Artfully Wild Blog Along: 4 September 2021

• I awoke with a sense of dread. I asked Mac (who sleeps with the radio and ear buds), "Did anything else awful happen overnight?" I didn't want to get up and face a day of more heartbreak. "It's okay, nothing more."
• The duck with the injured leg, the one that injured said leg escaping from the orchard through a wire netting fence, was waiting for breakfast outside the orchard! She hopped, stumbled and flapped her way back over the fence, making her way to the feeding dish. When lockdown is over, and we can access materials, we plan on replacing the fence.
• I thought gardening in the countryside was a peaceful, meditative affair. But today I wore my newish hearing aids and was driven to distraction by dozens of small birds having a conference in the pohutukawa tree. Are they always there? I don't know because I don't usually wear the aids around home.
• This year I didn't put in a winter garden, and now it is spring and nothing is ready. As I said yesterday, no seeds sown in trays in the sun by the dining room window, the garden beds full of long grass and other weeds. Today I continued working on the bed I started yesterday and finished it, so now have room for some of the ordered seedlings. Tomorrow, another bed. If I can keep up the pace I will have space for all of them by the time they arrive.
• The keruru are definitely in mating mode - while I was gardening they were chasing each other around the garden, flying very low over my head. I hope they get their courting rituals over soon as I actually felt endangered! But they are magnificent birds.
• At the end of summer, my two beehives had collapsed from lack of proper care, and one was queenless. I thought they would both die, but in a last desperate attempt to save them, I merged the two hives. The single hive has made it through winter and I am hopeful it will take off and grow strong enough to make up a second. Today we did a hive inspection and put in a second varroa treatment. I am so happy to be back with a healthy hive once more. I adore my bees; they are such amazing creatures.
• For the first time since she came to live with us about three years ago, Luna is not demanding food with menaces tonight. We saw her earlier eating a small rabbit. Much as they are cute, rabbits are an awful pest, so we didn't rescue it. She is spending the evening stretched out in front of the fire with a very large tummy.
• Life under lockdown is so small and restricted, and yet it is also infinite. I have always felt a strong connection to this place we came to 21 years ago, always enjoyed the way working on the land strengthened that connection. The older I get the bigger the small things become for me. Lockdown has increased that feeling.
  
• A drop of water hanging from a plum blossom holds the entire world. The whole world is that drop of water.
  
• I am the drop of water. The drop of water is me.

Artfully Wild Blog Along: 3 September 2021

So already I haven't blogged every day of September - but that's okay, and a simple statement, not a hand-wringing tale of failure. Which those who know me well will understand as real progress.

TW violence.

Today, the third day of spring, has been a perfect blue sky day. These are the days when my early morning walk to feed the chooks and ducks is a delight: violets in the grass, pink peach blossom, white plum blossom. Lately it's been a chore, venturing out in wind and cold rain, plodding through mud, today was a welcome change.

The SAD has kept me lacking in motivation, and I realized that I have once again neglected the garden preparation necessary to get my summer garden planted. Not only that, but I haven't started seeds either. So I have ordered a 'vegcombo' pack of 72 seedlings of unknown varieties, which should arrive early next week, thus forcing me to get out and get weeding.

So it was that I spent several hours outside in the sunshine without sunscreen because it's been so long since I last needed it and am now the possessor of a fine pink complexion. Why don't I get out there more often? Gardening always makes me feel good, yet I resist it. The smell of freshly turned soil, the working hard and sweating with the effort, hands in the earth, surrounded by bird song, including the challenges of male pheasants declaring their ownership of their particular territories.

Lunch was satisfying too: homemade bread roll with home grown bean and seed sprouts and egg from my own chooks mashed with onion weed freshly foraged from halfway down our (600m) driveway.

It was encouraging to listen to the daily announcement of cases of covid in the community and hear that the numbers seem to be reducing.

