Here is an admission: I have been feeling low. Very low. Terribly, exceptionally low. And in the word lonely there is low. Lo and behold the times of plague, both universal and personal. This, is personal. This is putting into words the sick feeling I arise with each morning. The mother is virtually gone, and the husband, who is in limbo health-wise, weigh heavily on me. I wake up each morning and fear the new day. What else can possibly happen? What else must I take care of? What else is there to worry about: knowing full well that worry doesn’t help.

It is erev Yom Kippur, hours before the Day of Atonement, part of the Days of Awe where a new year is upon us. Feasting and solemnity and fasting. I am a semi-participant, in my way. It is a time of change and forgiveness. So much has changed. So much needs to be forgiven.

In the previous post I wrote about my mother’s dream: she thought she lost both of her daughters, and in a way, that is true. Nothing is the same.

This morning, my husband, for the first time in a long while, was awake and up before me. Most of my waking hours are spent fearing possible loud falls and crashes, tumbles and breaks. It is a terrible foreboding especially since his health has been deteriorating quickly and so far there is just waiting for tests and results.

His walking is difficult. His balance is poor. His weight is that of a camp survivor; I won’t mention the camp…can he survive?

He is barely eating.

Now it is time for my dream.

They say that dreams had upon awakening are powerful and prescient. Perhaps they are:

I was in a new apartment, an apartment in Manhattan in the West 20s, near my job at The High School of Fashion Industries. I worked there in the 1980s. You know how details get woven through space and time in dreams, how ridiculous things happen that make no sense but make all the sense. There were people sitting in that apartment, people whom I didn’t know. New neighbors. We had apparently moved. My husband sold the house and we moved. But, we had none of our things.

“How could you do that? How could you sell the house and not tell me?” And then the apartment reminded me of one of his colleagues who lived near our house and who had just passed away.

The noise of Manhattan. I grew up there dodging the constant auditory badgering caused by alarms, garbage trucks, fire engines and ambulances. Now that cacophony and intrusion were back in my consciousness, heard clearly.

The apartment was big and airy, not typical of a Manhattan dwelling. Those people sitting around…might this have been a shiva? (Visitation to someone who has lost someone). Yes, I bet that is it. But who had died? Or was it the assisted living we had visited before we found the place for my mother?

So, we were in this new apartment and the previous owner had left pets. A cat. A large bird in a cage. In a bedroom there was a cage full of small birds, parakeets, finches. I had a finch as a child. I am always taking care of animals, of one kind or another.

I asked some of these strangers where to buy food. Where medical attention could be gotten. I was worried that not only did we not have a car but to survive in Manhattan and get one’s needs met, one had to rely on public transportation. Someone told me there was a Ben’s Deli that delivered. Someone mentioned a medical facility not too far away.

“Now we live here, now? When I could have been so close to my job and it no longer matters? So many years later.” I am trying to make sense of it all.

The dream-cat rubbed against my legs. I had to take on the responsibility of these deserted pets and care for them, so many animals that needed food. And I said, “we have to go out shopping.”

Then, my husband deftly rose from his seat, stood strongly and was able to walk.

He was able to walk with no problem.

When I awoke I felt that a huge weight had been lifted from me. I felt light, almost giddy and happy. I was OK with a new day, not terrified of it.

When I came downstairs, there was my husband in one piece, reading the paper, in the mood for cereal. Asking for food.
No catastrophe had occurred in my absence. I decided to operate on the premise that everything was normal. That there was nothing to worry about.

But there is more. We were raising a caterpillar, the last one to survive. It was a pupa, the twenty-first to hopefully come to fruition, long after the others had taken flight. This one was discovered on the parsley plant long after the others, a last-ditch egg laid by a mother Eastern Black Swallowtail, who might possibly be the progeny of one we launched last month or even last year. They only live a couple of weeks.

This pupa seemed to take longer than usual: still hanging on its twig, it looked almost translucent, I didn’t believe it was alive and if it was, it would probably overwinter and emerge in spring if we went through the myriad of procedures to keep it in a cold, dark place for months.

 

But, this morning was different. Instead of looking toward the butterfly cage and seeing no movement, there was movement. A female had eclosed, becoming active, flapping and climbing to leave the cage. Within a short time I had brought the cage outside, unzipped its doors and stuck in my hand. The last bunch of butterflies we launched didn’t want to leave, they had to be coaxed to leave home.

But this girl was ready and flew out quickly, veering to the south, at the highest altitude I could ever track, higher, higher flapping her wings as hard as she could, higher still, and then out of sight. The day was warm and humid. Cooler days, rainy days are predicted and it didn’t have time to miss the opportunity, to take advantage. It knew.

The day of introspection is almost here but it began earlier for me via a dream and a small creature I was caring for, for weeks. The messages are evolving and becoming clearer and clearer: miracles are coming, in fact, in these times, each day is a miracle. Life is going on. Nature takes its course.

Fly when you can. Stand if you can, walk if you can. And if you cannot, find another way to get there.

My father, the biggest worrier, used to say, “whatever you do, don’t worry.”

Today I did not worry. I was reminded of possibilities, of not to give up, of the preciousness of hope.

I dwelled in the Days of Awe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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