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.