Back out in the garden, I listened to Jessie Mulligan on National Radio talking to Lynda Hallinan about attracting bees to your garden until the programme was interrupted by a news flash. 

A man had been shot dead by police after attacking people at a supermarket.

At 5.15pm the prime minister and the chief of police held a news conference where we learned that the man was a Sri Lankan who came to New Zealand 10 years ago, has been under surveillance since 2016 because of his extreme ISIS views, but has never done anything to warrant arrest. The police watching him had no reason to think this was anything other than another supermarket shop by the man who had shopped there before, but he obtained a knife within the store and started stabbing people. He was shot by the police within 60 seconds of the start of his attack.

Suddenly the black dog is back, snapping at my heels again. I feel helpless, despairing  and sick to the core at this world of fires and floods and storms and violence and disease and hatred and covid and conspiracy theories, and at this heartless earth which just keeps on being beautiful and glorious without a moment's consideration of me or the rest of humankind.

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Artfully Wild Blog Along: 1 September 2021

First of September

First day of  spring.

First day of Level 3 lockdown for those of us south of Auckland.

Thirty eighth anniversary of my second son's birth.

Because of #3, my son's birthday was enlivened by being able to get a takeaway Thai dinner. Such are the highlights of a covid birthday. My heart aches to see him as I sit here remembering the night he was born. I was supposed to bring him home from the hospital on a two hour discharge, but that was so rare back then, it was three and a half hours before they worked out what forms I had to sign to legally relieve them of responsibility for my rash behaviour.

Also because of #3, instead of spending time with my son - in all honesty, I wouldn't have driven to Wellington to be with him but I'd have liked to have had that option - the highlight of my day was walking to the end of the road and back, taking surplus eggs, limes and garlic to put in neighbours' mailboxes. Last lockdown we put our surplus out by our mailbox for people to help themselves, but that was when the autumn weather was fine almost every day.

It's been a grey, wet, windy August, but today it didn't rain, and there was a bit of blue sky amid the clouds. The windmills on the hilltops to the east look like opposing armies on days like this: some shining white in the sun, the others a dark, dull metal grey in the clouds' shadows.

I have never managed to keep a daphne bush growing, but bought yet another about a month ago. Given my lousy track record, I decided to just leave it in the pot it came in, and wait for the already formed buds to emerge. Today I picked a small sprig of delicious smelling flowers to bring smiles to the dining table. 

The light is returning. I know summer will be here soon, even though the wait seems interminable - it has happened every year since I was born almost 70 years ago, so there is no reason to think it will happen otherwise this year.

The experience of those 7 decades  - how the fuck did I manage to live this long? -  also informs me that that damn black dog snapping at my heels will soon leave me alone for a while, once the summer sunshine arrives and I can spend days outside in the garden, at the beach, walking in the bush.

New shoes. 

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I have joined a facebook group with the stated intention of blogging every day of September: I doubt I will manage every day, but hopefully more than my average of about twice a month!

Reading: August 2021

 Nothing remarkable this month - except the book that I have been reading since the beginning of the year! But I still haven't finished reading it so you'll have to wait until the end of September for me to tell you about it. It is extraordinary, so much so that I only read a few pages at a time, and hold the words and knowledge and ideas inside my mind for days, savouring them, caressing them.... but, as I said, you'll have to wait.

Of the other books, the two best were: 

• By the Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz
• The Switch by Justina Robson

The others were good enough to read to the end, but not really inspiring:

• The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka
• Unsheltered by Clare Moletar
• The Summer Seekers by Sarah Morgan
• Deep into the Dark by P.J. Tracy
• Who is Maud Dixon by Alexandra Andrews

Reading: July 2021

I haven't stopped reading - I just haven't been writing about it. I keep a list of books read in my diary and always intend to review them but somehow it hasn't happened for a long time. But there is always the next month, the next day, the next book: so here goes.

