Getting Reacquainted

What’s left of the apple tree behind Patrick’s woodturning studio resembles a hesitant bride unsure of her decision, her blossoms scattered among the remaining branches that survived a winter’s worth of windstorms and heavy wet snow piled on like sandbags for weeks. I was lucky enough yesterday to catch the scent on the tail end of a southern breeze, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply as the delicate aroma became part of my very cells. What she lacks in blossom volume she more than makes up for in olfactory impact. Once again, the power of trees within reach of my hungry senses.

I’m fully vaccinated now, and a few days past the two-week period to let all the immune system fortifying dust settle, which means I’ve moved out of the home office and back into the official brick and mortar that is headquarters for my paid work. I also went into the local grocery store for the first time in over a year, Patrick by my side, feeling a bit like Leonard Lowe in Awakenings after his first successful (albeit temporary) dose of L-dopa. Everything looked strange and new, brightly colored and overwhelming with reassuring reminders of the familiar mixed in to keep me from dashing back to the car. It was a last-minute decision to even go in, prompted by the empty space in our freezer where the Klondike bars reside (looks like we answered that product’s jingle-y question).

It’s natural, then, to begin the internal comparative dialogue, weighing the pros and cons of a somewhat locked-down existence with being (somewhat) released back into the wild. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I’ve been an introvert for much longer than I would have admitted, despite all evidence to the contrary prior to the pandemic.

“Resilience” is now a firmly anchored and easily accessible word in my vocabulary. I’m still figuring out how much I can handle. Quite a lot, it seems.

In the course of a workday’s workload at the home office, I appreciated being able to rise and log on early, quickly hang laundry between meetings, and have my own sweet and fully-functioning kitchen one floor below where lunch came directly from the fridge or the oven, not an insulated lunch bag with an ice block underneath last night’s leftovers packed in Tupperware.

On average, working from home, I gave my employer an additional ninety minutes of my time each week, watching my salaried hourly rate drop like a stone. The once-blurry line between work life and uniquely sacred home rhythms is coming into sharper relief again, and the word “relief” is the most appropriate one I can find to describe that. Much as I love what I do, the lessons of boundaries and self-care have since been recalibrated with humility and great joy.

I’m a well-hydrated person no matter where I work. At home, though, I got more exercise making multiple trips downstairs to use the facilities (restrooms at headquarters are right around the corner from my office). I shall recommit to a few more laps around the building on my way back from the copier and the mail room to make up the difference.

I will deeply, deeply miss the Work From Home Extremely Casual dress code.

My workday companions used to be sycamores, snowfall, laughing crows and wolf spiders, all getting about the daily business of their respective agendas while I tickety-tapped my way through rough drafts, virtual meetings and phone interviews. Not once did I take their presence for granted. With a quick glance over my shoulder, there they were, standing tall, drifting aimlessly before landing on the porch, flying over the grassy slope to the barn and crawling across the corner of my laptop’s keyboard. Back in my windowless office eighteen miles from paradise, I ache in their absence and try to drive home at a reasonable speed to see them again. At the same time, it’s lovely to hear Pam’s laughter through the wall that divides our offices, and see Christin’s smiling eyes above the top of her mask as she greets me and other visitors at the front desk.

Walking through a couple of aisles in the grocery store last Friday, I reaffirmed my preference for curbside pickup and general indifference for the entire shopping experience. I’ve dabbled in retail therapy now and then, but have come to land in a more spartan place when it comes to Things. All that carefully planned product placement at eye level has been wasted on me. I shall not grace the cover of Impulsive Reckless Consumption anytime soon. But I will still smile and chat happily with the young clerk moving my purchases from the conveyor belt into the bagging area. We must remember the communal value of pleasantries exchanged with strangers.

It’s all still unfolding, dear readers, this adjustment to the next layer of the pandemic that continues to trudge through our lives. I satisfied my curiosity about what the grocery store checkout would look like with its plexiglass barrier and faded floor sticker indicating the 6’ mark between customers. I have made peace with the placement of my facemask and can go for hours without touching it at all. I’ve filled my memory bank with indelible and intimate images of the land evolving through four seasons, noticing the small and subtle changes to her face, a privilege most often reserved for the fully retired, and I’ll unpack those memories sitting at the round table in my office eating lunch from an insulated cooler bag. I’m now a slightly less hesitant apple tree in spring, battered a bit and missing some branches after the rough winter, but still putting forth blossoms in hopes of a fruitful summer. No complaints either about Patrick being the only other human being I’ve hugged for the past thirteen months. Up until yesterday, that is.

