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.

How to live in my moment. Not yours. Mine. This is specific to me. Because why would I want you to live in my moment. Just yours. Mine is just a second like yours.

Be too afraid of uncertainty. It’s not the same as thinking of the fact that uncertainty is certain. Its not the same as being not afraid of certainty. It’s being too afraid of uncertain and still treking forward. I’m not brave enough, I’m afraid enough to be brave of uncertainty being certain.

Feel too tortured from living in the past. Relive it so much that it becomes exhausting. Torture yourself with the shame and guilt you once felt and feel it again so you never feel it again. Making you always feel it again.

Finally give in. Give up. Let go. To my moment. Resolve to the fact that this is all the certainty you get. That anything more outside of right now is uncertain and you are too afraid of this, but will be brave. To stay right in my moment. To walk ahead in the know. To the unknown. From the known.

That’s it. Several moments passed and I stayed in them. They are gone and new ones are coming as I write right now. The ones laid out, not yet laid out aren’t thought yet.

I found a great word. Here is my great word right out of Pinterest. A single Pinterest moment. I found a word in about a second I loved and left looking for words to love. It was enough.

My noun use of this word is when trees squeak. When you walk in the woods and then stop and hear the trees squeak in the breeze. I could listen for seconds. That’s it. Not hours or minutes but just a few seconds I can stand and take in the fragility of life. After a few seconds it becomes torture or painful as life is too fragile. If I go longer I absorb further than my moment. I can’t become absorbed, just slightly sprinkled on then shaken off like a dog in the rain for a second. My moment is a few seconds long of a moment. Who’s isn’t? We just have a second at a time. Then it’s gone to a new one. My new moment to stay in my moment. To allow the next.

I’m relieved he died. Who says that? Me. My relief outweighs my grief. It could have been worse. It would have been worse. He would have suffered with this virus and died alone. He wouldn’t have tolerated the chaos ensuing upon us. He would have been livid over the new rules here and there. He would have been consumed by this. His mental anguish could have killed him alone. I’m relieved.

I can’t get myself to think ahead. To plan or to make any plans. If you try you are scorned on websites of closures and rules to keep you home. To be safe. If you want to explore a park or trail even online you are first given messages of Covid fright. It’s not an official word yet. Covid. The world hasn’t settled enough for it to be a vocabulary word yet. You can’t do anything without first being warned of something the world hasn’t quit excepted yet.

I think it’s entertaining to imagine the natural world at rest and enjoying the lack of distractions. No trail workers, no saws, no traffic, no fisher people. I imagine the animals waltzing down the trails less traveled in single file rows enjoying their new found freedom. Swimming the shore lines with a new found relief. Splashing high above the water to pronounce your location with no fear. We all have to stay in but they get to wonder free.

What is life like from behind the rotten fallen tree? Life where I’m not tiptoeing through the woods in fear of so much. What is it like to raise from a restful sleep in the tall grass to meander to the stream for a fresh drink of water, water unspoiled by laundering clothes or cleaning dishes. Where the fish swim freely. What is life like below the water where the water is less disturbed and the things lay to settle. Opening the water up to explore. What is it like not to be fished? What is it like to feel like a fish right now? Is it the same relief? Is it relieving to be a fish?Do they know this is temporary? Do they look to the future and think it will always be safe or will it return to their old normal? Will they have a new normal too?

What will a new normal look like? I can’t see it? I also don’t want to? Staying in the moment is easier now than it ever has been. This for me is what I needed to gain some relief of the torturing thoughts of an uncertain future. This virus was a hard fast way for me to realize what I was stuck on still. I was stuck in the moment in my mind, not living in the moment in my mind. That I had to think forward to get away from right now. Think backwards to not forget the painful memories. I was torturing myself with the idea that being right here wasn’t enough.

So I imagine fishing. Reeling my thoughts back in. With a simple image of a fishing line being reeled back. It’s pulling crap with it never fish. My fishing line is always stuck in something not fishing. I’m stucking. I’m about to go too far into fishing. I usually pull and snap the line which makes me even more frustrated for having line stuck in trees or in the mucky water for critters to tangle in. I’ve lost a pole. I don’t fish. It’s too hard. You have to sit for too long and you really can’t talk. Or scare the fish away for others to catch just to release. Release back in the water with a little injured jaw.

How many times can you catch the same fish and release him? Why would you even play this game? What’s worse is why would we do it and then eat them? I’ve gone fishing exactly a dozen times or more and left feeling nothing but frustrated I spent my time that way. I was taken fishing not gone fishing. Why did I keep going fishing? If I had it my way I would splash through the water warning all the fish to stay clear of approximately 40 feet away from the edge. If I don’t reel this in soon I’m going to be fishing all morning. I just don’t fish. I don’t want to be taken fishing on a date. I don’t like the added gear when camping. It’s just not how I spend my time. It’s too far out there. At least I worked that out this morning. Fishing doesn’t bring me relief. Just my dad dying does today. I’m relieved for him.