1. Six Wicked Reasons by Jo Spain (fiction)

2. The Confession by Jessie Burton (ficton)

3. The Litigators by John Grisham (fiction)

4. Camino Island by John Grisham (fiction)

5. Cliffs of Fall by Shirley Hazzard (short stories, still don't like them! They always seem unfinished to me)

6. Devoted by Dean Koontz (fiction) (a disappointingly weak ending from an author I usually enjoy.)

So nothing particularly bad, I always enjoy John Grisham for an easy read and these were of his usual standard. But.....

Picks of the month:

7. Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey. (fiction) Thank goodness I reserved this book from the library after hearing a review of this sci fi / fantasy novel, because I would not otherwise have looked past the spine where someone had stuck a 'romance' sticker on it. Do not be put off if you don't like the romance genre - it is definitely NOT this. I think they read the jacket and jumped to a conclusion based on their own narrow definition of the word 'relationship'. It's a great read and a mind teaser: not a 'who dunnit' but certainly a 'wtf is going on' but just like in the best murder mystery, there are clues all the way through. I gradually got most of the pointers, but still didn't quite guess the surprising end. Highly recommended.

8. Nomadland by Jessica Bruder. (non-fiction) I had 'enjoyed' the movie, though 'enjoyed' isn't really the right word. The book was so much more! I became depressed and hopeful by turn, and overwhelmingly relieved that I live in New Zealand and not in the US. Our welfare system is not what I would like it to be, life can suck for people here, but Holy Shit! it is so much harder there. Also learned even more about what an asshole company Amazon is! But so interesting, and inspiring too, to see how resourceful people can be. And also how people can form kind and supportive communities anywhere. Highly recommended.

On how to store labels

A lot of my ponderings lately have come as an expansion on ideas from a discussion in Return of Me, a class from Book Art Studios. 

After one session, my mind was swirling with thoughts about labels, and talk about there being 'two sides to the coin'. Both reminded me of my ponderings and anxieties during homeschooling days when I was asked about how I taught 'x' or what my kids were learning when they did 'y'. The longer I homeschool / unschooled, the harder I found it to label my children or to describe their learning, because both my children and life are so intricate and interacting and complex. At first glance there are two sides to a coin, but then we notice that there is a third side which is the circumference. And then we notice that the circumference has a patterned edge, so lots of little mini sides! And then, we notice that the sides are not opposite, they are just the outside of the coin, the external 'skin'. And then we see an old very coin that has been handled and dropped and covered in boiled-lolly stickiness and washed, for years and decades or even centuries and it's almost smooth and we can't see what the picture is or what the writing says. And then we lay it on the railway track and wait for a train and then it has no regular shape left. And then we drill a hole in it and hang it on a chain..... and is it still a coin with two sides? And maybe that's what is being done to me, and maybe that's what art is? Taking things, mixing them with thoughts and feelings and crumpling and soaking and tearing and working and working at them until the labels disappear but the essence remains, and we call it a 'book' or a 'quilt' or a 'statue' but it is made of all the other labelled things and labelled actions but is both less and more than all those things. It is the same but different. And even after it's finished, it is still not a finished thing because every person who experiences it will do so differently, both physically and emotionally.

So if we stop the labelling, and think of the process of learning and adding and chipping away and putting our work out on the railway track and polishing and distressing and layering..... why then we can look at the planning and practicing and hoarding and emotional self-flagellation as all being part of the process, all part of the 'coin', and chose how much is enough of each for ourselves, rather than worrying about anyone else.

So maybe labelling things - people, things, our actions - can become a collection of jars, boxes, tins, vaults, and consequently very restricted and restricting. Maybe if I really feel the need to label, I could use mesh bags instead of glass jars, to allow a bit of flow? Maybe using words like 'sometimes', 'yet', 'for now', could be freeing.

Consolidation and Expansion

 I've gotten out of the habit of blogging, and indeed, out of the habit of writing much at all. I miss putting my random thoughts and ideas into words, so figure this place is a easy one to start doing that again.

