The first chilly morning comes today, like a bell that cannot be unrung. 8 a.m., I wrap myself in a blanket and take my homemade espresso onto the back porch, still green with my box gardening. Both these hobbies are less than half a year old. Something to busy my hands. I also know the names of the birds, who have heard the bell, too, and the behavior of everything today seems changed. The squirrels root around more in the yard and are unhappy to find me on the porch. The four fawns that play in the little nature preserve (the backyard drainage ditch) are nearly out of their youthful spots. The bright-red cardinals and goldfinches pick in the roof gutters for fallen food. My pulse clocks in at 58 bpm until a bee, anxious with the change, starts investigating my bowl of cut mango. A neighbor is listening to Sade’s “Cherish the Day” just loud enough for me to hear.
I take my computer outside, too, the deck now both dining hall and desk when weather allows. The kids, schooling virtually from home, are in high-school/dining room and middle-school/my office, where I have given them sprawling desks, natural light, dedicated workspaces and few distractions. I am trying to get further from them, allowing them to speak freely (my stepson was credited with the first f-bomb of the schoolyear less than an hour into day 2) and, I hope, to self police. I walk by casually at certain intervals to ensure tech is working, that they make it back from lunch to their screens, and to comment suggestively on the beauty of the day, hoping they might choose to visit with it on their breaks. “You’re welcome to join me outside for lunch,” I encourage … to the inevitable, “No, that’s okay.” I suppose it’s for the best; Only loud and repeated “NO!s” and “SHUT UP!s” come through the wall dividing me from the kitchen. So … in these tiny shafts of light and air that are mine, finally alone … I have been given license to figure out how to rebuild something that looks like MY life.
Interestingly enough … The universe saw fit to cast two lines out to me today from that distant life of mine. I bid one with a dream, apparently.
Last night I dreamt I was playing a big group show with a dear musician friend I haven’t heard from since a phone call cancelling a lunch date, which would have fallen a few days into lockdown. In real life, he’d driven straight from where his tour marooned him somewhere in Florida all the way to his father’s remote property in upstate New York. His tour partner tested positive for Covid, so this hermitage was ideal. He hiked for just enough signal to call me to tell me what we both knew: There was going to be no lunch. I had been looking forward to the hang back in March to quiet a thought that often creeps into my mind, given enough silence to manipulate. The thought that inspired last night’s dream: A secret fear that maybe I don’t impress someone anymore.
Much to my surprise, this very afternoon he calls. We rattle off how we’ve filled our days … his life still somehow glamorously remote in a Walden-esque hideaway. I envy his isolation. I give him the litany of the outdoor projects I used to push the boundaries of my crowded little world as far as they would go: The 20 hours spent digging out the pokeweed taproots, entrenched a decade in the disused garden … the nurturing of pepper seeds and refurbishing of flower beds. When I am finished, he says the thing that salves almost every open wound: “I didn’t realize how much I missed your mind, that you can make a bunch of yardwork sound like poetry.”
(Internal monologue: “You will NOT be so uncool as to tell him just how much that meant to you. You WILL, of course, hold a tiny evil doubt that he knows how to flatter you and the truth is YOU TALK TOO MUCH.”)
His uncertainty about the future and zen-like optimism is a comfort. Even though he is getting a call a week for some opportunity or another … he figures there’s no chance he will get to tour again until well into next year. We are all sick of ourselves, the way livestreaming does that to us.
How different can we be from one show to another, with the same fans mostly tuning in every time? It defies everything we’ve been taught about HOW to tour, market and build a fanbase. He seems almost content to hibernate while I fret over my overwhelmed stillness. The difference is … he has calls coming every week. Opportunity keeps knocking whether he chooses to answer the door or not. Still, his call was a knock on the door of my little hermitage. A feeling that I am not entirely forgotten … even if people take their time remembering I am still here.
By the end of the conversation, I’ve begun shedding the layers worn for the outdoor office. First the blanket. Then the socks. The day has warmed.
By the time the second ghost of music life past texts me, I have to head inside for a lighter shirt. Still some summer left.
The second line thrown out to me was because the most sensible and gentle start to reclaiming my life was to reclaim the e-mail inbox. There, I found mailing lists from musician friends and decided then and there I missed one of their unreleased songs and needed to hear it again. Long ago, this friend gave me an advance copy of a disc years in the making. It had the most fantastic songs on it. But it got lent before I could import it. I messaged: “Could I pay you for another copy?” Rather than just send me a digital link, he sent me a text chain checking in and a promise to mail me the most recent master. Apparently, he’d tried to contact me earlier in quarantine, and wondered why I never wrote back. Turned out that, like my other friend, he hadn’t forgotten about me either; He just had my phone number wrong. Oh, that all things could be solved so easily.
Their messages to me today are a reminder my old world is still out there, even if it is dormant. Maybe it remembers me? (Please, remember me) As the gardens I grew to keep from going crazy begin to wane, I am allowing something personal and selfish to grow back inside me, finally, in the space made as light finds the ground below what has cleared. There is finally some room to breathe. To be seen. But plants were easy. They got bigger. They made fruits. I ate them with my dinner tonight and saved the seeds for … next year? Harder is how to measure progress when you are not sure what you are even allowed to grow, to hope for, what is safe or right … or on what timeline? What ARE goals right now, when everyone else is mostly taken care of and you have space to WANT again? And then … what if it is not the growing season? What if this truly is the fallow year, where even the land demands rest, your ambitions be damned? I don’t mind being alone, but it is so hard to be so still.