Fish will be relieved. If they can feel relief. If they felt fear wouldn’t they also feel relief? I know some fish are afraid I’ve seen it in the eyes. They will have less fishers out. Right now the rule says no more than two together. Two together isn’t a good idea for me anyway. I will make it too difficult for the other. Only two on a boat now. Do some take more? Isn’t fishing kind of an alone game? Im relieved the fish can feel a little relief as the fishing isn’t as relieving for some right now. It’s a huge relief.

Stop thinking of fishing.

I don’t want to be sad for everyone. I want to be sad for me. Not the world. It’s a sad sad world right now. Because we are all too connected to each other. We all know about each other’s sad. I am unaware of my own sad. It’s lost. Maybe someone out there is sad for me like I am for everyone else? Maybe no one knows to be? Maybe I’m not sad? Maybe I’m unsad? That’s not a word. The sharp underline says so.

I was a little surprised that unrest was a word and not just me adding un to the beginning of rest to get a word for the feeling of not being rested. I think you can do that. Just add un, ing, ness, and ed. To a word to get a word you want for a feeling you have that you can’t think of the correct word. People make up words constantly. Or they are making words mean other things constantly.

I don’t want to be sad for people. I’m exhausted by the days end when someone tells me a story or many of themselves. We have a new person who over shares. When this happens I do it back. If they start it I can not stop myself. “He started it!!” I yell to myself. I don’t know my own boundaries when others either don’t know theirs too or are that comfortable with them to leap on past and share it all. Is it that they can sense I’m someone who is worthy of a good story? I over share with only those who first let me know they have misery. Mine likes company. My anxiety loves a good anxious friend but really needs a good anxious friend who can keep there anxious less, I need leaky calm not leaky anxious. I know better my anxious does not. It can sense a chance to share it all in a split second giving me no time to set out the rules of this new person who also can’t set their rules fast enough. Two people ready to jump right over the edge into the abyss of sharing too much.

I like people who will set that fence and make me see it to stop. When I can finally see I’m being pulled in I abruptly stop and leave them to go over alone. I say. “I’m sorry this is more of a quiet game, one I play alone or with very few, this abyss jumping over is dangerous and unknown, you didn’t stop me, I need fences.” Then I turn around in mid air and go back. Leaving them confused. Im not a good first day of work person to work with. I need a bit more distance before someone is plopped into my world and stirs it up.

I dreamt a mountain lion was near. I was in a branch standing and then turned and he was right there. I was in my local park so it didn’t make any sense. Once I was camping there and swore I heard one. It was the loudest noise I had ever heard. I was scared to death. Alone, and in the woods. Which I love but am scared to death of. Weird right? I intentionally do it to. I go to face my fears. Because I love it so much. But that night I was convinced it was a mountain lion. To the point I googled the sounds they make and convinced myself enough to call a few days later and leave a message with the staff that they had a mountain lion in their park in the middle of Illinois. No one called me back. I’m sure they were laughing just listening to the message from me. In discussions over this with someone I was told I heard raccoons fighting. They pulled up the noise also via google and it was dead on. I’ve had raccoons since then prove this true in real life by fighting over my tent and falling onto my tent in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods alone. You have to expect this. I am in the woods in the middle of the night alone. Under trees with animals. Just not mountain lions but never alone.

This mountain lion has visited my dreams several times. The made up one. He is telling me things aren’t true. Not everything is true I’m thinking. Hé came and sniffed the bottom of my tree and then walked away slowly on the carpeted forest floor that seemed to actually be my living room with me in a tree. Dreams are like that. When you have them. They make no sense leaving you to make them make sense.

Why would I want to be so sad. It feels so selfish to be. To just lay around and be sad. To cry all day. To eat oddly. Not feed others, not engage in life from the so sad. Am I avoiding doing this? Is it healthier to avoid as a coping skill or give in? Give in and just let go of the others sad to be with your own. In such a selfish way when so many others need me to be sad for them. I am selfish. That’s what is being said of anyone who leaves home and doesn’t wear a mask and is afraid to be brave. It’s selfish to go out and put others at risk. It’s selfish to sit and think of yourself. I have heard it half my life from someone who was selfish. That if I wasn’t thinking of him I was selfish. It is difficult to undo. Which is not doing it is undo.

