The Breton gray skies were back yesterday, but it didn’t stop us from enjoying a morning outside. It is a privilege after all to slide open your kitchen door, step outside on a patio with bare feet, and breathe in fresh, floral garden air, especially during home confinement in the middle of a pandemic. A heavy awareness of this privilege sits with me – defined even by my ability to find 30 minutes of enough peace to reflect and record my thoughts in a blog whose name literally means the hideout. This is not representative of what most are dealing with right now. Romain and I spent some time getting into a similar topic after dinner tonight, how we’ve been fortunate, given the timing. If this were 12 to 18 months ago, we’d be screwed. And scrambling. And absolutely terrified.
So let’s be clear: Confinement by pandemic is not a glamping retreat. It’s not a springtime revival where the soul is replenished with all that’s been left parched from the dry winter air. It’s not sleeping in. It’s not finally getting to that to-do list. And it’s definitely not romanticizing la vie francaise. It’s job loss and dream loss and stress-induced toss and turns. It’s fear and isolation and long days of combating such fear and isolation in others when you are a caretaker charged with putting your fellow humans (the ones who are already sick or fragile or disabled) first. It’s being called from retirement to put on the white robe once more at a hospital in Vannes because there aren’t enough medical staff to meet the demand. It’s washing your hands in 20 minute intervals (which could mean 8+ transactions between each trip to the sink) because someone has to work the cash register. It’s mass layoffs. It’s the final few weeks of health insurance coverage before you’ve got to work out a new chemo treatment plan because Uncle Sam’s not going to buck up and pay. It’s the fuck you that sits in your stomach when the entire state of California has been ordered to stay home, yet scenes of crowded beaches along the Pacific continue to be the norm. It’s the way your shoulders sink when you exhale in disbelief at the related deaths at a Burlington, Vermont nursing home.
The list goes on. I’ve barely brushed the surface.
So yesterday’s Breton gray skies were a reminder (nature’s Bat signal of sorts) to shut down any whines about the weather and get outside. I put on an old pair of jeans, grabbed my machete from the garage, and spent the morning hacking away at our overgrown backyard on hands and knees. When I was eight months pregnant, I found myself home alone with two dogs for a few weeks in Vermont as Romain had an unexpected trip back to France. There were some deep trails behind our house that were perfect for the dogs, but they had become overgrown – and I wasn’t going to chance it with ticks. Since I slept with a machete under my bed (long story that has to do with a coyote), I grabbed it one day before a hike with the dogs, carried it with me to an overgrown area by a bridge, and got to hacking. And pretty much instantly, I fell in love with slicing a blade through tall, thick bands of weeds. Serrated or straight edge. It didn’t matter. I just loved to hack. Who knew.
As of lunchtime yesterday, we now have a trail cleared so that one can traverse the yard, from patio to compost bin and back, without the need for boots. There are also other random clearings where my machete meeting a mass of leaves and weeds went much further than I had anticipated, but, as expected, it brought me joy (and let’s be honest, I just couldn’t stop). I’m sure it brought the neighbors to the window with a few quips of mon dieu and qu’est ce qu’elle fait maintenant…and in doing so, took their minds off this confinement. This virus. This world turned upside down. Those Breton gray skies who, given the chance, are actually perfect.
THE CACHETTE 