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When I tire of watching the Hollywood Squares of Zoom, I can look out the window beside my computer. Actually, I don't tire of watching those dear faces, but the window distracts me with movement. In the relative foreground are my neighbour's two tall cedars, and they are a flurry of activity, even in frigid weather. At least I assume it's frigid because the inside of our house is cold. I haven't actually ventured outside for longer than I will admit. Does it count that I walked two doors down to deliver some mince tarts to neighbours? Or that the next day I met another neighbour in the middle of the street to give her a plate of mince tarts? (And thus I remove from our kitchen the temptation of unbelievably delicious mince tarts.) These two little walks are a far cry from the daily twenty-minute walks I was subjecting myself to before Christmas—themselves a far cry from the hour-long walks I used to take.
Did I really digress this far from the cedar trees? Black squirrels bounce through the boughs all day long. This morning a grey squirrel leaped from the neighbour's roof and barely managed to stick the landing. The star of today's show, however, is a blue jay. I haven't seen him for weeks—probably because I don't watch these cedars all day long. But there he is today, fluttering from branch to branch in search of cedar berries.
And that reminds me that when one of our grandsons was not quite two years old his ambitious parents hung on his bedroom wall a large poster of some twenty birds. At bedtime, as only the new parents of a single child can, they would hold him before the poster and he would say goodnight to each bird. And until you have heard a beloved two-year-old lisp, "G'night, wobin, g'night, bwue jay, g'night, cedah waxwing", you haven't experienced joy. I'm pretty sure the current edition of that grandson wouldn't know a cedar waxwing from a sparrow—but he has other merits.
Was there a point to all this? To any of it? Oh, yes. The blue jay in the cedars. I see these same cedars from the wall-of-windows in the media room, where we watch TV of an evening. To clarify: where we work our way through the DVDs of the past. If the British mystery being screened by the projectionist (DinoVino) fails to hold my interest, I float my gaze to the cedars and—as long as it's still light out—there's always activity. Given my current level of sloth, I continue to be grateful that I do not have to scramble like a squirrel to fill my fat tummy.
Now, what I really wanted to talk about today was how Covid 19's restrictions have affected my response to emails. I find it increasingly difficult to marshal the energy—psychic, mental, or physical—to respond appropriately to letters from friends. Long or short, the emails seem to require of me more than I can give. Empathy, wit, even a flat-out coherent sentence (one whose nuances can't be misconstrued)—these are beyond me, and this failure on my part makes me feel more isolated than ever.
So okay, what just came to mind is this: Get out of your own head! Did you ever think that the correspondent you aren't answering might like to have a note from you? Who cares if it lacks your traditional polished wit? (That's a joke.) Just put your fingers on the keyboard, close your eyes, and touch-type a short, sweet note. Just do it.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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