It comes easier for me to think of others misery. Mine is somewhat too miserable to think of. It’s also not. Everything that got me to here is what got me to here. All the shame, misery, anxiety, fear. It’s my fate. I love my fate. I’m a lover of my fate. No matter what it all was to get to here. I am grieving in my own way now. It’s unfamiliar territory from years of grieving someone else’s way. Which was no way. Everything I’m thinking is not true. I am sad, it’s just not coming out like tears. Unsad. It’s coming out with unsettled, unresolved, unrest, undo, unsad, untrue, under control. It’s coming out in ways that I am just adding letters to words to make them work the way I need them to. Words work for me. I’m just unsad. Sad for me might just be sad for others.

I thought I would write daily. Like a journal. But this morning I wanted to sleep past 4:30 a.m which is when I write until roughly 6:03 a.m. when everyone one else in my home is done resting from unrest.

I want to see what happens in my mind daily first thing in the morning. After the unrest. It’s the time I wake. I am still alive and made it to the next day. I maybe dreamt, maybe slept maybe didn’t. I like to see what comes out after a night where my brain rests. I don’t want to do some of the things I do right now. Like write to unwind. I am resting still at 4:30 a.m. I’m not done unresting.

I have written a few time at night. I can see the ones that I did. I don’t like to unwind at night by unwinding I think. My evening doesn’t seem to be about letting it all out. I’m often exhausted, often over stimulated and often have too much to say. I can’t say it all before I sleep. I can’t unrest before resting time. I need the wind to get to the rest.

I’m trying now. It’s not working. I can’t seem to become as engaged with myself at night as I am in the morning. I’m too engaged to what my day was? Too wound up to be able to unwind from a day of unrest? I’m unrested when I lay to rest, which just sounded like I was dead, like laid to rest dead. or dying? which is often what I feel will happen when I lay to rest. I will die not rest.

My day was too full of others to feel enough to unfeel so much. I am creative in the morning but lack the creative at night? Too many imaginary monsters under the bed for creating things? Too much unrest in my day? For proper unwinding to rest? Then I wake to unwind from rest.

My unrest will rest and I will wake to unwind the rest that rested from the unrest while I unwind.

I’m confusing myself right before sleep maybe to see what will need unwound from all the rest I will get right after the unrest from being wound.

Am I sad enough? Should I be sadder? I know I am not happy. I’m just not the opposite of it either. I’m more likely indifferent specifically because I think I should be sadder but am not happy. I’m confused. If sad, I should cry. No? It’s the corresponding reaction to this emotion. But I cry when I’m happy too. I also laugh when I’m sad. I make jokes. Morbid humor. It’s why I don’t like funerals, it’s not all the death and feelings in the room of how to deal with the death, it’s that I deal with it by saying the wrong things and laughing. Because what do you say? “How’s the kids?” “How are you holding up?” “Do you miss him?”

I say things like “man who let him pick that to be buried in?” Or “how are you doing?” Then laugh hysterically at the thought that this person could be anything but fine or might be fine and afraid to say I’m fine. I shouldn’t be invited to funerals. I won’t even be at my own. There won’t be one. I will need to be used up in any way I can be then made into something to be used as an amendment for soil to plant a tree. Or just sprinkled in the woods. I will be high in calcium I suspect, which I’m not sure what trees do with. It’s not always readily available in soils naturally. I wonder how many people are sprinkled in the woods or the ocean? Just casually dumped amongst the living things to go back to earth. Or one last swim in the ocean.

I can’t even be sad about this. I’m really now just full of morbid curiosity. I have a lot of end of life questions. The answers are all likely speculation from the living since the dead can’t speak. That moment before there is no whisper of the secret to dying right before you leave life to enter die. It’s a last breath. I saw it. He inhaled and never exhaled. Filling his lungs with air to take with him. Like when you go under water. Did he know to do this? Was it softly spoken to him “one last big one, you’ll need it for the ride.” I didn’t say it I know that. My mom was pleading for him to keep breathing. I was pleading for her to stop pleading. This is what happens when I sit with the almost dying. I also shouldn’t do this. I will be haunted for ever with the last moments of life until I get to my own.

I watched the news on accident yesterday. Not the regular news the one that shows the strange news. A boy was video taped struggling to breath to show the world he was struggling to breath. I’m not sure if I would be able to do this. Not a privacy thing just that if my baby was struggling to breath I would just sit there with my baby and make sure they stayed breathing. Watched each one. I’ve done it. I’ve sat with a baby who wasn’t going to keep breathing. I’ve been tormented with a baby on a ventilator. I’ve counted breaths. I’ve breathed for her. With her. Over her. Once on her thinking it would help. What if it was her last one you accidentally video taped? Then your memory is that you missed it because your thought was on sharing. She had a reason. I heard it, somewhat, I just didn’t listen to it. She wants the world to know anyone can get sick and suffer. This is true shared or not. This is true virus or not. No one is immune to death. We all struggle to breath in our own way. Everyone has just enough air until we don’t.

