Lockdown Rediscovery Challenge

Rediscovering Simple Pleasures

When your world shrinks to the “essentials,” you remember the value of simplicity

I dislike the words lock-down, quarantine, and ordered to stay at home. I prefer to think of it as socially-acceptable solitude.

I was challenged by Bob Jasper to think about three things I’d “rediscovered” in the past month or so — clearly, none of those things involves a calendar, and I’m not eager to “rediscover” what day of the week it is, or what time it is, any time soon.

In truth, this past five, six, seven weeks have not involved the kind of solitude I’d expected, from my first month of retirement, and I’m not sad about that. It’s the most time I’ve spent, alone with my husband, ever. Between work, school, two children, and vacations mostly spent with our family, or shorter “get-aways” for two — even our honeymoon was just a three-day weekend! — we’ve never had five or six weeks together, just us. And it’s nice. We’re at a place in our lives and careers where the situation isn’t as fraught with anxiety as it surely would have been, even a just a few short years ago. And it’s nice to have someone that I not only love and respect, but truly like and enjoy, to spend “The Great Pause” with.

I feel for those “essential workers” who don’t get to pause — some barely have time to breathe, or grieve, or worry about how to pay rent and utilities on an home they no longer spend time in because they practically live in the hospital or their own garage — far from loved ones so as not to risk their own families’ health. For trash collectors and the people, some of them just kids, who work keeping grocery shelves stocked and all of us fed, to delivery drivers and postal workers, and teachers suddenly forced to get creative with technology so the young minds that depend on them for nourishment don’t starve and fall behind. I have never not appreciated these people, never not felt they deserved higher pay and more respect, but I hope and pray they get the recognition and rewards they so richly deserve, when things go back to “normal.”

I hope that our next normal is better than our old normal, or our current “new” normal.

I am rediscovering the joy of reading for pleasure. The peace of drifting off to sleep with a good book, not a last glance at Facebook. Not “collecting books” that others think I ought to read, not reading for self-improvement or professional advancement, and not even reading for the sake of continuous learning — though that, too, can be a joy. No, I’m rediscovering the joy of reading novels. Cheap paperbacks. eBooks. Library books borrowed through Kindle. Thrillers. Formulaic fiction just for fun — things you’d never admit, at Book Club, to enjoying. Things not sanctioned by The Critics; things not destined to be listed on someone’s listicle of the “100 Most” anything, unless there’s a “100 Trashiest Books Guaranteed to Rot Your Brain.” I’m kidding about that last bit, but we’re not talking about memorable or literary classics, here. I like Dean Koontz, okay?

I am rediscovering my inner creative being — the child who liked to make potato prints or hammer and paint on metal or do things with scrap bits of yarn and fabric. The child whose 7th grade art teacher taught a bunch of prepubescent teens how to work with clay and hammered brass and textiles and pen and ink and tempera paints and linoleum printing — the child who can finally dabble in oil painting just for the hell of it, even if she can’t draw. Just because, and not with any aspirations of creating worthy art to be judged by others.

Except maybe the squirrel I caught myself talking to, yesterday, and I think as it approaches 90-degree weather already in Spring, he won’t be too picky about my latest art project.

A few years ago, my husband made me a little container garden for herbs and such, but put it too close to an oak tree. It is now Treasure Island for squirrels, as they bury and dig up their nuts under my basil. Who has thyme for such creatures? What’s the dill?

I suppose I should be a modern Beatrix Potter — a bestselling children’s book might be sweet revenge against these insolent rodents. But I caught one yesterday, as he was digging, his mouth full of acorn. “What are you doing, Squirrel?”

He looked at me. Didn’t move. Didn’t twitch. Reminded me of a game of “Freeze Tag.” I wished I’d had my camera. “That’s right, I’m talking to you.” I took two steps, slowly, forward — hands on my hips, like a fed-up mama. “What do you think you’re doing in my garden?”

He loped across the garden and hopped nimbly up onto the wooden fence post. Glanced over his shoulder. I glared back at him. Took another step forward. He climbed about a foot, and looked back again to see if I was going to give chase.

In that moment, I realize two things: One, he’s not afraid of me, that fat and sassy, bushy-tailed rat. And two, I see the squirrels do this all the time; he thinks I’m going to play. I know who’s going to win that game; I like to climb trees, but he’s faster. And I think I know this little guy — he looks like the same squirrel that hangs out on the other side of the yard, up in the branches, of a different tree, pelting me with peanuts.

No joke, I have my own little Peanut Gallery.

He’s got personality, I’ll give him that. I shoosh him off with a wave of my hands. “That’s right, you run along now, I have things to do. Stay out of my garden, you.”

My husband’s in the yard. He doesn’t even bat an eye. Clearly, he’s unsurprised that I am plagued by squirrels; he’s known, for years, I’m nuts

So now, I am recycling an old rice cooker liner, with paint and potting soil and cups to hold water, surrounded by plant cuttings. Why? Because the rice cooker was sitting on my back porch, forlorn and dented, and one day after it rained, I watched a squirrel drinking water from its dented bottom and thought, “That’s why I kept the damned thing, all these years — it’s a squirrel drinking hole!” And then I thought maybe I could move the acorns to it, from my herb garden — train Mr. Peanut to recognize haute cuisine and a real restaurant, when he sees it.

“The Great Pause” is an apt name for now, indeed. Nature has forced us to slow down, and left some of us little to do but stop and smell the roses.

I challenge my fellow writers: Charles Roast, Tree Langdon ♾️, and Sharon Hurley Hall to write about three things that they have rediscovered during lockdown. I look forward to hearing about your journey!