Gift from a friend
Last Friday I awoke, and was halfway across the room when I realized I was moving smoothly and with negligible pain. I didn't, in a word, feel "sick."Oh yes. Which is not to say I am not still tiring too easily, or am ready to go full tilt. Instead I have crossed that illusive "I am going to be okay" line.
Yesterday, a friend of mine took me out to lunch. It was a fine spring day, and the restaurant (The Looking Glass -- one of my favorites) offered delectable luncheon sandwiches: mine was a chunky chicken salad with mandarin oranges and walnuts, served on a delicate croissant, with a side Mesclun salad and raspberry vinaigrette. The decor is straight out of Alice in Wonderland, a bright room with an odd mix of tables, wrought iron chairs, upholstered and heavily cushioned chairs, hand-painted ladder back chairs. Whimsy. Frivolity. The place makes you smile. Its outdoor terrace is surround by a sheltering bamboo fence. The pond has Koi, and the first shoots of summer water lilies, and a brass figure of geese flying...
We moved to the Amish store for fresh cheeses, ground Elk, specialized flours, hand packed herbs and spices, sweet homemade butter and other goodies. After dropping them off at my friend's home for refrigeration, we continued on to Rotary Park, an underused park hidden of a downtown road.
For the first time since February, I was outdoors. In nature.
We drove as far we could into the park, then walked around photographing the dogwoods and other flowering trees. We rode back to a small parking spot beside a brook that a week ago was over its bank but now meandered leisurely, babbling, bubbling and chattering, calling to us to venture closer.
We listened. On the edge of the stream we collected fossil rocks, and eyes the tangled curling roots of tree half-uprooted by the high water. Our respective artist eyes were intrigued, culling forms and images, studying the way the sunlight played off the water.
We walked up the edge of the stream, not chatting very much, instead absorbing the awakening of the earth. A few fiddleheads here, a cluster of bright purple flowers there, dark plum trilliums scattered throughout ... we watched minnows scurrying about in the shallows, and I wondered if there might be a brown trout hidden away in the rapids upstream.
I didn't walk far before I became tired, but it was such a wonderful tired.
I pulled the sunlight into me, and savored the heady, musty scent of water and wet wood. I listened to the music of the brook and let it soothe me.
As we headed home, we agreed that our next "girl's day out" would be a picnic lunch there. A couple of folding chairs. A sketchbook or a novel to read. And the sound of that crystal clear water meandering past us.
I thanked my friend for the gift of that day. For choosing to share that day with me. For being my friend.