Planting several salvia, fuchsia, and penstemon plants this spring has resulted in a few hummingbird visitors these past few weeks. Happy little birds, their fast fluttering whirring like some quiet motorized engine, they provide for much fascination and study as they seek out and probe any tubular flower that offers nectar. I’ve noticed a green variety, and one in gray – both equally enchanting in their fleeting visits. They join the butterflies and countless bees, which have been focused on the cup plant and the hydrangeas lately. Our butterfly bush seems to be the one place where they all want to meet. 

Whenever I find myself in doubt or sadness, I go back to nature to find some peace and solace. Even if I only manage to step into the backyard for one moment a day, I can usually locate a glimpse of calm, and somehow it is enough. The world will help you if you allow it. 

We’ve just had one of our first monarchs of the season, in the wake of several swallowtails, which had been appearing regularly all summer. They’ll get their own post soon enough. 

Monday mornings usually bring a recap of the previous week, and though this week’s posts were a bit fewer and further between than our usual schedule, there were still a handful that I’ll link below. That lighter schedule looks to continue through these last few weeks of summer, and perhaps into fall. Finding my way into a more mindful manner of living leaves less time for sitting at the laptop typing life away. That doesn’t mean I don’t still locate magic and catharsis in writing. The snap of fall usually reinvigorates the creative process. Until then, lighter posts are the order of the day, as seen in the following:

COVID found us for the first time, and it absolutely sucked. 

Madonna celebrated her 65th birthday.

Suzie said I have a right to be this pissy, for the moment.

Summer still blooming.

Sunday morning glorying.

A lone Dazzler of the Day: Deven Robertson.

A short play in three lines:

ME: Well, I’ve lost my sense of taste. {Slams refrigerator door in disgust}

ANDY: There is some angel hair pasta in the fridge and the sauce turned out really good.

ME: CAN’T TASTE ANYTHING!!!

Such passes Day-God-Knows-What of our combined COVID adventures. This month has beat me down emotionally, mentally, and now physically, and I almost forgot that next week was my birthday until someone’s social media reminder popped up. I have reservations at a restaurant I’ve been waiting to try for years in Boston but who knows if we’ll make it there. We may have to add it to the long list of canceled events and fun plans that all got woefully derailed by the awfulness of this summer.

Honestly, I’m not even sure I care. COVID just robbed me of taste and smell – two things that bring me some of the greatest joy in life – hell, there are specific categories for each on this site (see Food and Cologne). And a quick perusal of my Birthday Amazon Wish List reveals that fragrance has been a longtime and regular motif in my Book of Desire. If I can’t taste or smell anything, I’m not sure what purpose I serve anymore… but hey, it’s almost my birthday, so happy fucking birthday to me!

“You know I deserve it…”

PS – Having just re-read this maudlin, melodramatic, whiny, bitter post, it dawns on me that this is largely why I’ve been avoiding writing blog posts with my usual regularity: I’m pissy. More pissy than usual, and perhaps I have reason to be, but that’s no reason to inflict it on the world at large. Still, there’s something as morbidly funny as there is disturbingly tragic about trying to make light of the events of this past summer, and if we can’t laugh, well, what is the goddamn point of any of this? So this post shall remain, until the COVID cloud passes and I come to what remaining senses I likely never even had. 

Sickness-induced insult to grief-stricken injury, Andy and I have finally been officially visited by the COVID fairy, lending this already-dismal month even more of a tainted pallor. I suppose it was only a matter of time before one, and then both, of us got it. Funerals of fathers are unavoidable events, and maybe the universe wanted me to be absolutely stilled to take it all in. As it was, I came down with the symptoms first, immediately testing and isolating upon being positive, which left me mostly secluded in the attic at a time when I really didn’t want to be far from Andy or family. Alas, life isn’t as merciful as we’d like it to always be, and I took the hours as they came, alternately reading more of Thich Nhat Hahn, watching the limp Amazon Prime line-up, and struggling through the work hours when my brain was scrambled on practically no-sleep. 

What I will remember of this hazy period of mourning I cannot predict, and what good it might be doing is equally unforeseeable. There was a moment when I was hurriedly making some ginger tea, and I was pouring it out into the cup and I accidentally poured it all over my hand, resulting in a brief burst of pain. Not quite boiling, it smarted and stung but thankfully left no serious burn. It was the emotional ache that hurt more – the feeling of being helpless and alone and missing my Dad while being exhausted, drained and sick. 

