“What is the sound of one wing flapping?” Since both wings are almost always flapped at the same time, the answer is “pretty much like two wings flapping, just less so”. But when you don’t have full use of both hands, things get a bit more complicated.

My recent injury left me unable to do much with my right arm. I could use the hand, but only if I could get it to what I wanted to handle without moving my arm. There’s a lot of things we do that call for two hands, and if you’d asked me six months ago what would be a problem and what wouldn’t, I would not have gotten it half right. I’ve developed a good bit of empathy for those who really don’t have both hands.

There are, of course, a lot of things that aren’t a problem because they just don’t require two hands: opening a door, using the TV remote control, using a phone, typing (if you’re not in a hurry), eating a sandwich, etc…

Then there are things that can be done, but require some modification. Getting a glass of water: you can’t just hold the glass under the faucet and open the tap. You have to turn on the water, then pick up the glass and fill it, set it down, then turn off the water (this also grates on my sense of resource efficiency). Carrying stuff into the other room might require multiple trips, where as before you could just pick up the laptop, its power supply, and your yogurt and head off. Opening a door might not be a problem, but carrying stuff through that door might be. These things require extra planning.

If it’s your dominant hand that’s out of service, things like writing and eating become problematic. While I’ve gotten better at filling in crossword puzzles with my non-dominant hand, at first I had to be very deliberate about holding and moving the pencil (no, I don’t do crosswords in ink). I thought carefully about how I wrote normally and tried to replicate that, in mirror image, with my other hand. Eating was somewhat less of a problem, but still took some mental effort.

Speaking of eating, you can’t use a knife and fork at the same time. Most people think it’s fine to pick up a chicken leg with their fingers and chew into it. I’ve come to believe that applies to steak too.

Hair can be a problem if it needs more than a bit of combing.

I’ve reconsidered the necessity of some things. For example, my home office has two computers, two cell phones, a desk clock, and a clock radio, all of which are perfectly happy to give me the time of day. So why bother with a watch if I’m going to be there all day? Similarly, I’m not going out anywhere, the cat doesn’t care what I wear (or don’t), so as long as my webcam isn’t aimed to low….

And then there are things that are just not an option. Cleaning and cutting up vegetables for my salads requires two hands. Hauling my trash to the landfill. Mowing the grass (my mower is light enough I could probably maneuver it ok with one hand, but it takes two to start it). These are things that I’ve had to rely on others to do for me, and I’m grateful for those people, which includes paid services (those people who can’t work from home during this pandemic) as well as neighborhood volunteers. A tip ‘o the hat to Joe, Deb, Bud, David, Sharon, David, and the others whose names I didn’t think to write down and apologize to for not doing so, for jumping right in when word got around.