This single video will torment me all day. I wish I could tell her now I’m worried about him, but mostly her. Was this her goal? To make an impact on the ones who won’t be able to stop seeing him breath through a screen for days. I will recall this several times in the next month or even longer. I will struggle to breath for him. I listened to my daughter breath last night. Like went and got her and put her in my bed so I could be certain she stayed breathing all night long. Like a meditation it was soothing and rocked me right to sleep. I woke panicked I missed her last breath. I’m tormented by the last breath.

I can hear my cat breath. When she was an infant her larynx or throat was crushed when she was found and taken to the rescue pet place. She breaths so loud. Across the house loud. She chuffs instead of meows like a tiger. She struggles to chew food and chews it up into tiny pieces and spits them out. She always takes one single food and sets it on the floor. And leaves it. I often wonder if she is asking me to cut it up for her. She is showing me it’s too big and needs to be smaller. I’ve tried soft cat food but she stares at it like she isn’t sure what to do. She ends up with it all over her cat face and whiskers. She doesn’t like to be watched when she eats. I have to do it from afar. Her breathing across the house is somewhat soothing even though I think she is actually struggling to. Like we all do.

I’m told to take deep breaths. I’ve been told to breath with my belly. A big deep belly breath. Except I seem to feel like all I am doing is breathing and then pushing my stomach out to show how full of air I made my stomach only I know my air doesn’t go into my belly. There is a layer of something that keeps the gut and the air area separate I think. So I’m expanding my lungs pushing on that layer to then make my belly look full of air? Or did I just move my back forward to protrude my belly? My therapist is never listening when I ask her about anatomy with breathing. She is too focused on trying to just get me to breath and not on the anatomy.

I always feel a little better if I hold my breath. Not super long just long enough to feel my heart beat in my neck and feel it slow down. I do this after I hike for miles. Or run. Or am anxious. I feel it in my ears and back and neck. When I get exerted I hold my breath and force my heart to slow down. And then slowly let that air out. It can make me a little light headed at first. You aren’t supposed to hold your breath. Your supposed to breath. Unless under water. Except I’m in the air holding the air I’m afraid to let it out. Not sad. Not happy. Tormented to breath.

It takes the same amount of energy to be sad as it does to be happy? Right? So it’s a choice. I don’t even want to write about it. I’m sad. I could even be leaning towards depressed. I don’t get depressed. I can find something always to give me hope. But I feel it in my face. Last night my heart beat not just fast but loudly. I could feel it in my face. My neck and against my pillow. Why does it get louder sometimes? It wasn’t soothing it was concerning. It threatened to come right out. Up through my ears. It felt to sometimes be in my stomach. Is my heart moving? What is keeping it going? My choices?

I finally fell asleep. I woke all night with my mouth stuck open dry as a bone. I am drinking some water. Not a lot. I don’t require a lot. But all night my mouth hung open drying from the air around it. If someone looked at me I would have maybe looked dead. I’ve thought too many times what is going on with my dead father. He is being researched. All his parts looked at to learn how he stayed alive for so long with a disease that should have killed him years ago.

Change your thoughts. Chose different ones. I keep doing it. But I’m too stuck on one to make any one other make sense for too long. I want all my electronics to be clear and transparent. Like literally. I want a clear phone. I want to see all the way into it and through it yet I can’t because seeing through it would mean not seeing anything on it. Then I want my coffee pot to be. It’s one of those single serving pod ones. I am dying to take it apart. I hope it clogs soon so I have to. But if it were clearer I wouldn’t need to, I could see it working. Maybe if I were more transparent I could see through myself more and understand me. Maybe everyone else could to. Maybe if my dad had been he wouldn’t be dead and being taken apart to find answers.

Undo. Chose different. I can’t get my daughter to understand how to do e-learning. She just doesn’t get it. It frustrates her and me. Both of them don’t. We also are calling it e-learning and no one is teaching them anything except me. I’m being given the tools. The print off that when you look at it is a choice board of parenting. It’s things I do with them anyway. The actual e-things are social. They are little groups all together on these little screens and the noises and chaos is too much noise and chaos. They lose interest and are off wondering. You can’t keep the attention of kids who have little attention over a small box. They can’t see through it.

