I have to start with the surgery.

And I  want to make this very clear: I am not complaining. I am grateful to be lying flat on my back on my comfy bed at quarter to one in the afternoon without any pain in my right leg. I am grateful I can roll over onto my right or my left side and hoist myself up to make my own lunch, or answer my own door, or best of all use my own bathroom.  And it feels to me, overwhelmed with gratitude, that it is a kind of a miracle that I can do any of this without pain. Because three weeks ago, wincing on a crutch, I limped into a hospital, had a surgery on my spine that necessitated general anesthesia and even intubation, and walked out five hours later hoarse and slightly dazed but more importantly, completely free of pain.

I am almost afraid to write that, in a similar way that I am afraid to fly because I don’t know how a plane works. (Or rather, I do, but it doesn’t seem possible.)

Microdiscectomy: Surgery that involves making an inch or two incision near the spine, pushing the muscle apart so that the surgeon can get to a bulging or herniated disc to remove the pieces that are impinging on the nerves, that, squeezed and irritated, cause sometimes eye-watering pain, tingling, and numbness in the leg.

The herniation, an evil monkey that jumped me as I mindlessly shoved a vacuum back and forth under my bed, robbed me of at least two crucial things: One, the belief that I can bellyflop on the floor to perform any kind of activity that requires moving a large object and Two, blissful ignorance about the fact that anything can happen at any time, and the anything, even if it is not life-threatening, can be life-altering. And not in a good way.

For nearly four months,  a prisoner of pain, I tried everything to avoid surgery. Everything, but nothing relieved the hurt enough that I could limp more than a few yards without having to stop to try to breathe through it. I did Lamaze huffing in the shower just to get to the point where I could escape the water to grab my crutch.

While I marinated in my herniated misery, I thought a lot about the rich, exciting activity going on all around me in my vibrant city. What was the point of living here when I could have none of it? The theater, the parks, the music, the restaurants, the shopping, the museums, the museums! Just across Central Park sat the stately Wunderkammer that is the Met, brimming with gifts visual and profound, beckoning me from only a mile away. Torture!

And finally it was enough: Surgery.

And so, able to walk again with only the mildest tingling in my leg and foot to never let me forget that anything can happen, I have given myself a gift: 100 Days at the Met.  It’s the perfect rehab: Sitting is the worst thing I can do for my recovery, walking the best. And if I want to understand (at last, in the adolescence of my old age) how to live happily a life in which impermanence reigns, where better to try to find solace than a place that honors above all memory and history and humanity’s valiant attempt to capture and interpret the essence of the world?

A membership seemed appropriate, so I joined, a year for $100. Less than a dollar a day to walk among some of the greatest art on earth!