Well, my home is chaotic. We took Simon to Auckland yesterday and deposited him in sterile temporary accommodation, as his flat isn't available until Thursday. He will be back at the weekend to collect the rest of his belongings. Or rather, the ones he needs - I'm sure there will be a large residue that will live on here, along with his cat which, it seems, is now our #2 cat. I'm trying not to worry too much about him, but his health is not good. I remember laughing at my parents when they worried about me even though I was 'grown up'. I now know that I will never stop worrying about my boys - I guess it's all a part of parental love.

A friend went on an adventure, which included making a knife from scratch! which was, of course, not only about the knife, but about the adventure, the challenge, the perseverance, the expanding, stretching, growing. Other friends have gone gliding, hot air ballooning, art workshops, writing workshops..... I've been trying to come up with something special to do for my 70th birthday. I came up with one idea, but Mac shot that down for some reasons, though I'm still working on it. I'll find something....

BUT..... 

I don't know if you have all watched the amazing Nightbirde audition on America's Got Talent - it's well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZJvBfoHDk0

The thing that got me thinking was her words, "You can't wait until life isn't hard anymore before you decide to be happy." And suddenly a rephrased version popped into my head: "You don't have to wait for a significant birthday to do something special, to have an adventure, to challenge yourself, expand, stretch, grow." Pretty obvious really, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only person in the universe to need a reason or excuse to do things, nor the only one to use the lack of an obvious reason or excuse AS a reason or excuse to avoid moving away from the comfort and security of the metaphorical armchair in front of the fire.

So.... as well as having decided I want to work to consolidate the skills and practice of the things I love doing - bookmaking, writing, gardening / permaculture - I also want to go on small adventures, stretch a bit, grow a bit, challenge myself a bit. I'm just not sure what that is going to involve!

Writing Fragments

Writing used to be a joy for me, but it became so much harder for me since I had a stroke three years ago. In January, I did a workshop with Wanda Barker at the Raglan Summer School, and although it took me a week to rest and recover, I enjoyed it immensely. I haven't managed to keep up the writing habit though. Recently I realized that although I could write in the workshop, at home I expect myself to turn everything into 'a piece', and if I can't see a final context, I won't start. I do so enjoy the process of writing, trying to find the best words, the best order. I have never been interested in getting work published: I like to share with people who will offer constructive criticism of my writing, and I like to share with people who enjoy my words and experiences, but the rest of the world doesn't matter. So, I've been writing a couple of things that are not really poems, nor essays, nor short stories - just fragments of my life. And I've accepted that fragments are okay.

The Freedom of Selective Memory

I have discovered

the joy possible

in selective memory.

Remembering as if reading

an ancient, brief item

in a yellowed newspaper,

voices and faces faded out.

It tastes like freedom.

The Hills From My Window

From my favourite chair, I see the ridgeline followed by Maungatawhiri Road. I cannot see the road, nor my friends' homes, but I see hills, paddocks, trees, and a few houses and sheds of strangers. This morning the misty rain blurs the shapes and mutes the colours.

In the mornings, on the rare occasions I rise early enough, and weather permitting, I see the sun's rays switch the spotlights on to the highest fields, turning them a wonderful gold-green, and then the colour moves wider and lower, like a Mexican wave, across the landscape. Next the tops of the trees are highlighted, and eventually the sun become visible in the east and reaches the windows behind me.

At sunset, that same view, framed by my window, is always the same, always different. Those particular trees on that particular stretch of the ridge, are sometimes backed by glorious reds and oranges, bright pinks and grey, but my favourite evenings are the ones I suspect are painted by Salvidor Dali, when the pale but luminescent white gold or apricot outlines the hills and no matter how hard, or exciting, or busy the day has been, all is well with the world, and I breathe out.

Telling the Stories

 Changing the way I tell the story after decades of negativity is hard. My 'natural' (really, it was learned) inclination is to see the negative.

