Mrs. Teabody Deals with August Anxiety

My husband has been sick for three days. In these Covid-covered times, our first thought when he woke with a horribly painful headache was he had been one of the unlucky, double-vaccinated buggers with a breakthrough case. A few phone calls let us know it was no longer possible to just “go for a test” but a third call to a community health center where he had been a patient resulted in a quick drive there at an appointed time less than an hour later. He was to phone a certain number to announce his arrival (which he did) and the health care person came to the passenger side of the car—that's how miserable he was feeling - - I was driving. She explained the drill—how deeply she'd go into each nostril, how it would burn/sting and in less than a minute she'd done as predicted and he was uncomfortably sniffing to settle the burn deep in each nostril. She said she'd return in 20 minutes. We propped open both car doors for air. Watched a young man emerge from behind a door marked isolation, removing his mask, a look on his face we read as relief. 

We chatted idly about all the people he'd been in contact with at his grandson's graduation party, how no one masked, leading of course to our own frustration about how so many of our local inhabitants had gone unmasked, unwilling to concede that they could possibly do one little thing to stop spreading the virus. The nurse returned with the results that he was negative for Covid but the doctor wished to examine him. He complied and entered the isolation area emerging a few minutes later having received a going over: temperature, heart, lungs, blood pressure. He had something viral but it wasn't Covid. Buoyed by that news and not having to notify the dozen people we'd been in contact with, we drove home with both of us feeling better about his not having Covid though he was feeling no better physically. 

Today was the third day he has spent almost the entire day languishing, sleeping when he can, getting chills when his skin is hot to the touch but he has no fever. As I always feel when he is unwell, I am helpless and fretting. I make endless cups of tea, open endless cans and bottles of Sprite and Coke. And I fret as he tells me he feels no better.  This morning the friend who cleans for us tells us something is going around. The news is comforting psyche-wise if not physically. This evening we watched from our bed in our freshly-painted, newly-carpeted bedroom -- the Major Summer Project! -- a progression of a profoundly silly British tv series called QI. He seems more responsive. He laughs, makes comments. Intermittently, things feel normal.  He feels well enough to have a shower, take his pills and I queue up an old British romcom, Four Weddings and a Funeral. After wedding #2 I fall asleep only to wake as John Hannah is reading the remarkable W. H. Auden poem at his beloved's funeral. Shortly after that but before the film ends, the timer snaps the television and the room into darkness. For just a moment I wrestle with the notion of putting it back on but that would mean a sudden noise and my husband is sleeping soundly—ah, sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care.

Suddenly I am aware of something unusual. The bedroom is full of moonlight. It has been wet, gloomy overcast, and humid the past few days to match our somber mood so I scarcely expected the moon and certainly not a moon that could light up the bedroom. I turn on my side to appreciate it, then close my eyes to find sleep again knowing full well I won't be able to. Not with that moonlight.

Eventually I swing my legs over the side of the bed and my feet land on the new carpet which feels divine. It is moonlit enough to walk toward the kitchen, and as I pass the dining room window I gaze in wonder at the secret garden. It, too, is half full of moonlight and the pinpricks of the solar-powered fairy lights are made brighter by the moon and everything that has light among the flowers is glowing softly. It is enchanting and I take my time to take it all in. It is August after all. Summer winds down. It  hath all too short a date. Indeed. It hath. I sigh and move away to the kitchen.

The dishwasher stands open. I'd run a light load of mostly bowls because cereal is easy and comforting and we have needed it. I fill the kettle and set it to boil, find some herbal tea and put a spoon of honey and the tea in a mug -- I pass over several before choosing one my sister brought home from England for me in 1985. And then I unload the dishwasher of its bounty of bowls and finally I set the silverware basket on the counter and began to sort it. It is flat stainless of a clean curving design I bought on a mad impulse at a Dansk store in the early 90s when I chose the lucky ticket to get half off everything. I pick up each piece in almost wonder. Though these spoons - - lots of those - - these forks, these knives have seen decades of use, here they are looking nearly brand new, unbent, shining as though they hadn't done a lick of work in their thirty years or ever known an unhappy time or ever lost their way. They lack the flash of their pricier sterling relatives, but I don't know a person alive who doesn't appreciate their resilience made possible by additives like nickle and chromium and by the tempering process that allows a knife to be used as a screwdriver, a hammer . . .but let's not go too far down that trail.

Through the tiny transparent window on the side of the kettle I see the bubbling water and when the kettle clicks off,  I pour it over the tea and honey enjoying the steam that hits my face as I return the kettle to its base. I finish putting away the silverware, every single piece shining and happy as I fit each piece into their appropriate nests. They wink at me as I slide the drawer shut. I close the dishwasher, pick up my tea and stand at the dining room window looking out at the garden. The moon is less bright but the fairy lights wink along in a comfortable and pleasing serpentine.

These are uneasy times made even more so when we deal with the very personal anxiety of an ailing loved one. That self-inflicted thought makes me recall the current health of a very ill former student who deserves at least another three decades to use her talent, to love her children. I think of a dear friend whose husband lies in pain in a nearby hospital; I think of this year of so much loss and so much uncertainty and then I do what I always do when the world is almost too much to bear: I count all the ways my life is and has been blessed. A sea of beloved faces - - smiling - - float through my brain, my own happy childhood roaming a field with our dog Caesar, my bare legs lightly scratched by Queen Anne's lace and cornflowers, the daunting hill toward home, the double lines of barbed wire-- such vivid and uncorrupted memories now as I count my happiness through place and feeling: this little beloved house that has been an island of sanctuary with its ridiculous number of places to just crumble into and just in front of me the moonlit, fairy-lit secret garden filled with beautiful plants that concern themselves only with the NOW of their existence. I am brought out of my reverie when the mantle clock starts to chime and a few seconds later the grandfather clock in the next room chimes in. A very little joke, you see? I've lived a long while; through every year (I think) there have been many, many times I've felt the world slip on its platform. But it hasn't. Here we are, everyone: blood coursing through our veins, the man in the moon doing his best to buoy this reverie. We need to be more like those nesting pieces of stainless steel, you and I; we need to anticipate extremes and in spite of what comes at us know that life has tempered us, that we are stronger than we think and that we need to appreciate those moments of serenity when we are nestled safely out of harm's way.

I walk toward the Major Summer Project, calmer now, shooting up little thought prayers of thankfulness and hope. The moonlight has been soaked up inside a cloud for now and the little house is dark, but I know the way. And so do you, my friend; so do you.