In the Darkness

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”  - Og Mandino

It is the time in the darkness, praying for sleep that I'm finding so hard.  It has been a long time since I've spent the bewitching hours trying to bargain with God.  In the daylight hours, I am confident and rational, the constant mantra playing in my head - this too shall pass, I am safe, my husband is safe, my son is safe, my sisters are safe, my friends are safe.  And I bake and paint and clean and cook and write and bead and work.  But when the sun sets, it's not so easy.  

I am not afraid for myself.  I've lived almost sixty-five years on borrowed time and had more lives than a cat.  I am going nowhere and taking no risks.  My husband does the grocery shopping for which I am grateful, but he is not all that young anymore either and I worry a little about his exposure.  My son is safe in his downtown condo but he lives alone and I worry about his mental well being after so much isolation.  He only goes out to buy groceries when it is absolutely necessary, but he must get in an elevator to do that, a new source of concern.  One of my sisters has been trying to shake a bug she got weeks before covid19 came to Canada.  She is on the mend, but I have been worrying about her and her vulnerability.  My other sister is in her seventies, single and without someone to do her errands for her.  I know she isn't going far either but I worry she isn't as cautious as she should be when she does have to go out.  There is something about the darkness that makes small worries seem so big.  

I have noticed that my emotions start to rise in the early evening hours, usually when the six o'clock news is on.  It's not the stories quoting the dire statistics that make me come unglued.  It is the sweet stories of loving gestures by ordinary people trying to make things a little better for strangers that make me weepy.    It is the stories of the health care workers and grocery store clerks and volunteers at the food bank.  It is the chalk messages scrawled on fences and sidewalks and driveways, thanking front-line workers for their courage.  And it is the stories of families who cannot be with their dying seniors because the nursing homes are closed to visitors.  For the first time since she passed, I realized that I am grateful my mom is no longer alive.  She would have been confused, alone and afraid and there would have been nothing any of us could do about it.

None of us knows how much longer this scourge will go on.  I know I am not trapped or stuck in my house.  I am safe at home and in the midnight hours, I pray that all those I love are safe too.

Not The Time

"Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small." - Ruth Gendler

I look forward to the Saturday paper.  It is the fat issue with the big section of puzzles and games.  Delivery of our morning paper has been reliable and consistent for years.  The paper is always left on the front porch, rolled and bound with an elastic and on wet days, enclosed in a plastic bag.  So I was somewhat disappointed this morning when I stepped out to retrieve today's paper to find it blown apart, the pages soaking wet and scattered in the bushes.  No part of it was salvageable.  It was not bound by an elastic.  There was no protective bag in spite of the wind and rain.  I started thinking about that.  Why now would our very reliable paper delivery man stop doing what he has always done?  Is he afraid to handle the papers?  Are customers afraid to touch the handled papers?  I won't really ever know the answer to that but my best guess is that I'm right.

The level of fear is high at the time we most need to be fearless.  I understand the fear.  I am the person they would first disconnect if they needed the respirator for a younger person with a better chance of surviving.  But being afraid, won't change that reality.  I have been thinking about other times when the world has been afraid.  People of my parents' generation would know a lot about fear in the times of World War II but I can only imagine those times.  In my own time and world, I am thinking about the days and weeks after the terror attacks on 9/11. We wondered if our world would ever be the same.  We were suspicious of our neighbours, worried about whether we should travel or gather in large groups.  We longed for the days when we felt safe and 19 years later, when we were getting past those anxieties, we are there again.  But this I know for sure - it's not the time for fear. 

Our enemy is invisible.  It knows no politics, no borders, no religion, no age.  It is an equal opportunity terrorist and it will take all our strength and resolve to vanquish it.  We need to protect those who are most vulnerable, first by staying home whenever we can.  We need to keep our physical distance but not our emotional distance.  We need to reach out to help our neighbours and friends who need a hand right now, remembering that it is not safe for some people in our community even to make a distanced trip to the grocery store or pharmacy.  And we have to do our part to stop spreading misinformation and ramping up the level of fear. 

What if we ration our consumption of news so that instead of watching it all day, we watch it once or twice a day for a limited period?  As much as I love watching CNN, I have found I feel far less anxious since I turned it off and started following just Canadian news stations instead.  Watching the daily White House press conferences did nothing for my mental health.  What if instead of reposting the scariest, most sensational accounts of what's happening, we post pictures of beautiful scenery, art or happier days?  What if instead of focusing on reporting on the transgressions of our neighbours, we reach out to help our neighbours with phone calls or notes left in their mailboxes to help them feel less isolated so perhaps they won't feel such hunger to break the distancing rules?  What if instead of unleashing our anger, we unleash our inner-artists by painting or drawing, writing or baking, stringing beads or macaroni?  What if instead of reading post after post in Facebook, we read books with great stories?  If we do all that, we won't need to be afraid because we will have a real chance to beat COVID19, standing together and conquering together with pure, unadulterated, fearless love.

Not Social Distancing

“Love will travel as far as you let it. It has no limits.” - Dee King

Social distancing.   I hate the term.  Social protecting, social spacing, social shielding or physical distancing are all better ways to express what's needed right now.  I am in day 13 of self-isolation.  Amazingly, it is getting easier as I go along.  Perhaps it's because I know it is coming to an end - at least the mandated part of it.  But maybe it's easier because I'm learning how to do it better.  I've embraced the technology that lets me look at people when I'm talking to them even if it is just through the screen on my phone.  I've waded into my art supplies and decided to try again to teach myself to paint with watercolours.  I've unearthed my beads and started to design a new line of jewellery, focused on men.  I've chatted more with friends about my feelings and frailties, no longer needing to hide that I too don't always feel strong.  I've learned to ask for help.  

