other children, so that they would not see. My friend, Jacqueline, gathered them and pulled them far away. I moved northish. A stranger sat me down on a bench. She called an ambulance. The attendants asked a few questions. They smothered laughs. A tent pole up the nose? An ambulance for a nosebleed? It was a two-minute drive to St. Joseph's Hospital. An emergency room doctor said, "Take a couple of days off of work" and wrote a note to that effect. On day 2 at home however, the world seemed too bright, the sidewalk would not stay still. No one else was squinting at the too bright sun. No one else swayed. Their sidewalks appeared to be stable. Perhaps it was me. I went back inside for my shades and made my way gingerly to a walk-in medical clinic. I removed my shades, the doctor looked briefly into my eyes. "Go back to the hospital immediately. This is for an emergency CAT scan," he said, handing me a slip of paper. An hour or three later, the procedure was completed and a white man in hospital scrubs raced into the examining room waving a gray scan, "Nothing obvious," he told me, "but stay at home for two weeks and follow up with your general practitioner." I returned home, the sidewalk tipping generously from left to right. The sun was a piercing, bright light. I called my brothers, they laughed. I laughed. It sounded ridiculous. Tent pole up my nose. A Date of Injury (DOI): March 19, say the medical records. "Post-concussional type syndrome resulting from a very focal injury" wrote Scott McCullagh, MD, neuropsychiatrist. Brain Injury Clinic at Sunnybrook Hospital. He'd never seen such an injury. A blow to the inside of the head. "It is called 'mild,'" he said apologetically, knowing full well the catastrophic impact it was having on my life. I was suddenly disabled and could not work. I slept a lot. I went for short walks. I made simple meals for my daughter and me. I swept the floor. I went to appointments. Eventually the thought arose, perhaps from my gut, that this might be an appropriate time to get a puppy. My daughter had been asking for one for a year or was it two. I was now available for the care of a baby dog. It would sleep a lot. It would need very short walks. Just like me. I would be home when it needed to pee hourly. My daughter, now eleven, was also old enough to participate in dog care. Two months after the DOI, on May 9, I brought Jazz home...