I’m left dropping things that are supposed to be required. Can’t they just give us a free pass? Just let us barely survive right now with all the restrictions in place and get to next year. If we even do? I can’t do it. And can’t isn’t a word I know. I appreciate the effort more than I’m letting off but I can’t seem to communicate why we don’t understand the effort. I’m not transparent enough just a single parent.

It’s not my first choice. If I had a choice board it would have had a choice that I already made once. Which was to raise children with a partner. Before that choice board was there it was to be a park ranger. It’s too late for this choice. The parks are closed. My choice was not single and raising kids. Not with my father dead. Not with things I can’t see through. And beyond. My choice was to have someone hold me when I’m sad almost depressed. To even tell me I’m getting there. To help me check in with myself when myself can’t seem to double check in. My choices are gone. I have new ones. They aren’t choices. I don’t chose sad. It chose me right now. I can’t chose happy. It was taken off the board. I can’t slow dance. Not a choice. I can’t even high five. My choices are limited.

My coffee shop is opened back up. It almost made me feel we were making progress. It also feels like no one wants to admit progress. That all this lack of choice is going to get us somewhere. If they say it and it rears back up they will look fools and not get re-elected. There are so many people to elect. A little over a month ago I didn’t even know our governors name. I kept hearing a name and asked my dad. Who is this guy they keep talking about making all these rules!He is our governor. He says disappointed. Then he leads me through a discussion on the laws and bills and senates and house that I didn’t listen to. He says I should be more politically engaged. That’s dangerous advice even from my dad who is as engaged in politics as his cat. He knows just enough to maybe hold a conversation with his coffee buddies. Knew.

Now I know more governors names and senators than I knew existed. I know personal details about some for reasons I don’t get. That one of them just met his daughters boyfriend for the first time. I don’t have a lot of space for politics. I have too much space if I allow it. I do not wish this on my choice boards.

If they want to call it e-learning wouldn’t we be sitting all day long in front of devices and the teacher would be teaching? Like in a classroom except not. Could that even work? I’m sure they are scrambling to make every effort to make our kids engaged but I am the one currently with them so it is my responsibility as it actually always is. It’s what I chose.

I can’t just sign up for social media platforms just to get sucked back into them again just to help us get through a really strange time. It’s not in my core values. I value the time with them. Not with millions of others. I miss one single person who used to be alive. I apparently miss my librarian today but know I really just miss her library and all the choices.

I found myself missing someone else. Just the thought is what made me so sad. I shouldn’t miss him. He hurt me. He hurt us. I should be grateful I’m going through all of this as a single and not a with a partner who wasn’t a partner. I’m getting weak. I am lax in choices and getting weaker from the lack of being engaged by myself. I want to chose happy but I can’t see through anything to chose it. When and where are my choices? My hope?

Take it to the woods.

That’s what I know.

When in doubt we take it to the woods. I just know this growing up. I would never know what specifically was going on but we would pack up and head out to the woods.

As a “grown up” I’m learning this is where I go to listen to myself. To tell myself to be quiet so I can hear what’s outside of myself. So I can hear what’s inside of myself.

Listen. To the birds. To the water. Can you hear water? Listen to the squeak of the trees as they move. Listen to the sound of your feet hitting the ground.

Smell the air. What do you smell? Air? Earth? Dirt? What?

Feel the sun, the rain, snow, wind.

Maybe even taste the sweat on your lips.

Listen close as you move and work your muscles and body. What do they need? Food? Are you drinking enough water? Do you have enough water? Where can you get water next?

Should you stop and rest? Isn’t that giving up? No it’s resting?

The loudest crash I’ve ever heard was just heard right now. I don’t know if it was an accident on the interstate, someone tossing something in the trash, or an airplane explosion.

Anyway, I tell my daughter we are connecting to nature. She says. “What does that mean?”

It means get in touch with yourself, get close to yourself. This is where you can tell yourself what to do. To listen to yourself. To find control of yourself. To imagine the impossible and the imaginable.

This is strange advice for a small child yet the most important time to give advice to a small child. While the sponge is sponging. Absorbing information. Now is the time to fill the sponge of a mind with things that someday can be rung out and accessed when it’s needed the most. Get the mind full of things to know to use again later. What things? That’s your choice. What are your values? Goals? What type of life do you want to leave for them?

There is more to the woods than what you see it’s what you feel coming out. It’s that feeling that makes you small again. That feeling that there is so much more than you. You are a speck, a dust, a little tiny grain.

Not that I have a feeling I’m bigger than everything else, actually yes that’s it. I want everyone to be in control of themselves. I don’t want to personally do it or control it I want them to. It’s worse. I do. I start to feel I’m bigger than what’s going on. That I’m not a speck of dust I am a boulder of them. I’m too big. I’m too worried. Too much for even myself. It is often no wonder I’m on my own. I’m not just enough I’m usually too much.