We visited with Patrick’s sister, Molly and their mother, Joanne, yesterday, one of our many bi-weekly trips to town with food for their freezer. There we were, all fully vaccinated and masked, standing outside in their driveway, enjoying the hostas and purple creeping phlox emerging from the mulch. Patrick and Molly were deep in conversation near the garage doors and Joanne was telling me about her recent visit to the salon when she suddenly raised her arm and offered an elbow tap, saying “we can do this now!”. “Would you like a hug?”, I asked, and she closed the space between us without hesitation. As my arms encircled her, I registered the smallness of her shoulders and committed to memory the significance of this moment. She would always and forever be the first person I hugged in thirteen months other than Patrick during the pandemic. After a few moments, Molly would become the second.

Whoever is third, I intend to keep track of ‘em all.

On the Other Side of Chaos

The good folks at Crayola in Forks Township, Northampton, Pennsylvania, sure did get “Spring Green” right.

More on that in a minute.

A recent workday at the home office was anything but according-to-plan. I couldn’t connect to the company’s server remotely, had a poor sleep-deprived IT colleague with a head cold troubleshooting just as the sun was coming up, and on that thin edge of a tough decision, ended up not going on the morning walk. I don’t need to tell you how much that skews my day toward madness (in case you missed it, I just came close to admitting that routine is essential to my well-being).

Project deadlines that had been whispering due dates in my ears were now full-on banging their fists against the door, but without a remote connection, their document drafts were held hostage at the gates of a malfunctioning login. Plan B consisted of errands in Columbus involving two banks, our company’s off-site printer to fetch a rushed-through order of colorful labels for a bulk mailing that ABSOLUTELY HAD TO GO OUT FRIDAY and picking up a former patient’s dress shirts to be made into bears for the grandchildren (see “What are you Wearing?” for some context on that). The exclamation point at the end of that mad-dash would be a final drop-off of those labels and shirts at headquarters before heading back to the home office to see if IT had been able to repair the broken bridge between my files and the server. Toss in there somewhere a weekly patient review meeting (which I join by phone) and finding one of the kittens in the bathtub playing with a field mouse just as I was leaving the house. I scooped it up and left it trembling in the mulch in front of the living room windows to regain its composure when another kitten came out of nowhere, pounced and finished the job (I sent a feeble apology upwards and sighed in the direction of the kitten now licking his whiskers). I was behind the wheel over the lunch hour and hit the drive-thru at Taco Bell between stops (a decision I’d come to regret later in the afternoon. Mouse karma?).

I can’t recall the last time I had a stretch of “typical” days, characterized by a fairly predictable unfolding of familiar events. It’s not all high-end drama, this life I’m living, but when the to-do list crashes and burns like it did last week, I’m grateful for my punting skills and the grace of teammates who understand the good intention of promises made atop the sometimes thin ice of technology that we all take for granted. It was only a slight consolation to learn most of those teammates were having the same remote connection trouble. I defaulted to a legal pad, my favorite pen and my memory, rocking it old-school style for the rest of the day. Work got done and I’m still employed. That was probably always going to be the outcome. It’s good to remember that.

The game-changer for me that day, though, was the commute home from the main office. It’s a quick run through a charming neighborhood in a small town, then a two-lane road through farms and fields freshly turned, patches of woods and a glorious dip into a valley framed by two panoramic hilltop views. In the winter, it’s a white-knuckled gamble making it down one steep grade and up the other, especially in the dark when the asphalt shines menacingly with black ice. It doesn’t help one’s morale either, passing that cemetery on the left before shifting into low and making the rapid descent toward the bridge that crosses the misleadingly-named “Dry Creek”. But now, with April in full swing, that pass through the valley is a moment marked by wonder and deep appreciation for that split-second rolling perch at the top of heaven, a sweeping view of emerging life in all its tender newness. I look up and around, and from a distance, the trees are fuzzy, their winter-worn brown branches softened by a slow-motion dressing of leaves. “Spring Green” from Crayola’s 64-pack was surely inspired by this scene, and now I’m drifting back to my coloring book days at the dining room table, mouth open and tongue moving over my lips randomly as I concentrate on keeping it between the lines. Torn carefully from the book, this one’s going on the fridge. Mom smiles and tells me how much she likes it and in that moment at six years old, I’m a walking hymn to happiness. From employed adult to first-grader in a flash, just by shifting my gaze to the wider view. The equation out of a rough start to the day looked like this:

Color + Wonder + Memory = Perspective.