So one version anticipating and living this week has so involved involved:

• my hand hurts;
• it's grey and wet and dreary;
• I'm feeling old and decrepit at the prospect of 3 more medical appointments this week;
• I can't garden or craft because my hand hurts / rain;
• blah blah blah....

But I am actually doing what I said I would - noticing and telling the other story:

• my eyes are all good as far as glaucoma and diabetes go, and my vision has changed so little, I can choose whether or not to get my lenses changed;
• I had time between appointments to have lunch with my friend, Amy;
• I had a visit from another friend, Liz, and had a long lunch with her in Raglan;
• Steven is coming tomorrow to visit;
• my sore hand gives me an excuse to curl up with books for hours;
• the rain flooded the bottom paddock beside the drive today and there were lots of ducklings paddling in the shallow 'pond'.

A negative outlook is a hard habit to break - I've tried before - especially having had decades of working on the principle of 'if I expect the worst, I can't be disappointed. But I'm trying.

Telling Stories to Make Magic

If the full and whole story of my life was told, and if it could told as quickly as I have lived it, it would take over 69 years. So when I tell the stories of my life, even to myself, they are, inevitably, just tiny parts of the whole. And they are often changed by how much I tell, and how much I leave out, and how important they are to my overall narrative, ....... and what the fuck is the meaning of life anyway? Well, that went downhill fast!

Recently couple of people got me considering the stories I tell myself.

Liz, of Book Art Studios, asked what my perfect day creating would look like. I found this incredibly difficult to do because so much of what I thought of isn't possible at the moment, or in some aspects, will never again be possible. Then I started considering what I really want now, and who I am now in the present as opposed to the past, or in some possible or impossible alternate future reality. 

A young friend wrote on Facebook, addressing all those disappointed by missing out on tickets to Kiwiburn. Oliver spoke of how people may get tickets later, when the 'lucky' ones realize they can't go after all and sell their tickets. He spoke of other celebrations, festivals, and of the possibilities of setting up or contributing to other celebrations. He talked of years to come. Best of all, he said: "Burns are fundamentally about making magic happen, and you will never need a ticket to have permission to do that."

So I thought about the creative environment that I have longed for. I thought about Burning Man, which I heard about way back in the 1980s  and how I thought, 'one day I'll go there, when the kids are grown', and Kiwiburn, which I heard of in the 1990s and thought, 'one day I'll go there, when the kids are grown'. But I haven't gone, though one son has.

I thought about how I no longer tell myself that story of one day going to Burning Man or Kiwiburn, and of how I have let that story go, and am comfortable about leaving that story unlived, and yet I am unwilling to let go of my 'perfect creative day' story. Which actually, was never realistic anyway.

Now I'm thinking of what attracted me to Burning Man and Kiwi burn, and about the different aspects of my 'perfect creative day'. I'm thinking about all kinds of things in my life that I have been telling myself stories about, some true, some part true, and some just plain bullshit.

I'm thinking I need to tell new stories about my past. Not made up ones, just some of the stories I have put aside. Remembering positive stories as well as the negative stories that have eaten away at me.

I need to start imagining positive possibilities and futures. instead of the negative what-if scenarios that plague me in the dark of the night.

The habits of a lifetime are hard to change, but maybe if I start with the premise that I need neither a ticket nor permission, I might just be able to make some small magics.

Let Me Rest In Peace

 When I die, as we all will,

please don't hold a funeral.

Just let me rest in peace.

 

Don't gather and hug and kiss and cry.

Don't sing somber or joyous songs.

Don't get up and spray your words

over all those attending.

Just let me rest in peace.

 

Don’t visit my sons

With plates of food

that they won’t eat

but will have to wash and return.

Just leave them to grieve

(or not) in their own ways.

 

Don’t breathe and sneeze

your thoughts of how loved,

or not, I was, and how much

I will be missed, or not.

Just let me rest in peace.

 

If you have thoughts

About me, loving or not,

tell me now, or tell my sons

in a disinfected letter.

