Is everyone a little sick right now? Not terribly ill, just a little off? I am and everyone I encounter says the same. “I don’t feel great, not sure why.”
The sad seems to be hitting extra hard this year. We’re sad and it kind of hurts.
The internal narrative kicks in: Is it Covid? Is it whatever acronym is making everyone sick? Winter? Menopause? Am I dying? (A common question, it seems, among women in the middle. If the middle makes us feel like we’re actually dying, maybe it’s time for some of that research and relief?)
Or is it the pile of years we’ve spent managing catastrophe? The endless, grating news cycle; the neighbors with their screaming signs; the mean stupidity that continues its march; the plague.
The weak tea doesn’t help but the butterscotch pudding does, which leads me to think today’s sick isn’t really sick, but rather some unnamed hunger or despair (which one could argue is sick of a sort).
March reveals the grubbiness of human existence. Broken cars and leaky roofs, tattered tinsel on the bank sign. The filth-flecked snow, the sky an interminable study in gray. The little deer dead in the road, someone’s day ruined.
I picked up a night guard at the dentist and got dizzy in the grocery store. It’s one of my tricks, but it’s been a long time. One of these dizzy grocery spells, I’d like to just float up and away like Remedios the Beauty, leave it all behind. No floating this time, just a hasty retreat to the car for some tortured self-analysis. The dizzy drags me down.
I hate the night guard, hate that I need it, but the dentist says everyone needs one now with all the grinding and clenching. We’re literally breaking our own teeth.
But tulips! A lovely woman in my tiny town started a sustainable flower farm and, this winter, she grew hydroponic tulips. Past me had the vision to sign up for her six week flower share (November me, pre-sad, still holding a little summer). Every Friday, since the end of January, I’ve driven a few country roads to pick up a glorious bouquet of tulips unlike any I’ve ever seen. Some frilly and fringed, some lush like peonies, some suggesting roses. Last week, it was a ‘strong tulip,’ she said, sort of like the stand-up-straight guys you see in the grocery, but with so much more personality. The most magnificent orange, opening up to flashes of yellow. Dramatically different flowers, each week.
Who knew that tulips could be this varied, and bring such joy?!
(The Dutch, my son said. The Dutch knew.)
So February sucks and March needs some time to recover. But if you’re a little sad, or sick, or reeling from *all this*, find flowers. Find color, wonder, a little awe. Remind yourself of the “significance of insignificant things” (to quote Dacher Keltner quoting Kierkegaard). A slow walk in the slow falling snow, home to the orange tulips and the simmering stock. Find the seemingly insignificant things.
It’s occurred to me that whatever we do — even if it’s nothing — we’re moving forward. One foot in front of the other. The calendar turns, the light is returning, and so are the flowers. Snow is coming, but I get my last bouquet today. Thanks to the winter tulips smiling at me through the darkest days, I just may make it.
Cheers!
Lisa
Things to share:
The Puzzling Gap Between How Old You Are and How Old You Think You Are.
Strange Season is a beautiful essay about “a whale in the rainforest, a house trapped in ice,” but so much more.
Dance-y electronics aren’t usually my thing, but the lyrics and that flouncy orange dress. “I’m on fire but I’m trying not to show it.”
This honest piece, in which
interrogates her own winter depression, is an important template for all of us. Sharing is key.
I love these gorgeous, old Japanese designs and wish I could pin them up all over my walls.
You've described my state of body and mind for several weeks. I keep wondering if I've got a cold, allergies, or am just aching because there is no other expression for this discomfort, agitation. Yes, time of year has something to do with it. I have found that even moving to San Diego has not eliminated the deep-seated awareness of winter, greyness, and cold. Maybe it is memory that is afflicting me.
“March reveals the grubbiness of human existence.” Yes!
In my garden, that grey space between late-winter and spring is almost painful. Thank goodness for spring flowers!