Next time it’s all falling apart, remember that. And go find your crayons.

Praise for the Pause

It’s too windy this morning to ignite the burn piles we’ve created in strategic places on the land (near the garden (ash is good to mix in with the other compostables)), down by where the old dairy barn used to stand, and at the bottom of the slope to the old old goat barn) and the township’s volunteer fire department just posted the burn ban hours for spring, so I’d better find something else to do.

Today’s walk was more meandering with lopers in hand, just in case I needed to cut back the aggressive blackberry vines with their thorny teeth chewing their way up the tender trunks of our baby sycamore saplings. My aching hands tell me I made progress, but with 41 acres of unsupervised growing space and the season of new life still in its overture phase, I suspect that ache is more anticipatory. I let myself be distracted by the chatter of mockingbirds (oh, they came back!), standing beneath their treetop rapid-fire impersonations for several rich and pleasing minutes.

I don’t feel like doing much of anything today. Is that ok?

In this beehive busy life of ours, it’s rare that Patrick and I wake up unmotivated or empty of project ideas. We’ve been cranking our way through a perpetual to-do list for going on twenty-two years now, and we suspect a hidden hand is adding to it in invisible ink while we slumber. But today opened with bright sun coming in and out of fast-moving fluffy white clouds with grey bottoms and it reminded me so much of summers spent at the family cottage on Marble Lake in Quincy, Michigan, I settled into those memories as my feet slowed to a more leisurely rhythm. Let the wind move and whip its way around me, acting all purposeful like it’s got somewhere to be. I’m gonna take it easy for a change, cut blackberry vines or not; we’ll just see how the spirit moves me. If the ground wasn’t soaked from yesterday’s rain, I’d have kipped down right there on the field path and napped my way through the brunch hour. It won’t be long before it’s dry enough to do that. Of course, when the time comes, the mood will overtake me while I’m at work, and they kinda discourage employees in repose on the lawn that frames the parking lot. I tried it once, had a blanket and everything spread out on the grass in front of my truck (on my lunch break, I promise you), but it ended abruptly when John, our friendly maintenance staffer was using the leaf blower to clean the asphalt of debris and unwittingly shot a spray of dried crabapples and pea gravel across and under the truck just as I was drifting off. I’ve never heard a human being apologize so profusely (once my heart was out of afib, I assured him the welts would heal).

The morning walk is quite finished (so is breakfast and a couple of mid-morning snacks) and I’m still meandering, though I haven’t gotten up off the couch in over an hour. In my mind, I’m sifting through a few possibilities for after-lunch activity but so far, no one is voting heavily in any particular direction. When was I last aimless like this, and not feeling guilty about it? If I can’t recall, it’s been too long. There are half-started art quilts piled on an antique platform rocker in the studio, whispering how much fun I’ll have if I just work on one. And what about all those cigar boxes my brother-in-law, Rob, gave us last weekend? Those would make great containers for the hand-bound miniature journals still in process on the drafting table. I also noticed we ate all of the gluten free cinnamon chocolate cookies that lived on the counter by the new long-slice toaster (with collapsible warming rack). Can’t head into a busy work week without a batch of those now, can we?

Sure we can.

And probably will. Once I finish hanging the laundry, I’m gonna make the bed.

Right after I’m done napping in it.

What Are You Wearing?

He stood in the lobby just steps away from the tropical fish tank, betas and Nemos darting about in complete ignorance of what was about to happen on the other side of the glass. Shortly after his wife passed, he’d dropped off four of her blouses to be reimagined as soft teddy bears for the grandchildren. Today they were ready and waiting to be gathered in, squeezed and sniffed all over for that familiar scent of lavender soap and cookie dust. On the human side of the fish tank glass, memories pushed against the corners of his eyes, a bittersweet mix of relief and aching loss.