Just let me rest in peace:

don’t send me company.

 

 

The Other Overwhelming Sad

On top of and underlying the sadness I wrote about on Friday, was the other huge sadness that most New Zealanders were feeling. That I could not bring myself to write about last week. All week I was feeling love, horror, fear, grief, compassion, for the victims of the Christchurch mosque murderous slaughters as nearly 90 survivors and family members gave victim impact statements in court.

At the same time I felt stomach-churning horror at the thought of being the mother of that white son, who is the same age as my white son. The knowledge that none of my sons would do such a thing, does not ameliorate the nausea, when the knowledge that he-who-I-will-not-name is a son of our shared white culture of privilege and arrogance.

Even the sentence of actual life-until-you-die imprisonment (first time *ever* in NZ) has left me in a state of horror - yes, what other option could be considered? But he's 29 - he faces so many decades of non-life in jail. What a waste, what a dreadful way to be. And his mother and grandmother - how dreadful are their lives. And yet, what he did is just so awful, so so so awful. I can't stop thinking of how I could live with the knowledge that my son had done that. I think I would kill myself.

It was comforting to have the son who is the same age visit this weekend, and to hear his thoughts around this horrible slaughter, and have it confirmed that he a good, kind, moral man that would never commit such an atrocity. Plus, he makes me laugh.

Sad Like Never Before

 I’m feeling sad. Sad like never before.

I spent decades in and out of depression. A few times I’ve been suicidal. More often I would fantasize about dying in a way that no one would feel guilty – that a sudden rock fall would land on my car without warning, or that I’d be struck by lightning. I cried when a biopsy came back clear of cancer. I was sure everyone would be better off without me, but also knew that some wouldn’t see that truth and would be devastated if I killed myself. I didn’t think I was worth the money to waste someone’s time and effort to help me with counseling. Eventually, in my fifties and sixties I got intermittent help, and the last few years I finally felt life was worth living, and that it was okay to do things just because I enjoy them.

But now I’m feeling sad, like never before.

The world feels unsafe. Not just because of covid19, but because of people. The denial of science that is inconvenient, around climate change, covid19, around vaccination, around 1080, around a whole raft of things that have proven not to be 100% perfect. Around science itself, which many see as failed if scientists update or refine their information and recommendations after doing more research aka science.

It seems to me that there are a lot of fears around, which contribute to the denial of the majority of scientific opinion, and to the promulgation of conspiracy theories ranging from the possible but unlikely (Jacinda Ardern is conspiring with other world leaders to destroy capitalism) to the absurd (alien reptiles have taken over the world’s leaders.) (Oh, and by the way, ladies, your endometriosis was caused by demon sperm from when you screwed an incubus in your dreams – facts from the same doctor who tells us that hydroxychloroquine cures covid19.)  Fear of an uncertain future: it was always uncertain, we just didn’t recognize it. Fear of lack of control: we have never had control over many things, we just pretend in order to make us comfortable. Why do we hate, and often fear, cockroaches and bedbugs and green veggie bugs? Because we can’t control them. Why are earthquakes and tornados and tsunami so scary? Because we can’t control them. So when we can’t control things, we either pretend they don’t exist – think of Aucklanders living in a city of volcanoes, Christchurch people still living where their existence was so threatened. So people deny science because it is less scary to believe that ‘someone’ is in control, even if that ‘someone’ is out of our control, that there is the possibility that some other someone will outwit the ‘someone’. Whether that ‘someone’ is Bill Gates, or Jacinda and friends, or Big Pharma, or God in punishing mode, or the devil and his demon sperm, or the Waikato District Council, or Miss Trunchbull, or the alien lizards  - it’s still more comfortable to believe than, ‘well, random shit happens’, and also more comfortable to believe than, ‘we just have to suck it up and get on with living with it as best we can’. I know conspiracy theories sometimes true (eg the suppression of harm or tobacco, sugar v fat harm to hearts), but seriously?

