It’s been a hard winter.
I’m not talking about the record days of record cold, the rain followed by falling temperatures, the ice, the struggle to stay erect or the unrelenting wind. No, I am talking about living with a man who outlived a daughter. She died last July, and we both still hear the phone ring and think it’s her. We know it isn’t, but it takes a long time for the mind to accept this fact. How long? We don’t know. While I didn’t need any more experience with grief, I’m getting it. I’ve written about grief before in “The Grieving Garden: This Too Is a Garden,” and “The Absence of Presence.” Now I am watching a man who lives to create, who had that creative focus that leads to flow, become robbed of that focus because of grief.
The world never looks the same after a child dies. As a parent, you’re only as happy as your happiest child.
He’s not striving for happiness exactly, just a respite from the dark. Nature has been our balm for years, but when you cannot get outside for a walk so many days in a row, you stay inside.
That’s where our cat Van Gogh comes in. He isn’t going out either. We used to enjoy watching him nap, silently. But in his heavier state, he eats nonstop and gets no exercise; he snores. Loudly. He has this pouch of fat on his belly that sways when he walks across the room. It takes him about an hour to clean that belly. Yesterday I got on the scale, and I, too, may soon have a pouch of belly fat that sways when I walk across the room. If it weren’t for spandex, I would be straining every piece of clothing I own with my expanding waistline.
On the plus side (which I am on my way to), we don’t have to scramble to get to the grocery store before the next winter storm. We can all live off our fat.
In the evening I’ve been watching the Winter Olympics and eating. If eating were an Olympic sport, I’d be in medal contention. I ate two boxes of crackers while watching Red Gerard compete in slopestyle snowboarding. The announcer said that Red is just 17 and weighs a mere 117 pounds. I used to weigh 117 pounds. Before this winter, that is. Still, I am grateful to be introduced to a sport I never even heard of. Wildly creative one, too. If I were 17 I would like to try that sport. Right now, I settle for aerobic eating.
At night, when I can’t sleep, I have been redesigning my front flower beds; this is done entirely in my head. I transport myself back to summer and survey the plantings. I add; I subtract; I rearrange. Try it.
I’m grateful that my brain can do this. My subconscious is primed with plants, thousands of them.
The past week we have been enveloped in fog. My husband asked: “When was the last time we saw the sun?” I couldn’t remember.
But then I think of those Woodstock Hyacinths I planted last October. I can almost see that deep magenta and smell their sweet scent. And I wait for the fog to lift.