Regaining My Post-Covid Balance
When you are trapped in a Covid time warp, all you want to do is sleep. Sleep for hours. Sleep for days. Sleep a sleep so deep that you fall in and are carried away to places you haven’t revisited for years. Decades. A lifetime. As if you were circling the globe on a flying carpet high above the world or flying over a narrow river gorge on the back of a great winged snow goose. These journeys and others happened when I disappeared under a blanket of Covid-induced sleep.
My world shrank and I was giant Alice peeking down a rabbit hole. In the great woods beyond and soaring high above our front deck, a super blue moon lit up the night and early morning hours unobserved by my sleeping neighbors. Stars became twinkle lights as a gathering took place of all the woodland creatures I imagine walk unseen in this woods throughout the day and deep into the night. I imagine a bear standing tall over a tree stump where fairyland creatures all raise goblets and celebrate the coming of fall. Around the circle, I see a red fox, cottontail rabbits, a tiny mouse on a gnome’s knee, a red squirrel, a hedgehog, a tuxedoed badger, and a golden-haired mayfly fairy with transparent wings.
Where is the beautiful doe? I wonder. The delicate creature who comes to my birdfeeders every morning. Silent. Always alone. Not a mark of stress or injury on her beautiful coat. I’ve given her the name Dolores and welcome her to the feeding trough as I do the nuthatches that follow me about and assorted chipmunk-sized red squirrels and big bushy-tailed grey squirrels. Through the dining room window, I watch frisky red squirrels fly across the aerial highway they traverse from tree to tree like highwire walkers. A favorite stop near a wooden bench is a glass water bath on tall, sculpted legs. Here, squirrels, birds and Dolores stop for a cool drink when the afternoon heats up.
Emerging from sleep, I get up and wrap myself in a great cashmere shawl before stepping out into the cold morning air. It feels like fall suddenly. I wonder if I’ve slept through summer’s end and missed the final days of the season entirely. Had I? Who knows? Who looks at the calendar anymore? All the days seem to have slid into one, and I sense it is time again for corn and grapes to be harvested two time zones and an earlier life away in the Midwest.
Sitting on a French park bench across from my raised flowerbed, I see tall arching wands of lavender and am pleased that the garden is still thriving in my absence. I’d initially imagined it as a rose garden two years ago when it was constructed. Along its raised redwood panels that run high and taper at the ends, it is a garden I can literally step up into and walk through without wiping out tiny wildflowers that bloomed from seeds scattered last fall. Only one rose bush survived—a butter yellow Julia Child Floribunda that I replanted earlier this summer in a large pot in warm sunshine that nourishes my tomato bushes on the front deck. Happily, it is making a health comeback, giving me hope on so many fronts.
Suddenly, I am joined by my neighbors’ cat—a friendly, yellow tabby named Mac. Her twin sister, Cheese, never crosses the road to visit me, but Mac loves exploring my gardens and its quiet pathways as much as I do. She stalks skinks and frogs and dreams of flying like a bird. While scratching her back, I tell her I have created a treefrog habitat in a flowerbox with four petunias that rest above its watery bottom. High above Mac’s reach four treefrogs temporarily poke their heads up as I peek behind the petunias. Surprised, they dive with startling speed back into their watery hideaway.
I’m soon back on the couch with my head on my pillow, sinking into a deep sleep again. As the the first days of September go by, neighbors stop by and leave gifts on the porch beyond my screened door. Bouquets of flowers, peaches and heavenly plums from a neighbor’s orchard up Highway 20 arrive and still I sleep. At night plates meals are delivered by my masked friends and gratefully received when finally, after three days I realize I really must start eating again.
I love to cook. And like the woodland creatures in my Covid sleep, I dream of once again gathering with Kit and friends on our deck, soaking in warm September light, and raising our glasses in a toast to feeling healthy once again.