One more week and our state eases the restrictions I wasn’t following anyway. Mostly I was, I was not shopping in stores, going to anywhere but work where I grow plants and my moms house who I am always exposed to so we decided to not quit being exposed. I wonder off to teach my kids the love of the natural world in some of the most remote open places I can find. So I sheltered In no place. I wasn’t rebellious I just lived kind of cautiously without showing much fear even though I was full of it. Just not of a virus.
I tried to wear a mask. I want to to show others I’m not selfish like you are told if you don’t. I’m not afraid of this but so many are. Its my responsibility to not just breath easy for myself but to make others breath easier. But I just can barely breath with nothing over my face. It recalls a memory of not being able to breath, covering my mouth is a trigger? I panicked and nearly peed my pants when I decided to actually go to the store for groceries for the first time. I ripped it off in frustration. I was just starting to learn to breath easy and now I have to put a barrier in front. I tried to trick myself into thinking I’m practicing for scuba diving but I am not sure that’s the same, I’ve never scuba dived. I’m too afraid still. I will but I’m not there yet and this may present a minor set back. I don’t just want to breath easy in the air with air I want to do it when air isn’t readily available and or under water. I want to breath easy when my mind says I shouldn’t. This mask thing should have been a way to practice. I wouldn’t be able to rob a bank. Or do any kind of hold up specifically because I would have a panic attack from the mask. And of course the fact that I don’t want to rob a bank or hold anyone up ever.
I work mostly outdoors. I am also a grower. I can’t work from home. I can’t take 10 s of thousands of plants home. Is the air this dangerous? Do they want me to have images of the spikey virus balls whirrling around in the air waiting to cling to me? Isn’t some of our air dangerous anyway? Is it being sucked in my greenhouse vents sticking to my pants? What about when they spray fields? Or when we omit gasses and various air pollutions from factories making plastics. All those things. I don’t believe it is anymore dangerous than any other day. Or it could be and I don’t think about it being dangerous.
I was already afraid of people so I rarely right now worry about distance from them. In fact I’m worried when they say others can be in your space they will suffocate me. They will forget I had strict boundaries and miss me. I might to. I have had visions of hugging my librarian when this ends. I may need new boundaries.
While I was at work my daughter who is 16, but often is more like a 4 year old, nearly burnt the house down making popcorn while her older brother went to the bathroom. This is her thing. It has happened before when she has turmoil in her life. She wants to bake is my guess but has the knowledge just of making popcorn and spaghetti os. I don’t want her having more knowledge of dangerous kitchen appliances yet. I still need her to think the stove is hot and not to touch, like a toddler. We are prepared for these things. I have fire extinguishers in every room. I just don’t know what she is and isn’t capable of making catch fire yet. She doesn’t love fire. She loves food. She just wants to eat. She wakes up and announces she will get to eat supper. Then declares what it will be. I could probably make it for breakfast and she would be thrilled and then lay back down thinking it is bed time. But I won’t.
She’s a handful that one. Having a child with different needs is difficult but I also have other children with various needs that are different too. They aren’t the same. All kids are special. All my kids are special. One just has extra chromosomes than the others. I can’t see her any other way than through her eyes sometimes. She isn’t extra special, she requires me to be extra special. Extra everything. Extra cautious. Extra aware. Extra ordinary. Extra patient. Extra extra read all about it is all that comes to my mind now. It’s hard to write about how extraordinary our life is with her in it. It’s difficult to put into words. There isn’t a single word, there are too many.
It is hard. It becomes a different kind of hard each day. The hardest part for me was to accept not her, but accept the loss of what I expected. I had to allow myself to finally grieve the image of a little girl I imagined when she was in my tummy. I’m not even sure she was anything other than what I have now. But us mothers we do it. We lightly rub our bellies full of new life and dream of the new life in our full bellies.
Today, my dream came true. I dreamt this life while dreaming of this life. She is this life and was the one that I daydreamed of when I was supposed to be paying attention to the roads or doing my job. She is not Holland. There is a poem I was given once that told me about this lovely country you get to go to. It was a neat little way of accepting not going to Paris. I am too afraid to fly over the ocean so I couldn’t wrap my brain around either place. She is exactly who I didn’t expect.
The loss was like a death. It wasn’t. I didn’t lose anything but I did. I lost an image and it was buried. Then replaced by all the things I didn’t know were to come. I felt guilt for feeling it was a loss. For years. I sometimes still do. I sometimes still grieve for what she wasn’t. But she is. She is my something I didn’t know I wanted. She is so much more than Holland or Paris.
That was an odd thing to get to. I so rarely write about her. Maybe now I am getting somewhere that I can. I’m not even sure why. It is too personal almost. Too special. Too much all mine. It’s too much my story. But it’s too much in my mind sometimes. Too hard to breath from it sometimes. I’m breathing easier is my guess. I am accepting myself. I need a haircut. Just a little trim. I haven’t for over a year almost. Now I can’t. Unless…I drive to Georgia. Georgia allows haircuts now. And massages. And tattoos. And golf I think. No, that’s us. We allow golf and gardening and pet grooming. And masks to make it harder to breath right when I’m starting to breath easier.
Aspenleaf 