Physically, this is a nightmare – the fever and chills alternating with profound and immediate spells of sweating and overheating, pain of the muscles and joints and skin, labored breathing and a sore throat – none of which makes it anywhere near easy to sleep – so hours and entire nights go by in suspended unrest. The attic is fine for the kids, but for a middle-aged man accustomed to the comfort of our European-topped king bed, and the reassuring mound of Andy beside me, it was like being exiled. 

I text my friends a flurry of NyQuil-inspired messages – silly, nonsensical things of whatever comes into my mind, the way I used to do when I was out drinking and first leaning into that tipsy feeling of abandon, back in a time when I didn’t have to miss fathers or retail jobs, when we could rightfully enjoy youth’s indulged refusals of responsibility. We didn’t know what a luxury it was, or maybe we did, and being young made it ok to let it flit away. 

And so I sit here writing this all down, trying to forge this time into my head where not much sticks anymore, where not much even seems to matter, and it helps. It helps a little. 

For the first time in a very long time, I was actually looking forward to fall. This summer has not been that good on any front, and I found myself wishing that we could fast-forward to a few months from now. That’s the antithesis of being mindful and living in the moment, so I am trying to recalibrate and not wish any time away, no matter how sad or painful it may be. A look back at the last few weeks of posts (an overdue weekly recap) reveals where my head is at. 

A letter to my Dad.

Grieving.

Driving.

Breathing.

Hushed and still.

Walking.

Fluttering.

Visiting.

There are a few cardinals that frequent the trees and bushes around our home, but rarely do they alight on the Japanese umbrella pine nearest our front window. On this morning, one of them decided to give me a visit, then grant enough time to capture a few photos of its magnificence. It peered in at me, giving a little nod of its pointedly-tufted head. I want to believe it is more than a random visit, and if there is comfort in that then I may suspend my natural cynicism. Loss softens some brutal edges. 

Later in the morning  I am going through a pile of unused cards when I come across a birthday card meant for a father – I’d been keeping it for Dad’s birthday next month. Grief strikes quickly and sometimes unexpectedly, and in that way it can be debilitating. I remove the card from the pile and walk into the kitchen, preparing to throw it out, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Instead, I place it on the counter, saving it for a little bit later. 

When the first wave of sadness settles, I return to the card. A second wave arrives as I read what Dad would not have been able to read next month. Closing the card, I set it down beside me and cry a bit. Without rushing the pain away, or forcing the tears to stop, I allow the grief its moment to manifest. It passes. Neither the body nor the brain was designed to cry forever.

Looking back at the card, I decide not to throw it out. Maybe I’ll send it off for his birthday, just this one last year. Or maybe I’ll do it every year. For the past few birthdays, it was clear we were doing these things for our benefit – Dad never cared for birthday hubbub, and would have been more than happy to let the day pass without notice or fanfare. I don’t want to do that just yet, so the card goes back into the pile, and our tradition of marking the day shall continue. 

“Love and understanding are the lotuses that bloom from the mud of suffering. Without the mud, there is no lotus flower. The lotus needs mud to grow. Understanding and compassion are possible only when we’ve come in touch with suffering. 

We know that suffering plays an important role in generating understanding and love. So we do not run away from suffering, instead we embrace it, and look deeply into our suffering in order to understand it. If we can understand, then we can love. And when we have understanding and love, we suffer less.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s been a hushed reverence in these parts for the past couple of weeks. Entirely intentional, it’s my way of dealing with loss. Seeking out spaces of quiet and stillness, I find solace in these pockets of silence. When I began this blog two decades ago, it was originally designed to be a place of calm and peace. Even back then I was searching for some sort of escape from the cacophony of noise and distraction that the internet has mostly always been. 

Now with real life stepping in and pausing things here, I’m reminded of that original intention, and I find comfort in the relative peace of a reduced writing schedule – and no real schedule at all. An unexpected and surprisingly-valued summer break. 

On office days downtown, I slip into St. Mary’s church on my lunch break, to sit in the cool air and dim light – the hushed reverence is there in the middle of the day. In the last pew, I kneel and bring my hands together. I don’t always pray. Sometimes I do, but mostly I bow my head and try to commune silently with my Dad. My mind travels back to Sunday mornings when our family would sit together at mass, going through the motions, intoning our prayers and responses, not quite believing it and not quite disbelieving it. Dad was quiet about his faith, and it was clear he would have been just as happy staying home on those Sunday mornings, so I never quite got an accurate read on what he might have believed. It remains a mystery, and I’m ok with it staying so. A person’s faith is something intensely private, and fathers are often the most private people of all.