It’s a typical Saturday morning here in beautiful Bucks County, PA. Sipping hot water, lemon, locally harvested honey and ginger, while listening to Sleepy Hollow on WXPN. A slower paced musical selection, to ease my way gradually into a day filled with a meeting, some writing, taking an online Continuing Education class to maintain my Social Work license and then going to see a High School version of RENT tonight that has been getting rave reviews.
Last night, we saw our first scattering of snow and I woke before sunrise to behold confectioner’s sugar coated grass and car. Glad to be inside with creature comforts on a mid November day near Thanksgiving, with the temps below freezing. I’ll bundle up to venture out later, maybe taking in the cushions from the chairs on the deck to signal a change in the seasons. Not quite ready to put holiday decorations up yet, likely next weekend. I do have twinkle lights throughout the house all year round to create a festive environment.
I have been perusing Facebook and marveling at the ways in which the world is opening a bit more and folks are traveling again. Temporarily casting aside the familiar for the adventurous. That was me, until a few years ago. The pandemic changed everything. A bucket list trip to Ireland in 2018, visiting friends in Canada, and regular jaunts to the D.C. area in the rear view mirror. I have no desire to travel at the moment, content to nest in my colorful, cozy home. I have been easing my way back into social activities, attending the wedding of friends last weekend, and outdoor community events over the summer and into autumn. Sometimes masked, other times feeling comfortable to bare my face. Vaxxed and boosted, having had a mild case of COVID in April, I figure I am as safe as I can be and still interact socially. I am mostly working from home, offering telehealth sessions for my therapy clients. There are some days when I choose not to cross the threshold to the outside world.
Color me surprised that this social butterfly who would flit here, there and everywhere is more at ease with hunkering down, following my own meandering path between activity and stillness. I catch myself staring into space at random moments, noticing the color or texture of what is before me. My mind sometimes feels like a white board in which writing has been erased. Scares me a bit since, in a recent conversation with my first cousin, I was reminded that our shared grandfather had dementia that was not diagnosed until he was missing, only to be found in either the Delaware or Schuykill River where he had aspirated water and died after being retrieved, from pneumonia. It doesn’t help that I have traits of someone with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and get easily distracted (Oooh, look, a squirrel!) when in the midst of something I ought to be concentrating on. It’s then that I take a few deep breaths and re-orient my brain. I liken it to watching my nearly three year old grandson go from coloring to sculpting with PlayDoh, to building with blocks, to narrating conversations between his Paw Patrol buddies to coming over for a hug, asking for a snack, to seeing what his baby sister is up to, in a five minute span of time. Every so often, we do a quick clean up, since the room looks like a whirlwind went through it with items that are tripping hazards for his 64 year old grandmother and choking hazards for his now crawling six month old sister. In the same way, I need to do a mind clean up since the mental hard drive gets full. The problem isn’t storage, it’s retrieval.
Still in jammies, as I am finishing this piece a few hours after I typed the first sentence. I was interrupted by the aforementioned meeting AND….ta da! the launch of my TEDx talk called Overcoming the Taboo of Touch which I have been sharing widely and wildly. Even though I am ensconced in my comfy recliner, rainbow hued blanket over my lap, my mind, heart and soul are out gallivanting through the cosmos.
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Photo: iStock