Once a month, they stick a needle in my arm and check my PSA, cholesterol, and testosterone: blood pressure rising, cholesterol high, body clock ticking down.
The doctor keeps telling me it’s a level playing field but every week he changes the rules and twice a year he moves the goal-posts.
A man in a black-and-white zebra shirt holds a whistle to his lips while another throws a flag. It comes out of the tv and falls flapping at my feet.
Yes, I’m living in the Red Zone and the clock’s ticking down.
Yours are the hands that raise me up, that rescue me from dark depression, that haul me from life’s whirlpool, that clench around the jaws that bite, that save me from the claws that snatch.
Yours are the hands that move the pieces on the chess board of my days and nights, that break my breakfast eggs and bread, that bake my birthday cake and count the candles that you place and light.
You are the icing on that cake, and yours is the beauty that strips the scales from my eyes, then blinds me with light.
“Eric, Phillip, Peter: why did you leave me? Why did you, where did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: you went out through the door, so silent, didn’t even slam it, why did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: I hardly even knew you, the house, my life, so empty without you, shadows so scary, why did you leave me, where did you go?
Eric, Phillip, Peter: vacant and silent, lonely the house, such a big world without you, so full of menace, so full of woe, why did you leave me, why did you go?”
In one room in my head my mother’s mother sits with me on her knee at the kitchen table playing patience.
Elsewhere, I stand on a stool beside my father’s mother helping her to mix the cake she will later bake in the coal-fired oven of the black, cast iron stove.
My mother’s father sits before the television. He leans back in the chair, raises his foot so he can’t see the adverts on the screen, and puts his fingers in his ears.
My father’s father lies in bed, downstairs, in the middle room. His dog lies beside him, licking his hand. We all wait for the death that has haunted him since he was gassed in World War One.
Clare sits at the computer, following the figures that track the pandemic. I sit here watching her, humming softly to myself: “¡Qué será, será!”
So, the holly hocks are back and this year we have some red ones to go with the lovely yellow ones that reseeded, in a different place, from last year. The red ones are very shy and are hidden away by the back steps where they are very hard to see.
I spy, with my little eye …
The red and green go well together. More a deep, blushing pink, I guess, with very dark centre. You can see the wood of the steps just behind them. I posted this yesterday, incidentally, but the computer munched it and I had to rewrite it today. It has been a slow time for me. The Corona-19 finally got to me, not in the physical sense, but mentally. As a result I have been feeling isolated, trapped, and a little bit depressed. Alas, there are many more like me suffering in today’s world. Luckily, the flowers help. As does the sunshine.
We’re back
Here are the new seeds from last year’s hollyhocks. They are similar in color, but much smaller this first season. They have also shifted location and I have been surprised at how many seedlings have sprouted and started to grow. Next year we may have a bumper crop.
Night Garden
And here we have a painting of the garden at night, flourishing without us, but beneath the stars. “The garden going on without us.” Given the current situation, I prefer the garden going on with us still here to watch it.
These daffodils were not painted by an unknown painter, but by a painter whose paintings are unknown. There is a subtle difference. There is also something sweet abut covering a blank space with color and shape, even if the hand is unsteady and the eye unsure. This painting is also unframed and belongs in a photograph album or a long-forgotten painting book.
“Fair daffodils, we weep to see thee.” Indeed we do, for they are so transient lasting but a week, or less, cut and placed on the table in a vase of water. So sad to watch them as they stiffen, turn slowly brown, dry up, and then hang their heads in the shame of old age. We are not so dissimilar, those daffodils and me. This photo will capture me forever, or until it is erased, because a photo isn’t a photo anymore. That painting will capture those daffodils too, for little while, until my subscription to the blog runs out and I forget to renew it.
“Poor daffodils, we weep to see you.” But weep not for us, they tell me. Our day is done. Our life is fulfilled. We have brought beauty and scent, however brief, and we have given light to enlighten your daysand joy to light up your heart. And that, I guess, is the message. “Gather you daffodils while you may, for Father Time is flying. And those sweet blooms you pluck today, tomorrow will be dying.”
Thus it is during the Corona Virus 19 pandemic, and thus it was during the Spanish Flu, the Black Death, and all the other plagues that have come to bring understanding and make us see reason. Our lives are as short as the lives of flowers. Seize your life, hold it in both hands, admire it, enjoy it, make the most of the mall things, for they are often, like the smiles of small children and the daffodil’s golden glow, the most important things of all.