Today I’m ringing my sponge out. I’m ringing it out of the things absorbed years ago to get me through the things now. My mind was filled with useful and useless information for later use. Except algebra. I didn’t absorb it. It’s not part of any sponging done.

I have no attention span today. It’s gone with the wind. I would like it back but I’m busy coping by apparently not being focused today. The quicker I move from thing one to thing two the less I think of the things. Avoidance can be an excellent coping skill if properly coped with in itself. I do not want to think of my dad gone forever and I do not want to think of the feared world.

Our what’s to come is always an uncertainty so why is this so much different? Is it the desire to control an outcome out of our control? We will likely never know what would have happened had this or that happened or didn’t. I understand there are rules and reasons. Trust me. I have so many for myself that the added rules they want to enforce are lost. I’m responsible for myself. I wash my hands when I think I’m supposed to. I cover my coughs. I avoid people like a plague before people were plagued. It’s what I do best.

Avoid.

Keep as busy as possible physically so I’m not thinking of the emotional aspects of life that I don’t get a real say in. My future was and is always unpredictable no matter what coarse of action is laid out for me to follow. It’s just a new uncertainty is all. The quicker I accept this the quicker I can get back to being packed full of my own fears. Let the rest of the world be afraid without me.

I’m a social distancing nightmare. never before have I wanted so badly to cuddle. To lean into someone, to slow dance, to cry on a shoulder, to be held. I don’t even have these things as memories really anyway so I’m not craving something missing I’m craving something I’ve never had that now I’m told I can’t. Like a child. The more I’m told not the more I hear yes. The more I look through the loop holes for a hinge of yes. Was that really no? I don’t do these things well under normal circumstances. Why now? Because I have had a significant loss and feel…loss. Does a slow dance help? Or to be held. Does it matter who it is? Can I feel comfort from just my librarian hugging me? Although right now I can’t since I’m not even sure if she has a job to do. Maybe she is loving it. No one messing up her catalogued books and chatting in the isles of stories. Why am I thinking of my librarian? Because I miss her.

I’ve derailed. It’s the flighty-ness today. The lack of routine and the skills needed to focus. Or the wiring? I am still being trained to focus. I can hyper focus. I have some things that I can do really well that seem like I am the most focused put together woman. Like a backhoe. Or any equipment. Bucket trucks and lifts, saws. I have the focus for precision. For moves that have to be. Like a good cut or a dig close to electric lines. Elevate the risk and I only become more precise. But not focused. Not put together.

Take it to the woods is not working. It’s just not long enough. I need days there for something as big as losing my father.

It took days the last time I lost a person who was supposed to stay with me forever. Which isn’t that long. He couldn’t make it? I was too much and not enough all at once. The only thing that really bothers me today is that I was put in a place to break a promise. To be the one to leave to find my value again. I don’t break promises. This one maybe was never actually made. It’s the only thing I can tell myself to feel like I didn’t do wrong.

That’s ancient history. A story I own but may never tell. But I own it.

I have to keep going more often is the plan. Keep loosening the strings upstairs. I can feel it and see it. A day of flight isn’t a waste. It was a way to make it through the day. Avoid the pain. The sponge rang out and just wasn’t enough. It will absorb again. It always does. That’s why I keep going. It’s a reminder to myself I have it in me still to take it to the woods. To keep taking it there and leave my footprints and take my fully saturated mind full of quiet.

This is the most scrambled I have felt in a long time. I feel like I’m failing at something and I can’t figure out what exactly it is yet. Because I eat a lot of take out, make my bed a few times less, care less about how I look and never did anyway so its even less, dehydrate, ate food once off the floor in the middle of a global pandemic, ate beef reheated twice, and I binge watch Gilmore girls. I feel like I’m not going like I’m supposed to but I also don’t know how to go like I’m supposed to yet without my dad. Take it to the woods is what he would say. In his own way. By just taking us and never even saying it. We just knew that’s what to do.

I can’t eat turkeys. Or really any birds for that matter. I’ve tried. I can do chicken in the form of shredded and nugget and sandwich but the second it resembles what it was alive, I’m out. All the legs and wings and bodies…blahhc!!I’m not a vegetarian. Or an aviaron? Made up word. Also that might be someone who only eats birds, or maybe studies birds? which is making my heart beat fast to just think about.

I made a turkey one year. It was given to me. I felt I should use it. I did all the things to make it and it was beautiful and I’m told delicious except I couldn’t even look at it. Preparing it was probably one of the more difficult things I’ve done in life. Right up with having babies and a pain shot in my foot for an ingrown toenail.

