Yesterday, I was having a good day, which really wouldn’t seem extraordinary except there just haven’t been a whole lot of them lately.
A year ago, I had just lost 22 pounds. My hip didn’t hurt anymore, and I was a little closer to keeping up with the boys. All of the big kids were coming home for Christmas, and we were looking forward to taking the little boys on a spring break trip to Florida to visit my mom and dad.
It’s different now.
When I encounter people for the first time, they see me on the screen as I carry a chrome book, doing my best not to slip on the cheese or whatever is stuck to the floor while I chase my kindergartner through one disastrous room after the next. We meet again and again in this same, awkward manner. They don’t know who I used to be, and I don’t know how to tell them because I am not sure I even remember.
Maybe it started during the first days of this forgettable year when I decided to try combing out my dreads. It took nearly a month of stolen time with my stiff hands to salvage probably four inches of hair; the razor would have been so much easier. Now, though, I want them back. It’s easy to forget about the incessantly itchy scalp, how bad they were for my already-bad posture, and the chickens getting stuck on my head. I just miss how things used to be.
My half-full glass sometimes seems to be evaporating. I think I’m sinking. As the walls cave in around me, I might soon be swallowed by this very earth that I love so desperately, that I dream of feeling in my hands, that I did not get enough of, as with so many other things in this sorry season.
Yesterday, my son brought in the mail, including a little paper package tied up with a string. My friend had left for me the sweetest pair of fingerless gloves, knitted with flowers in colors of red, purple, gold, and robin’s egg blue, vibrant as a street fair or holiday market, neither of which I could attend this year. In the attached note, she said she thought of me when she saw them. I was so touched that I nearly cried for the fourth time that day. The sun was peeking out, and I had the best new pair of fingerless gloves, just perfect to temper the burn of my arthritic joints. Maybe things were finally going to turn around.
We know what we need to do. We just need to do it. At some point, defeated too often by the slamming of the chrome book and the falling of our collective spirits, I stopped doing what I knew was right. I ate sugar and bread and bakers dozens of Christmas cookies. The creak came back in my hip, accompanied by all but about five of the pounds that I had lost. It was too much to think about. I knew what I needed to do; I just didn’t do it.
When we returned from the grocery store that night, the usual frenzy of carrying bags and unloading food ensued. Some hours passed, and as night fell I thought of my precious new gloves. I went out in the darkness to look in the van where I found only one glove. It had fallen between the seat and the door. How could I have lost its match on the very day that they had been given to me? At least, I told myself, I still had one glove.
The year has taken so much from us. I wonder if we will ever get any of it back. If I don’t even remember who I was, how is anyone else to know?
I went to bed wishing for things I no longer had, forgetting that so many things still filled my glass.
I’m trying. I haven’t had sugar in three days. I have been drinking beet and kale smoothies. Maybe the shortened time in the garden this year was actually good for my achy joints. Maybe they will stop aching if I eat more beets, which I actually love, and less Oreos, which I also love. Maybe I could dye my hair pink. Chickens would probably stay away from that.
Someday, the boys will be back at school, and I will have stretches of my days before me. I know my people don’t care if I have lost or gained twenty pounds, or if my hair is pink or my scalp is itchy. We know what we have to do to get through all of this. We just have to keep doing it.
I could hear the roosters crowing on my way to open the coop early on this cold, gray morning. There was, though, a small patch of jubilant brightness on the frosty ground near where the van was parked. It was the missing glove.
After warming it up on the heat vent inside the quiet house, I slipped it on my “bad hand,” which immediately felt better. The little gift…actually a big gift…from a blessing of a friend was a bold reminder that we can find what we once had. It may, though, be extra bright and beautiful, and warm like never before, because we felt, if only for a short time, what it was to have lost so much of what we had known.
Peace, love, and hope to all! XO