 Copper Road
Please don’t leave, O’ burnished ridge of mine I’m not ready. Give me more gold or ruby rust, both equally valuable To me anyway And you, overripe raspberry, disguised as Sumac My heart is clotted with your intense bloody hue Linger longer I plead silently. This morning, the rising sun came piercing through the black trunks turning the dim road into copper. Glistening shards, blinding streaks, demanding my attention, and I gave it, and it awed me. You’re irresistible and you know it. Show off! Same time next year, you shout. I know…but your cruel tease of time between visits between orgies of colour that can penetrate souls - It’s too long. How else can I describe you? Dazzling deciduous forests, mile after mile, lining bogs, tracing hills, mingled with spruce, pine and cedar. Evergreen and cerulean sky; your complimentary partners, like humble undergarments beneath your jewelled cloaks. Your perfume - aahhh, that familiar scent. A memory - I’m four Penny loafers, clicking and swishing through leafy carpets, pockets heavy with shiny mahogany chestnuts for show and tell Nostrils damp, wafts of cool earth and decay, foreshadow the frigid future, that comes after goblins and ghosts have knocked on doors By All Saints Day, you’ll be gone and melancholy will settle over me like November fog blankets the bay that is missing the loons. They gathered, cried and vanished. Much like you did. I’ll have to settle for ducks now. Quacking substitutes. Hunter’s targets. Last hurrahs, Final flourishes, Bittersweet goodbyes. You’re all of these. Can you tell you are my favourite? Is it obvious how much I adore you? Oh, doomed season… Oh, Autumn.
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 Where I'd Rather Be. Have you had a bout of Covid since March 2020? Or, were you one of the lucky ones, like me, who managed to avoid the virus? Have you followed all the recommended advice? Got your vaccinations (3-4 by now)? Have you wondered how you have successfully outsmarted those nasty germ particles drifting in the air as you worked your way through a crowded grocery store or at a concert or sporting venue?
Have you secretly become a bit smug about your super charged immune system? I went a bit further (in my mind) and amped up my daily intake of Zinc, Vitamin D and Vitamin C just for good measure. I avoided crowded indoor events. I became expert at using public toilets without ever allowing my hands to come in contact with any surface. (Even before Covid, I had this pretty much down to an art.) Allow me to regale you with how it’s done. You use your sleeve or a tissue or paper towel to open the doors, lock the doors, press any buttons or handles. If you must, you can use your hand to turn on the germ covered faucet, but since you are about to wash your hands - thoroughly - that’s OK. You cannot then turn that faucet off with your cleaned hands. More paper towel is required or anything that creates a barrier between your hand and that vile virus coated tap. OK, so now you are relieved, cleansed, and it’s time to depart this hellish haven of “other people’s contagion. Do NOT forget your mission. Do NOT touch that door knob on your way out. You will have saved a paper towel or a few sheets of tissue for your exit, but you don’t really want to take it with you in your pocket or purse, so it can be helpful if the trash can is close to the door whereby you can hold the door open with your foot while you gracefully employ one of your well-rehearsed ballet or yoga poses (one that elongates your body to emulate a horizon line between the door and the bin. If that bin has a lid, you have thought to leave it open before you make your exit. Extra points for you if you sink the rolled up potential germ wad like a carefully orchestrated free throw. Having conquered Public Toilet Germ Avoidance 101, you use many of the same techniques at shops, gas/petrol stations, bank machines and the biggie of all…airplanes. You have masked and wiped and sprayed and detoxed your personal space in economy or business and even first class if you’re lucky (I had one luxury experience between Hong Kong and Sydney at the height of the pandemic). You have hand sanitizer in your car and your purse and if you forget you just used it, and your tongue accidentally comes in contact with your foul tasting fingers one more time… As much as you hated wearing the mask, you did, but you started to loosen up a bit after the rules changed and it was no longer required in most settings. You teetered between thinking the masks were probably still not a bad idea and the wickedly free feeling that came with abandoning the suffocating incontinence Pad for the face you had been forced to don for the sake of your fellow man. (your safety was always secondary, right?) You even experimented with turning them into a fashionable accessory and bought some in fun prints or coordinating colours to match your outfit du jour. Those “designer” masks were hideously overpriced and even harder to wear for more than five minutes. Breathing beneath their thick fabric layers was akin to running out of oxygen 40 fathoms below. When you realized they had to be laundered after each use, you ditched that ridiculous plan and joined the masses in line at Costco to bulk buy disposable masks faster than an explosion of viral droplets in a sneeze at a super-spreader event. There was some hemming and hawing about the necessity of a fourth booster but you had reasons to believe it was the wise thing to do based on your age and current state of your immune system and your desire to start travelling again before you die, so you rolled up your sleeve and got in the ring for round four. By now, you are a genuine minority. There are fewer and fewer people you know who haven’t had at least one case of Covid and you know some people who have had it twice. You start to wonder if everyone is just careless or if you are just particularly cautious but you reassure yourself because you actually know some people who are even more responsible and vigilant than you are, so you could be doing more to safeguard yourself and others but you are at a stage now where you figure that even if you do get it, it won’t be too bad - mild symptoms, or at the very worst - a bad flu. You know you won’t die but then you think about those 15 years you smoked when you were young and wonder if your lungs aren’t as resilient as they could be so you cannot rule out that possibility entirely. You have grown so weary of it all. You almost wish you would just get it and have it over with. After all, you actually know people who have had it and now just shrug it off. In my case, my own father got it in a nursing home. His immune system must be that of a super human since he is compromised in every way possible. Heart disease. Diabetes. COPD. Dementia. His body is frail and his bloodstream is a cocktail of pharmaceuticals. He has had it twice and survived. It may be possible he is one of those people with a natural immunity - who knows? You start to live like it is over. Screw the mask-wearing (except when required), get out in the world more, generally stop worrying at all. That was me in the last few months. And, that is when it found me. After much retracing my footsteps just prior to testing positive, I narrowed it down to either the young man who sneezed at the table next to me in a Japanese restaurant, or the fact that I handled the bottle of soy sauce on the table that had clearly not been sanitized between patrons. Either way, it matters not. It got me. And it got me good. Despite my four vaccinations, I had what I can only describe as a pretty nasty flu that knocked me out for a solid five days, plus a lingering cough weeks later. So much for a mild case. My beloved Mick, who like me was a smug avoider until his recent flight back from Australia, has now spent the last five days recovering from a similar fate. This virus and all viruses have one goal - to find a host. Short of isolating completely or possessing a natural immunity, it is likely most people will eventually succumb. It has me rethinking my laissez faire attitude toward crowds and masking and distancing. The truth is, it’s not much fun and I don’t want to catch it again. As I get older, five days of misery seem like far too many. What I may have shrugged off as no big deal twenty years ago, is a big deal now at 64. So, please understand when I don’t shake your hand, or do the double kiss thing or turn down an invitation to a crowded indoor event. It’s not you, it’s me, because every day spent lying in bed with a fever, a box of tissues and an aching body is a day I have lost walking in the forest or paddling my canoe, or tending my garden or creating a new recipe, or sitting at my desk writing, or…….. You get the gist. As the saying goes, “When you have your health, you want everything and when you don’t, you only want one thing.” Indeed. #health #aging |
DEBunked.I see nature as a metaphor for life. Please join me on this journey down the garden path as I explore life through story - a shovel in one hand and a camera in the other. Archives
May 2023
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