I kept looking at this turkey. All lacking his feathers and head. But his body visible but void of vital organs. He couldn’t fly anymore and I could hold his wings up. It’s just not natural. The neck and stuff stuffed into a bag. Side note. I have the same problem with lobster and fish and frogs, if they lay in front of me with their bodies all cooked and an eyeball staring back at me pleading me not to eat him but release him. Animals just can’t look like what they were alive.

We don’t typically stare at our cows and other meat in this fashion so it seems strange to me that it’s just a convenience a bird is small enough to shove into a crockpot if you break it’s legs and hold the lid down with a large rock. I am certain if a cow lay in front of me to prepare I would never be able to eat it. I have been part of a neighborhood hog ownership that gave us part of a hog. Part of the deal was my husband at the time had to help butcher. I’m out. I never ate that pork. For awhile I protested this pork and was a temporary just grazer and eater of anything but the animal we helped slaughter. I had pet chickens not chickens I ate. I can almost not even eat eggs if I think of baby birds. I choke them down occasionally because I think they are delicious except if they are a baby chicken in my mind.

Oddly this all takes me back to when I was in high school ffa and judged meat. I don’t know what took me down that direction other than a crush on a cute guy who didn’t even know I existed. The things we do for love…I can judge meat and tell you where it came from on the body like some sort of cow anatomy specialist. I spent too many days Im comfortable remembering looking at cows butchered. Yet I can eat ribeye with no probelmo.

Once my son came home from hunting dove. It would take roughly 12 to feed a large person. The breast cooked is the size of a nugget. The waste was a bag full of body of bird and feathers. It looked like a bloody down pillow exploded after they were done cleaning them. I couldn’t eat them.

I don’t even really love birds. I’m not a bird stalker or a bird rights activist. I think there are too many Canadian geese and robins. I get frustrated when I can’t hear something over the birds. I had a parakeet as a pet as a child. I also fell asleep with it and suffocated it on accident under my arms. I was cuddling with a bird. No one told me it’s not the same as cuddling with a puppy. I placed the bird in my dresser drawer and told no one. I was shocked the amount of time it took anyone to realize how quiet the cage became with the lack of a bird. My mom points this story out when I think of owning a bird again. The responsibility that comes with it means to not suffocate him with love.

I started to notice the amount of places I would see turkeys several years ago. If I think back I can think even of times I would see them where they belonged. In fields and woods edges but I started to see them in places they shouldn’t be. Wild turkeys on my urban running trail through town. I know they lived in a little tucked in woods that once belonged to the railroad that is long gone and now is a place we all run to. These turkey would meander casually across roads as if they owned the world.

Once I was driving along and stopped knowing the cars in front of me were stopped to let the turkeys cross. As they crossed the oncoming vehicle did not stop and creamed one. Right before my eyes. Feathers flew and the bird lay dead in the road. He was probably so confused that second before impact. His ritual being to walk this way to get to his water hole. Or dig worms or just freak out runners on the trail. Just doing turkey things.

I became obsessed with this flock of turkeys. As the years passed the numbers fizzled away. Were people eating them? Was someone hunting here in the city limits. Sitting and stalking my birds to feed their family. I panicked more than one should before thanksgiving over the turkeys. One year walking the trail to be certain they were safe from our hungry pilgrims and Indians. I’ve called the parks department to see about a turkey crossing sign. No one called me back. They could have at minimum entertained the idea. No harm in a discussion on a sign for turkeys, we have goose crossing signs and they are protected by migratory laws that keep you from moving nests and killing them. They seem to own the sky. They are our signal for weather. When they fly in vs a certain direction. I couldn’t eat a goose no matter how many I think there are. Their neck alone would freak me out. It is too long. It’s a gooseneck. It would be stuffed into a giant bag. I’m nauseous now.

The turkey showing up randomly can have a meaning. I googled it quickly after this turkey stalked me after a long hike with my girls. He was following me and then I got to my car and he stood tall and proudly behind my car. I got out and shooed him away. He walked back to my car. He stood in the road. What was he protesting? The shelter in place order? He misses his company in the park. He misses his rangers. Who are furloughed during this time with no buildings to maintain and potty’s to clean. He was lonely. He was a reminder. He wasn’t sent from beyond by my dad. That’s too ridiculous for even me. He was all messed up as are the geese. Geese walk around in roads less traveled and streets less populated. They feel comfy and safe with all the laws they don’t know that protect them during migration and casually strolling the empty streets. I heard a lady was attacked in an uptown area of our hometown by a goose. It knocked her down and her glasses broke. They hiss. I’ve gotten too close too many times to feel the threat of the fact they are threatened. They are protected they say.