On the more mundane side, I haven't touched up my roots since before I left for Australia.  I have the hair dye in my cupboard but I feel no need to bother.  No one is looking at me anyway and even if they are, I doubt they are seeing the detail of my greying temples through the lens of my phone.  Maybe this is my chance to see just how grey I have become. And I certainly will have time to tackle my closets in the coming days to do the long overdue purge of accumulated clothes that would better serve someone else now.

But social distancing - not going to happen.  I will keep my physical distance for the protection of myself and those around me.  I probably won't venture out much, even once I can.  COVID19 isn't just a matter of not getting a nasty virus for me.  It is literally a matter of life and death and as I have no intention of shuffling off the mortal coil anytime soon, I will keep the needed physical space.  But even in isolation, I am not distanced, never distanced from those I love.  I am not distanced from my neighbours or my community.  I am not distanced from the people of my city, country or of the world.  We are connected by the bonds of love and friendship.  And we are obligated by the universe and our creator to protect one another.  Right now, we need to do that with space.  But there is no force, no virus, no threat that will distance me from them, no matter where in the world they might be. 

Bloom

The orchids are blooming on the windowsill in my kitchen.  Pink and yellow and purple, straining against the window.  I wonder if they dream of a life beyond the confines of their pots, out in the fields on the other side of the kitchen window.

I am in isolation.  It is hard.  I miss seeing my son and my sisters. I miss hugging my friends and talking to store clerks and strangers in check-out lines as I am so apt to do.  I want to browse the aisles of the art store and look at all the colours of the paints.  I want to finger the beads in the bead store and listen to them tell me what piece of jewelry they would like to become.  I want to go to the fruit market and find the sweetest grapes and berries, buy them in vast quantities and turn them into jam.  

Isolation is hard.  I do not want to whine.  I know I am luckier than most.  I have family and friends.  Groceries arrive on my porch almost daily.  I can still step out onto the back deck and breathe in the warming air.  It is almost spring.  I noticed the snowdrops blooming in the front garden yesterday. 

Isolation is hard. I think about the others.  Those for whom this the normal way of life.  Isolated not because they want to be but because they are elderly or sick or fragile. Perhaps when this is done, we will have some ideas and feel some responsibility to ease their burden.

Isolation is hard.  This morning I found a canvas hiding in a place where I had stashed and forgotten it.  It is the perfect size for the painting that is in my head.  I bought some beads a couple of weeks before my travels but did not have time to string them before I left.  I will take them out and listen to them in the quiet until I hear them whisper their desires.

Isolation is hard.  I will try to take a lesson from the orchids on my windowsill and bloom where I’m planted.

Isolated

“No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.” -  Jiddu Krishnamurti 

 

It is not how I expected my homecoming to go.  After almost a month of adventuring in The Cook Islands and Australia, I am in isolation.  Morning coffee with my sister, dinner and a long hug with my son and afternoon tea with my neighbour are all on hold for fourteen days.  I can't grocery shop, can't go to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions or take a wander through the art store to pick up the supplies I need to get the paintings that have been brewing in my head, out of my head and onto canvas.  And no therapy.  I was on twelve flights in 25 days.  I slept in twelve different beds, ten different ones on ten consecutive nights.  I have walked an uncountable number of steps.  I need therapy so very badly.

I am not sick.  There is no indication that I have Covid19 or anything else.  I did not travel in any hot spots.  Health Canada has only asked that returning travelers monitor their health for 14 days for symptoms of covid19 unless they have traveled in a high risk area.  In the interest of being prudent, my husband and I decided a few days of isolation would be in order, not for our protection but for the protection of others.  But within a couple of days of coming home, our world changed.  Toronto Public Health announced that anyone who had been outside of our borders needs to self-isolate for fourteen days.  So here I am, housebound on day five and already climbing the walls.

I realize that I am far luckier than many others in this position.  I have family, friends and neighbours to help me.  The cavalry has rallied.  Groceries appear at the front door.  Offers to run errands continue to come in text messages and phone calls and I know the offers are sincere.  Just the same, I'm struggling.  I've never been all that good at asking for help.  I guess this is my chance to work on that.  But the logistics of day-to-day living are really the least of what I am finding most difficult.  While I can be introspective and I love my time alone, I am essentially a social animal.  A high-touch social animal at that.  No touch, no hugs, no closeness feels more like no air.  I have skin hunger.  And after a month of continuous outdoor activity, I have cabin fever.  I've been trying to poke my head out for a few minutes of fresh air everyday but it is wintertime and I'm not all that good at the cold.

My sleep schedule is off.  I'm still operating on Australian time.  A long, mostly sleepless night finally yielded to a couple of hours of sleep in the early hours of this morning, ending abruptly when I woke in a state of terror, being attacked by a gang of Neo-Nazis somewhere in a foreign countryside.  I have no idea what that was about.

I've been thinking about people who live this way as a matter of routine, though not a matter of choice.  Elderly, isolated people.  People who struggle with mental health issues.  The lonely and infirm.  Will we as a society learn from our individual experiences and reach out to improve their lives when this crisis has passed?  Maybe.  I have nine more days to think about what I can do about it.