Family Letter #16, during a time of writing letters to my family when the Coronavirus Pandemic dominated our lives.

Mid-April, 2021

Hello to all from the other side. Yes, it happened; an evil variant of the coronavirus got me. It got my son, too. The two of us are now mutant Pokemon ninjas after high fevers melted our brain to mush; and, we have inside info on a common new disease no one knows much about, but all of us thought we knew plenty about. My precious son became my light through the brain fog after his four days of fevers broke. He said: “Don’t read anything about the virus on the internet Mom! It’s just going to freak you out!” Alas, his warnings came too late; I had already freaked myself out over and over, googling everything I could about a vicious contagion that excels at being unpredictable. My fevers lasted six days and I don’t know where I was transported to during those days, nor do I know how to manage the altered brain that continues to slosh around inside my aching skull. At times, while in the depths of my fevers, a persistent craving for homemade cake with buttercream frosting hovered on the edges of reality; yet if a piece would have been presented to me, I wouldn’t have touched it. Food just doesn’t taste the way I dream it should. The saddest lingering effect of my bout with the coronavirus has been the discovery that I’m no longer a chocoholic nor can I drink much wine and beer. I hope this cruel joke reverses itself someday soon, and I’ve even created my own version of a chocolate rehab routine: I try to eat a small piece of chocolate each day, or a half-dozen chocolate chips. This ought to get me in shape for a campfire-roasted s’more, stuffed with an exquisite square of classic Hershey’s chocolate, by summertime. As for the wine and beer, my head remains too sensitive to headaches to relax and enjoy liquor.

About two weeks after I got sick, I set off on my first substantial walk. My husband agreed to accompany me into my favorite woodlands down the road since I wasn’t feeling as perky as I’d hoped. Although a pair of house finches had distracted me during the darkest days of my fevers by choosing to build a nest in the Japanese Umbrella Pine just outside my bedroom window (and I was so grateful to watch them flying back and forth hard at work), I missed my daily rambles to catch the spring arrivals of wood ducks and other birds in places beyond my gardens. I’ll admit, as soon as I arrived at my familiar trailhead, it seemed I’d gone too far from the security of home (it’s only a quarter mile away), and as soon as I began walking, it felt like I was trying to climb Everest without an oxygen tank.

However, I made it to my favorite beaver pond and got all excited about tramping across the sturdy dam those industrious, plump rodents had sculpted from locally-sourced mud. It’s so  fascinating to marvel, close up, at the construction work of beavers and, to me, it’s amusing and endearing to spy hand-like paw prints pressed into the mud.  My feelings of elation at being in the great outdoors soared into the stratosphere and knocked me right off my feet. When it happened, I fell (as expected), into a pungent glop of New England springtime mud, but only because I tipped to the right as I went down; had I faked right and gone left, I would have landed in the cold pond. No drama or excitement added pizazz to the fall; I simply wobbled and toppled, like a rag doll who for a brief moment believed she had bones and muscles. One week beyond my mud-thud flopover, I returned to visit the beaver pond again—this time all by myself—and tried navigating, one step at a time, that balance beam of gorgeous mud. Success!

And so, I write my Sixteenth Letter of the Pandemic as a walking-wounded survivor of the sinister disease that has crushed every level of human life on Planet Earth for more than a year, with no signs of letting up in too many parts of the world. For our family, March came in like a lamb and went out like an angry, restless, pissed-off lion (as opposed to sticking with the script, and coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb). We had watched the last piles of snow melt away; had swept up the debris of nearly two cords of wood which kept the fires in our hearth going throughout a long, cold winter; and, we’d set off to greet spring by searching for wood frogs, peeper frogs, pussy willows and migrating birds. A crazed, competitive, and somewhat humorous chase for vaccines had ensued all around us. At the same time—and unbeknownst to us—a dangerous line of cruel thunderstorms were about to wallop the shores of what we had long believed were our own safe harbors. 

