Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Itty-Bitty Baby Steps
I took a canvas chair to the park yesterday and sat under a tree while my old friend sat ten feet away at a picnic table. She brought two ice cream sandwiches in her purse.
I asked her if she was afraid of getting Covid-19 and she said no. Why not, I asked, and she just shrugged.
She turned her head away and held out her purse for me to reach in and get my ice cream sandwich. She knows me well.
I would never agree to swim across Ottawa Lake with her even though I can swim pretty far. I just want to see the bottom when I’m doing it. I always complained and worried when we walked dogs late at night at the lakefront. It terrified me to see a park ranger’s headlights, figuring we’d get arrested and our dogs, running loose in the dark, would get lost or impounded. And, now, I obsess about getting sick, figuring that the payback for decades of great health will be a suffocating death in a blindingly white ICU, my husband and dogs bidding me farewell on my iPhone. I wear ‘worst case scenario’ like an old, worn-out Rolling Stone t-shirt.
It’s getting better, though. My husband and I travelled out of town. That was big. And I used two public bathrooms along the way. Then, get this, I went to the doctor – inside a building, with other people – to get two dicey spots taken off my hand. And, then, of course, I put on my biggest-girl pants and ate a goddamn ice cream sandwich with my friend in the park!
So I am slowly getting out from under this forty-foot pile of wet Army blankets. Next week, I’ll be dancing in the streets. You watch.
One Comment on “Itty-Bitty Baby Steps”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Keep on being scared, Jan. Find pleasure in ways that are safe. I would much rather you have regrets about being too scared and too safe for a year or two than to suffer being really sick. If people aren’t scared, they have their head up their rump. I am not afraid of dying but I don’t want to die a covid death and I don’t want to be a cause of our health-care crisis.