Mountain Bluebird

Mountain Bluebird / Oil on black canvas, unframed / 5x7 / $68 includes shipping

I HAD A LOW WEEK last week. It was nothing big. But given Peter's death, I've felt pretty buoyant during these weeks of isolation and virtual quarantine. Last week, I felt lonely. 

Then a friend called, someone I hadn't heard from in a while, someone whose husband had died far more recently than Peter, and she mentioned that she had made a list of people to call regularly, and I was on it. 

That prompted me to make a little list myself, and start calling and writing to my friends and my family, and it helped. 

Drinking more water seemed to help, as did adding more protein into my diet, and sleeping a bit more. I've been walking pretty much every day, and I know that that helps. 

I lightened up on myself a little. If I don't have a bird for every single day this week, it's OK. I have a couple that haven't sold, and I can bring them back for another go. Or I can skip a day, or two, or a week - or just stop (but I don't want to do this). 

I want to have an online sale in time for Mother's Day, and I will - but it doesn't have to start today. It can start tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. 

If the house isn't exactly as clean as it could be, well, too bad. Same with the studio. Same with the dogs. And the bathroom. And the laundry. 

So I thought all this, and did all this, and realized all this, and I began to feel a little better. A little bouncier. A little more like myself, whatever that is in this post-Peter world. 

I guess my point in all of this is that this is a tough time for everyone. We would do ourselves good, I think, if we remembered more often that we are fragile, and fallible, and that we need friends and family and contact with people, in whatever ways we can get it. 

No matter how I may welcome the quiet of this time of isolation - and I do - I know I need to hear another voice, read another person's words, listen to someone else's thoughts and heart, if I am to know and accept my own, and go on with some light and some hope. 

***

Gratitude

I AM GRATEFUL to have realized all of this, and particularly grateful to the friend who called and reminded me to reach out for my own good mental and spiritual health. 

***

For Today

Percy Wakes Me

Percy wakes me and I am not ready.

He had slept all night under the covers.

Now he's eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.

So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter

   where he is not supposed to be.

How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you

   needed me,

      to wake me.

He thought he would hear a lecture and deeply

   his eyes begin to shine.

He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.

He squirms and squeals; he has done something

   that he needed

      and now he hears that it is okay.

I scratch his ears, I turn him over

   and touch him everywhere. He is

wild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then

   he has breakfast, and he is happy.

This is a poem about Percy.

This is a poem about more than Percy.

Think about it.

- Mary Oliver

from "Dog Songs"