Joy and Guilt and Pain: Also Potatoes and Peas
For the first week of schools closed and everyone staying home, it was the most beautiful spring weather imaginable. Every plum and cherry tree on the street was a sweet cloud, the sky was clear west coast blue. All the little plants in the yard grew fuzzy little buds, all at once. The kiwi vine and the apricot tree I was sure I had killed through last summer's negligence put out tiny leaves and buds! The daffodils and narcissuses nod their yellow manes on the back hill. I stomped around outside in my pink muck boots and pajama bottoms, listening to Hadestown and Post Modern Jukebox on my headphones, while Liko played with the gravel from the path.
The other afternoon I stood outside watering the garden boxes where Maile had just put down the seed potatoes and where the pea shoots just starting to nudge their pale green bent necks out of the cold black dirt. I heard a chirp and a zoom-- and a hummingbird swooped nearby. It paused just a few feet away from me, and levitated in the mist of my hose. I was charmed by its miniature holographic angel wings, inquisitive probiscus beak, and the impossible zig zagging way it held still in mid air. The spray from the hose met the sunlight and misted rainbows, and the tiny creature hovered like a bright benediction in the droplets for many long seconds, returning again and again to the spray.
My soul Whooped! The open sky, the water, the dirt, the creature of the air. It was a perfect moment-- a blessing. A blissing!
**
I feel a teensy bit guilty that "shelter in place" lifestyle is essentially my favorite.
I get to work in the garden, putting down roots, spend time with my kids, listen to audiobooks, cook, play music, dance hula, organize neglected piles, and connect with friends virtually, and not drive anywhere!
When I look around at this exact present moment, I feel grateful and enriched.
Beneath that, below it, I hear the drums in the deep and the doppler screech of anxiety. Of course, that's there, too. And the miasma of a terrifying reality of pandemic and economic ruin-- that's real. It swirls around outside this hearth-line.
What can I do to ward that reality off? Nail iron over the door, line my paths with sage and lavender, chant poems while we wash hands, stay inside, smoke and bleach out any illness-- brew tinctures and decoctions and teas and tisanes and vinegars. Gather medicines in case we need them. Enact rituals to sooth my mind, embrace the placebo panacea?
I suppose all I can do is plant potatoes, plant peas. Count on a future of food, of wellness. I can plant enough to feed my family, and hopefully more to share. And be grateful if there are moments of total beauty and delight in that work.
The fear and the threat is real, and so is the joy and delight.
The other afternoon I stood outside watering the garden boxes where Maile had just put down the seed potatoes and where the pea shoots just starting to nudge their pale green bent necks out of the cold black dirt. I heard a chirp and a zoom-- and a hummingbird swooped nearby. It paused just a few feet away from me, and levitated in the mist of my hose. I was charmed by its miniature holographic angel wings, inquisitive probiscus beak, and the impossible zig zagging way it held still in mid air. The spray from the hose met the sunlight and misted rainbows, and the tiny creature hovered like a bright benediction in the droplets for many long seconds, returning again and again to the spray.
My soul Whooped! The open sky, the water, the dirt, the creature of the air. It was a perfect moment-- a blessing. A blissing!
**
I feel a teensy bit guilty that "shelter in place" lifestyle is essentially my favorite.
I get to work in the garden, putting down roots, spend time with my kids, listen to audiobooks, cook, play music, dance hula, organize neglected piles, and connect with friends virtually, and not drive anywhere!
When I look around at this exact present moment, I feel grateful and enriched.
Beneath that, below it, I hear the drums in the deep and the doppler screech of anxiety. Of course, that's there, too. And the miasma of a terrifying reality of pandemic and economic ruin-- that's real. It swirls around outside this hearth-line.
What can I do to ward that reality off? Nail iron over the door, line my paths with sage and lavender, chant poems while we wash hands, stay inside, smoke and bleach out any illness-- brew tinctures and decoctions and teas and tisanes and vinegars. Gather medicines in case we need them. Enact rituals to sooth my mind, embrace the placebo panacea?
I suppose all I can do is plant potatoes, plant peas. Count on a future of food, of wellness. I can plant enough to feed my family, and hopefully more to share. And be grateful if there are moments of total beauty and delight in that work.
The fear and the threat is real, and so is the joy and delight.
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