+ Her Barefoot Heart
Wednesday, 08 April 2020, Day 29 of Sheltering-in-Place: Today is Eye Treatment #13, and as I both expected and feared, my vision has declined. Today I lost 10 letters. That’s almost all the letters I’ve gained over the last year. Despite knowing the erosion of vision since the last visit, I am sad, bereft, and discouraged. I’ll take it easy tomorrow, then bounce back into the studio on Friday and get back to work making face masks. Thank y’all for your constant loving support.
Gorgeous weather is the bearer of hope.
When we need more supplies to make masks, there is no choice but to go out. Before we enter the store, I give The Engineer a 4” x 44” strip of fabric with instructions to cover his nose and mouth then tie it in the back of his head, and I do the same. Next we both don gloves. Back in the truck, The Engineer says – and I quote – “I felt like an idiot when you made me wear that makeshift mask and gloves . . . and I think it’s the smartest thing you ever made me do.”
I choose yoga, sketching, and short poems for my 100 Day Project, and I start early with a Yoga Nidra this morning led by my amazing friend Nona Jordan. I haven’t adjectives to tell you how wonderful it was except to say that I am now looking forward to a spot of yoga in each day. Yoga will change my life. That much I’m sure of.
Small pleasures: walking through the grocery store downwind of the blue hyacinths that will soon grace our home.
On the way home, we get behind a grandfather and his grandson who apparently decided to break the bindings of cabin fever by taking the lawnmower out for a spin.
There is much to smile about well before noon.
Affirmations help some days.
Chore charts are set aside as we all pitch in to do what needs to be done while mask-making for friends and family continues full steam ahead. The floors are a garden of thread and scraps of fabric. There’ll be plenty of time to sweep later.
Today was my day to cook breakfast, so we ventured out for a PICkuptruckNIC. Went to Bo’s for a biscuit, then – because he is showing withdrawal symptoms – a stop by Lowe’s. I admit it was more than a bit scary – after all, we haven’t been out of the house in two weeks. We never left the truck, though The Engineer and I did go into Lowe’s – he in search of supplies and me wanting to feed my Fitbit. People tended to make sure there was space in our togetherness, and most women wore gloves or kept their hands in their pockets. Why did I feel like holding my breath the entire time? A clear plastic panel was on his shopping list, and their supply’s was nil. When we went to the checkout, we discovered why: a panel of hard, clear plastic separated every cashier from the paying customers. Every aisle was marked off with big, colorful X’s on the floor and a sign asking next-in-line customers to wait here to maintain social distancing. The people behind us paid no heed.
The weather was absolutely beautiful today, so once back home, Mother and The Engineer busied themselves outside planting colorful annuals in the deck pots while Alison and I worked on our computers indoors. If I told you Mother’s age, you’d be quite impressed at all she did today. But then if I told you her age, she’d kill me and spend the rest of her life wearing ill-fitted orange jumpsuits in prison, (a sentence she’d willingly endure for punishing me for the ultimate transgression. Our motto is Age is just a number, and mine’s unlisted.) I imagine we’ll all sleep well from a day of good work (and no naps) with visions of Bo’s Biscuits dancing in our heads, though I’m not sure we’ll venture out again any time soon. I don’t like being fearful, but I don’t know how to quell it.
Thank you to Julie for sending a long list of quotes in response to my request on Day 14. She includes a quote at the end of every blog post, and she was kind enough to compile last year’s quotes and send them to me. I dare say Mother will enjoy these much more than the oracle cards.
I really enjoy hearing about how you’re getting on during this surreal time. My friend Becky writes of baking cookies and how she and her husband (who is now working from home) enjoy this slower lifestyle, including date night on the newly pressure-washed deck – now festooned with brightly colored plants – twice a week. She’s turned this into a delightful time of delightfully leisurely togetherness.
Meet Flerkin
And Jeeves
Did I mention that we have 8 – yes, e-i-g-h-t – cats staying with us, too? Why oh why does it sound so adorable when Tracy Coan posts of her feline’s antics? Ours are cute as buttons . . . When they’re asleep.
I am cranky.
I need space (physical and mental).
And order.
In this morning’s First Light of Day journal, I ask what I want my life to be because that seems a good starting point. The question “What do I want?” echoes when it hits the page.
I need a reset button, something to take my mind off the current situation and set me back on the path of cheerfulness and optimism. The only thing for it is to plead with Mother Nature to wrap her arms around me and whisper sweet parables to my heart and something positive to think about to my brain.
The sun has come to call today, so I go outside for a walk and there, in the flowerpot now filled with dead stems that were once colorful blooms celebrating daughter Alison’s graduation from college in our home-held ceremony, I spy a daffodil stretching and rubbing her eyes.
How did that happen?
In July this pot was filled with ham and egg lantana, not daffodils. Daffodils are spring flowers; lantana thrives in the summer. Daffodils enjoy the cool shade; lantanas are happiest in the hot, full sun. I accept it as one of Mother Nature’s conundrums, something for me to ponder.
Now I may be delighted with the notion that everything happens for a reason all in its perfect time, I may giggle gleefully with magic, but The Engineer wants to know how and why things happen. Before I can stop him, he shoves the pot aside with his foot, and lo and behold the pot is sitting in the middle of a small daffodil patch. This daffodil – the only one blooming – who found her path blocked, found a way to keep growing anyway. By golly she was meant to stretch, reach, grow. She was meant to live, and live she would. She was, after all, put on earth to bloom, and she let nothing – not even a heavy pot of wet soil and dead (or dormant) lantana stems stop her.
The Determined Daffodil, now at home in a vase that belonged to my grandmother, the one I’m writing the book about.
She is not a victim, this daffodil. She doesn’t whine or wring her hands because her life is difficult and not at all the way she’d like it to be. This is one Determined Daffodil, and she chooses lightness and smiles and positivity.
Now I REALLY have something to ponder.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
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