In fact, because I was so sure we’d weathered the pandemic as best we could and were about to sail forth into our new lives on calm seas, I’d spent the last weeks before our vaccine appointments re-reading a book one sister gave me a long time ago on how to change my life by tidying up my household. (Maybe you all have already read the book:The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It’s good!) I was revisiting the book in response to America’s impressive vaccination campaigns, which were gaining steam and causing serious feelings of pandemic peer pressure to torment me. I wanted to emerge from lock down—post-vaccine—as a new and improved version of my pre-pandemic self. To me, it really did feel like the pandemic was going to end soon, yet my house (and brain, in the opinion of the book), was still a mess. According to the book, I needed to put my past in order, reset my life, and take the next step forward by getting rid of all the useless bric-a-brac cluttering up my house and my head.  The pandemic had already refashioned us into a one-car household when I gave my car to the kids in Brooklyn after theirs broke down forever back in August. (With a work-from-home lifestyle, it was obvious we only needed one car.) All I had left to do, before getting vaccinated, was to focus in on a plan, a process, and a deadline for tidying up everything. If I did, my fresh and improved self would be in a great position to thrive in the weird new world. I was doing a pretty good job at following the advice in the book! And then, wham-o, the virus interrupted my momentum and crushed my aspirations. 

It will come as no surprise to hear that being so sick for so long gave me a lot of time (probably too much time), to think about all the things I’ve gotten right and all the things I’ve gotten wrong in my life. I couldn’t focus on reading or watching movies—even listening to music was difficult—so as I languished in silence, I promised myself that if I survived one of the world’s most terrible diseases, I would never worry again about what I got wrong in life! I would only celebrate my triumphs. 🙂 I know my son and I are beyond fortunate.

* * * * * * *

More than ten years ago, I planted a pear tree near my deck. It’s about to burst into bloom. When I sit in my house looking at it on this late April day, I notice that at any one moment, there can be more than seven different kinds of birds foraging for insects and/or sweet blossoms on that one tree. Do the birds know they are different from one another? I hear them compete for—and establish—territories, with their songs and unusual behaviors, but on my pear tree, each avian appears unhurried and quiet as they concentrate on searching for food. Beyond the pear tree, two magnolia trees are blooming; a yellow one and a pink one. My Yoshino cherry tree is blooming, too. The Yoshino’s fleeting and dazzling blossoms are one of nature’s truest, ephemeral heart stoppers; I love standing under the tree when the flower petals are falling in a breeze.  Out in my front kitchen garden, the Bonfire Peach tree is ablaze with its showy, vibrant pink flowers. Soon to pop, after all these early spring bloomers, are the wonderful redbuds and crabapples. Meanwhile, the old birdbath nestled in the garden near my unique Sourwood tree crumbled into ruins this winter after relentless loads of snow and ice were too much to bear, at last. I remember how the birds used to show up for bath time in previous garden seasons by taking turns while waiting on the branches of surrounding bushes and trees. They never shared the bath the way they share the pear tree. 

* * * * * * *

A week ago, I opened up the motorhome to get it ready for a new travel season and soon heard a phoebe singing from a branch in one of the white pines nearby. It boosted my spirits to notice they’d returned to my gardens for another spring and summer. On the same day, I realized the juncos had flown north until next fall. Later in the evening, I looked up at the night sky and caught the constellation Orion slipping further and further away. It’s a good sign that my life is  getting back on track when I feel a specific sort of regret—not for what went wrong in days gone by or for what will never be—but for what I might be missing out on, in real time, if I don’t stop to smell the flowers and partake in the seasonal joys of my own unique and special life here on Planet Earth; the only place, for all we know, where life has ever—and will ever—exist. 

I don’t know what my new “normal” will be as I heal from my bout with the coronavirus. What I do know is this: As long as Mother Nature’s enchantments are still making my heart skip a beat, it’s because my soul, at least, remains afloat and ready to set sail.

And as long as my soul is alive and well, so am I.

This pandemic letter was completed on May 3rd, 2021, at Skidaway Island State Park, Georgia. We arrived here after a week camping on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Writing is more difficult for meta complete at the present time. It’s tiring to concentrate. I’m on the road with my husband for a month, traveling and working through the south. Now, more than ever, I look at the craft of writing as a way to heal from Covid 19. It forces me to keep concentrating, thinking, and multi-tasking. As usual, it’s the arts that can be so healing. Included with this letter is a star-shaped leaf from the American Sweetgum Tree. (Liquidamber styraciflua.) The tree is native to the southeastern United States. They tower all around my outdoor writing spot at Campsite Lucky #13, along the coast of Georgia where historic islands of many kinds are woven together with vast marshlands and rivers.