Caspar Bluffs, Galena Territory, near the Thunderbird Effigy Mounds, photo by Laura Lee
Poetry has left me during this pandemic. When the world and others are deemed as not safe, this HSP has become HYPER vigilant, resulting in poor sleep and increasing bad habits.
I know I have so many privileges. I know that, but as the saying goes, nothing is ever truly forgotten.
So I had my spring plants/ flowers daily watch, and it was wonderful. Crocus, scylla, trilium, May apples, Virginia bluebells and more. I took some online classes. I tutor and continue to tutor.
And perhaps poetry will come back. During this pandemic, I cannot say that poetry has saved me, for the trauma is primitive and only after some relief from trauma can I return to art, to poetry. If poetry never returns, there is life, love, nature, beauty. Poetry in their own way.
Twenty years of complicated trauma plus four years of being stalked by a violent “friend” taught about being hyper vigilant–for more than six decades. Have her injured and retired much earlier than planned, and just beginning to find her way during this retirement. Have her proud for not overreacting for news of a novel virus; no, this time she will not stock up or freak out. It’s on the other side of the world, right? Right? Add grief for a lost sister and a state of shock about her new reality.
Add the pandemic.
Click. Knowing she is privileged. Knowing how many are suffering physically and emotionally. Guilt over privilege. I know, she will give up something she loves, make a sacrifice. Bye bye, poetry. She will volunteer more and more, to help others. She finds students who need help and mails lessons, materials, makes phone calls. Tutors.
Click. Husband forced retired early due to pandemic. Lucky, lucky they are and they know it. Able to do this, rather than face the pandemic daily, face first, face to face.
Click. His former employer is no longer paying him since he doesn’t work there anymore. He’s having to deal with sudden retirement.
And they are lucky, and they know it. Yet it is scary to have to be so worried about money once again, after five decades of working hard to get out of debt and be sufficient.
It is, however, a recipe for constriction, a recipe to kill poetry. It is a recipe for clenched jaws that make her jaw muscles so strong, they could snap wire. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
See, see what happens that one time you decide not to be hyper vigilant, not to worry and stock up.
The days are okay, for there is sunlight and she forces herself to take nature walks, one thing not denied. It’s healthy to walk. Stay away from others on the path, wear a mask.
But the nights close in and find nightmares returning, ruminations, constrictions. Worries. More rumination. This is not what she had planned for retirement. She knows how lucky she is. She misses people more than she can say. She likes people. She misses her sister. She is with grief and night, grief for the pandemic, for the loss of her sister, for the “so that was my career” thoughts. She uses carbs to calm herself. All the carbs.
I knew somehow this would happen, she thinks. I am getting older by the day. I’ll never be able to enjoy retirement. I miss work. I miss teaching. I am living a meaningless life right now, helping no one and doing nothing, she thinks, even while knowing she would never judge another this harshly.
She walks more during the day, even on the days when the windchill is dangerous. She only stops on the days when the house door is frozen shut. Not trusting the gym during an airborne virus pandemic, she walks the halls at night and frets.
Be hyper vigilant. There is a killer novel virus. Stay away from others. Wash those hands very often. Be hyper vigilant. You should have been hyper vigilant. See? Told you so.
Twenty years of complicated trauma plus four years of being stalked by a violent “friend” taught about being hyper vigilant. For more than six decades. Did you suddenly forget important life lessons?
Before the pandemic, she was writing a lot of poetry and publishing; after the pandemic, the constriction, the clenched jaws and the nightmares prohibit poetry.
More or less. Things are opening up now. She is trying not to over react to words such as variant. She is trying to relax enough to read poetry. She is trying to write again, to write poetry. She has found nature classes online bring joy and looking up and looking down while walking in the woods shows her the unimaginable beauties she never saw before in her work, work, work, work days.
She thinks about a pandemic, privilege, and poetry. She knows deeply how lucky she has been. She knows that her mind and body didn’t seem to care, that she reacted at a primitive level of survival. She knows she should be more relaxed and joyful as the new pandemic rules ease up, as people are able to socialize again, get out more again. She knows it is much safer now than fifteen months ago. She knows it’s her rotten trauma responses keeping her on the edge, hyper vigilant, getting her mind full of stinking thinking. She knows how much she misses her career, teaching, and misses people. She knows she should lighten up.