I am old (69 in a couple of weeks) and have underlying conditions which means if I get covid19 I am likely to die (of which I am not afraid) a very painful, lonely death (which I do admit to being afraid of). My focus in the meantime is on how I can learn to live sensibly in this beautiful world, in ways that work right here and now.

But now I’m feeling sad, like never before.

Because the real problem of this covid19 disease is the huge ongoing health problems - some 'recovered' people have health problems months on. Post-'recovery' people still have cellular organ damage to lungs, brains, liver, kidneys, chronic fatigue, recurring symptoms....and no one knows how long it will take for them to recover, or even if people will ever recover What is this going to do to our economy? What is this going to do to my beloved sons, grandchildren, and friends?

I’m feeling sad, like never before.

We need to adjust our (humans everywhere but particularly in our 'civilized' first world) lifestyles in the light of climate change and environmental degradation, if our existence as a species is to continue. But many prefer to stay comfortable pretending it’s another conspiracy. Personally, I think we need to take covid19 as a quarter final in the lead up to the main event. I tend towards the idea (non-scientific opinion at this point in time) that this and other weird stuff, is happening because we humans have upset the balance of nature with our greedy exploitation and expansion. My fear doesn’t drive me to denial: it drives me to sadness. Like never before.

People are showing more and more that they are not kind. Blatant racism. The bitter opposition to so many things, and to so many other people, seems to be increasing exponentially. And I find myself becoming more intolerant of others. When, during this current re-emergence of covid19 in New Zealand, I am in the supermarket, signs about social distancing everywhere, and as an announcement over the speakers reminding people of the requirements is literally just ending, a man pushes right up against me, arms and bodies touching, as I reach for a jar of gherkins because he can’t wait an extra second for me to move on…. I suddenly become filled with over-whelming bitter rage. And this woman in a Facebook discussion:

I can't take my kids swimming because some old people with co-morbidities died. couldn't watch his cross-country because old people with co-morbidities died. Who's being selfish now? I If you're scared stay at home. If you sick stay at home. Wash your hands like you would anyway. Let the rest of us get on with our lives!!

I’m feeling sad, like never before.

Once again I feel unwanted, worthless - worse than worthless, a burden.

Mental illness kept me from living a full life for decades. Then diabetes and a stroke have made my life even smaller. Now covid19 is reducing it, with restrictions necessary to control it. For younger people there is still hope for the future, but although my ‘isolation facility’ is a beautiful place to live, there are places I’d like to go, things I’d like to do, before I die.  

But even if a vaccine is produced, no vaccine ever gives 100% protection, and the older you get, the less likely they are to be effective – thus the need for widespread uptake, to protect the elderly and the immune-compromised. With more and more people like that woman, that rabid anti-vaxer who has previously harassed a nurse friend of  mine, this science denier, wide-spread uptake isn’t going to happen.

The weekend after next, there’s a women’s retreat that I’ve been looking forward to for a year. I’m not going. In December I’m booked to go to Book Camp again. I may not go. Maybe I would do these things if I was on my own, but it would not just be my life I’d be choosing to risk. Life is getting very small.

I’m sad. Like never before.

Tonight the neighbour's cows got out of their paddock and into our place, trampling the trees we planted just a couple of weeks ago. Mac had hurt his knee earlier in the day and was hobbling around in the dark trying to get the cows back down the driveway, while I drove to get the neighbour to come help. I met his worker at the end of the drive and stayed to block the cows from the other end of the road. I sat in the darkness of the car and cried. Just so sad and lonely, sad all the way through.

But then the neighbour arrived. He's much younger than me, and has always been really fit and healthy.  He had a stroke three years ago, six months before me. He peered into the car and saw my tears. He understands. He asked, "Do you need a hug? Because I sure need one." And I got out, and in the dark we hugged and cried until the cows came home.

And now I'm a little less lonely, and a little less sad.