The bears, or any items our volunteer staff members make from a loved one’s clothing, came packaged in large clear plastic bags, the kind used to wrap baskets filled with Easter candy or themed collections of gifts for charity auctions. I picked them up by their bow-tied tops and pushed through the door to the lobby. As I held them out to him, he dissolved in a shaking of tears.

I wasn’t two days into my new job as volunteer coordinator when one of the social workers approached my cubicle dragging a large lidded tote full of sweatshirts.

“The family would like these made into twelve quilts. I told them I didn’t think they’d be quite right but we’d see what we could do. Any ideas? Hi, you must be Liz, the new coordinator. I’m Ruth, one of the social workers. Welcome to hospice!”. I returned her smile and shook her hand. We both looked down at the tote, at the pilled and colorful contents, confident that creativity would win this one. “Pillows, perhaps?”, I offered, knowing our sewing team of volunteers would be able to turn a dozen of those around a lot faster than twelve full-size bed quilts, and they’d look much neater. Thick knit fabric doesn’t lend itself to the precision that most quilts require.

Ruth left me to consider the possibilities and I started unpacking a lifetime of sweatshirt memories, sorting by size and color. When I came to the last three at the bottom of the tote, I spied a large patchwork vest hugging the inside corner and unfolded it. Made up of squares held together by a simple blanket stitch, I touched each patch, counting. There were twelve, exactly.

I called the local fabric store and placed an order for twelve 14” square pillow inserts.

We’re accustomed to the starkness of firsts and lasts in our end-of-life setting, yet these moments, these sacred encounters never fail to slow us down and I consider the deep impact of finality the families feel as they hand over that flannel shirt dad was wearing when he passed or a sister’s favorite apron, worn especially for the Thanksgiving meal she’d prepare every year (cranberry sauce stains and all). Bags of clothing always come with backstories tucked in and among the fabric like invisible sentries guarding the cotton and buttons that will soon take on a different shape. In that tender moment of hand-off, we hold them as carefully as an Emile Galle glass sculpture and register the responsibility we’ve just accepted. In hospice, you don’t get a second chance to do it right.

In my own closet are too many unemployed business-casual outfits hanging patiently until I return to working at the office full time. Pandemic restrictions and a home office setting for four of the five work days have loosened my wardrobe habits, making me grateful for the “stop video” option on virtual meetings. I haven’t totally abandoned personal hygiene (I feel it necessary to make that clear) but a daily shower isn’t as necessary as it was when I worked in close proximity to others; last night’s leggings and long-sleeved shirt work just fine as today’s uniform. I still know what’s appropriate to wear and when it’s ok to relax the dress code. “Pandemic Super-casual” will give way to “Back in the Office” soon enough. For now, I’m getting away with wearing pretty much the same pants, shirt and sweater on Mondays without anyone asking if that’s the only outfit I own.

But I think other people notice what we wear more than we do. I’m grateful for clothes that fit and even come close to flattering me, and then I get about the business of the day. It still surprises me when someone says “that’s my favorite jacket you wear” because it means they noticed. Eventually it may come to mean something more when my time is short and those “lasts” settle into a family member’s memory of holiday gatherings and the shirt I always wore. It’s easy to forget that in the social convention of getting dressed for the occasion at hand.

Dad had a few cotton button-down shirts he’d wear when he went fishing, and after he passed in hospice, I handed them over to one of the volunteer team members to make into fish (with no disrespect at all, we just aren’t teddy bear people). I looked for a pattern that was more artsy than juvenile and left it in her capable hands. She delivered in less than two weeks and the results still rest on the bed in the downstairs guestroom. Each time I run my fingers across the soft plaid strip-pieced shape of the fish’s fins and body, my mind settles on those images of dad in his boat, cutting a silent seam in the water of Marble Lake as a setting sun pulled him to the places where the large-mouth bass gathered among the weeds. He probably didn’t even know we were watching from the cottage windows.

In the rhythm of our days, I suspect these moments of clothing awareness come and go. Add a humble spirit to that mix and it’s likely we go about our business with barely a thought given to the fabric hanging easily on our shoulders and sheathing our legs. Of course that’s fine and normal. But perhaps one day, for someone we know, the last thing they remember us wearing will indeed be the last thing we were wearing, and everything will change. Be it unsettling or not, people who love you are paying attention and collecting memories with you at the center, moving about comfortably in your favorite togs.

Might wanna take that extra look in the mirror before heading out the door.