Today, the smell of the fresh cut grass reminded me of early spring, when students sit in school and begin to get spring fever. They still have a few months to go before summer break, but they feel the fever deep inside—they need to be outside. What I sometimes would tell them is that we teachers also felt spring fever, and that it is so hard for us to keep teaching adjectives and adverbs, Macbeth and Les Mis, and that we dread the testing season in April because we too need to be outside.
Every head turns to the windows if we hear the roar of that first spring motorcycle, and I have to turn my face away from the students when I hear this, for the gray skirt and muddy boots and salt stained old leather shoes and the puffy coat are just too much to deal with when I need spring as well, but I must say, “Students, settle down. We have to get ready for the big tests coming up.”
This year was the Pandemic spring of 2020, the not-spring. I had planned to write down each day of spring news: what date did the rolled up green open to leaves? What day did the first hint of crepe paper yellow show on the witch hazel? What day did the snow drops bloom? And did the trout lily survive, did the daffodil bulbs make it through the squirrel’s hunt? What’s the earliest date the chipmunks emerge, their metabolisms too fast to survive winter while awake?
Last night I came into bed late, as I often do, and my early- to- bed husband was chuckling, mumbling something to me about dreaming about his best friend Tommy who passed away in 2005. He told me the entire dream from start to finish and I will remember it. My husband was trying to help Tommy get home from the “hospital on the lake in the woods”and his friend kept hiding or getting stuckin a big hollow tree that had fallen down. This friend always had a wry smile on his face and it wasn’t clear to my husband if he was fooling around, being playful like when they were kids, or if Tommy was in some type of danger. Somehow he got stuck in this tree and was all covered with twigs and dirt. My husband was chuckling as he talked about it, for his friend was like a big hairy woodland creature,and I thought of how we process grief in different ways.
My husband is not a talker, and I am. I have talked and written about my grief of losing a number of loved ones, talked about it in therapy grief groups, written about it in my blog, written poems about it. Grief is an ever present companion for me, and I do verbalize it. I sometimes cry, I often talk to my grief.
My husband is very different in that respect. He’s never mentioned his mother, his dear friend, his brother, or any other loved ones who have passed. Not even his father who passed away not too long ago.
Do I dream about any of my loved ones or friends who have left? Rarely. Most of my dreams are still about trying to find a classroom or trying to find my teaching materials or about trying to find time to use the bathroom. (The teaching baggage is left over, even into retirement.). I wonder if other teachers dream about the bathroom!
I’m very touched by my husband’s dream of trying to help his friend in that big log. I’m glad he was able to chuckle about it. His friend did remind me of a big bear in many ways, and I could just see him in a big downed tree covered with leaves and dirt. I can hear his deep voice always making jokes. Tommy was the eldest in a huge family, and was the boss, the elder brother and always had what my husband called a shit-eating grin on his face.
And I wonder how our dreams will be changed by our shelter in place/quarantine of the 2020 pandemic? In the future, will we have many more dreams of hiding, being caught in tight places, of suffocation?
I continue to talk, write, sometimes even cry. My dear husband, the person I love most in this world, dreams about departed friends in big hollow logs covered with leaves, twigs and mud, and chuckling.
Attempts at specular poems, and yes, I probably need to leave the sparrows alone. They appear too often in my poetry; however, I do love sparrows since they STAY ALL WINTER and provide some color, sound, movement even during the dull dreariness of November, December, January, and February.
Specular poems are a form where halfway through the lines repeat themselves in a mirrored order.
Image of the American Tree Sparrow from the Creative Commons.
These are just some photos from yesterday’s nature walk, and the walk in the fen the day before with the hubby. I am so grateful to live near such natural beauty, and grateful my husband likes to walk in nature with me, after 40+ years!
Nature inspires my writing, a lot, as do the changing seasons.
Every year there’s a day in September when I think Autumn blows in. I think that’s today. The wind is picking up and all of a sudden there are thousands of little yellow leaves on the ground. Even though it’s a hot humid day today, you can tell there’s a change. Not particularly pretty, but I love following the seasons.
Just a few snippets from that time ten years ago, since I am submitting a revised/ edited full version for publication and don’t want to have this considered published.
Attempts at specular poems, and yes, I probably need to leave the sparrows alone. They appear too often in my poetry; however, I do love sparrows since they STAY ALL WINTER and provide some color, sound, movement even during the dull dreariness of November, December, January, and February.
Laura Lee 