So here is what google says:

The turkey spirit animal is closely associated with the abundance of the Earth. It is a symbol of all the blessings you receive from Mother Nature. The turkey comes into your life to remind you to honor what Earth has to offer. More importantly, be ready to share your gifts, talents, and blessings with the world.

It was perfect. I like a good something to believe in. It is a neat and tidy wrap up to my turkey mental anguish. or bird mental anguish. I like meat and tidy. It’s one more thread loosened.

I tried to start with a soothing thought of the forest floor, but kept associating it to my carpeted floor hoping my carpet floor isn’t as full of life as the forest floor. It’s not the same. We don’t want living things in our carpet floors. But yet it’s likely true. I probably lay to stretch on top of things that rely on me to drop food crumbs to sustain life. I’m trying to get back into the woods in my noggin. It is so full of life. I have a collection of pictures from yesterday to prove it. And to show no one. But myself.

They are things I learned as a child. I don’t know the May Apple from any other way than my dad saying that’s a May Apple. Or a trillium, or a bloodroot. I still was sending him pictures from places I’ve gone and things I’ve found that he taught me how to find and the places to find them in. I know some things will be more prevalent along the edges of the water but just above where it might flood sometimes. Or some will be on the back sides of certain trees dead and decaying. I know where to look from years little watching him look in those places and proudly displaying the mushroom we weren’t even looking for.

Now what? He’s gone. I don’t think I will ever be someone who thinks I’m being spoken to from beyond the grave. I may not have this type of imagination. Plus my dad is being researched by science not in a grave. But I could see getting to a place that like yesterday I just was who I was and showed my girls the things I know which I know because he knew. So if I really stretch he is with me forever. Because I’m part of him forever. It’s painful to imagine. Because of his absence. But maybe someday I can feel less pain from the thought. But it’s today and not someday and I know if I don’t get back to today I’m going to die in my mind.

It’s magical. The life that comes up from a dormant frozen soil full of organic layers in the woods. When it thaws it doesn’t just thaw it was hiding all this magic. I can’t think of a better word. It’s not just life and a living forest floor it’s a magical unfurling of life of the living forest floor. If I could sit for longer than 6 minutes I would love to sit and watch it. Day in and day out the world thaw and life begin again. But I can’t sit for 6 weeks just roughly 6 minutes and during that time I’m sitting and telling myself to sit not really sitting.

The whole time I’m walking my dads there but not there and I’m still there. I tried to pretend he is there and not was there. My pretend was busy pretending so many things it was tasking me.

My daughter learned maybapple and trillium. It was a game. I would tell her she had to find it or she couldn’t play in the water. But she couldn’t leave the trail to find them. I’m trying to teach her to look down and look. I’m trying to teach her to listen. She thinks it’s odd she can’t be loud outside. I think it’s odd I want her to be quiet outside. But I can’t hear anything if she talks loud outside. I imagine my father struggled this same way toting me around to places as well. I don’t remember, likely from being too loud to hear him say to be less loud. If a bird is chirping and even several I want to hear them. Just them. I stopped her several times and made her hold her breath and listen. Then tell me what she heard. She said she heard her breath held at first. Then slowly her answers became things to listen to outside of herself. The water. The wind. The birds. Then the game became dull and lifeless because she is 6 and wanted to play dolls soon. I wanted to go home and watch Gilmore Girls. We were about done with the adventurous day.

My oldest daughter who has Down syndrome rocked. She hates the woods. Hates trees. Hates dirty shoes and hates water. I don’t know where this girl came from other than I have the painful yet wonderful memory of making and delivering her into the world. This thought nearly took me into the moment she was told to be anything less than what I saw of her the first moment I saw her. Too long of a story.

She walked up and over and under and through. For hours. I pushed her so hard. She pushed back. She had new shoes and was furious they were wet and dirty. She was huffing and puffing and blowing the woods down. She walked over 3 miles in a place she didn’t want to walk 3 steps. Came out and got in the car and said “I did good job hiking.” All breathless and red. She did. She totally did.

My dad would be proud. Would have been too. I would have sent him all of these pictures. Once I actually did. Then deleted it before I sent it in case my mom was near his phone and would have to look at it only to see that it was me confused he was still here. She would cry. I would cry and we both don’t want to cry every single day. Except we will for awhile. It is part of the process of grief. I could have sent them and probably should have. I don’t have something yet to replace the place I sent them to. I felt alone and sad with no where to send my things. I came to the conclusion, I will just not send them. They will go to right in front of me. Right in front of me is my kids. They will get to learn what I learned. I don’t need to send it anywhere they are right with me. Right in front of my feet walking with me.