Tag: confinement

Breton Gray Skies

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.

Prout Prout Prout

Last night’s home confinement excitement was the arrival of a very large John Deere tractor in our neighborhood around 18h. Those John Deere shades of mechanical green and yellow always make me think of Vermont and farms and lambing season. In another life, I would live in a oversized patchwork dress stained with red wine and full of quick hand-made repairs to loose threads and mysterious rips (like the one I bought in 2003 from a friperie in Paris). And I’d roam my garden of herbs and peonies, yellow roses and bougainvillea surrounding koi ponds – and a meadow where my lamb babies would roam and bounce and bleat. Unfortunately, this tractor wasn’t on duty to deliver anything small, furry, and cute. Rather, it was hauling a massive empty tank and a set of nasty pipes that would soon go to work pumping out all the sludge from a neighbor’s septic tank through a hole in their back yard.

Let me remind you: we’re in the middle of a pandemic. It’s complete home confinement and permission slip-controlled activity around here, which means everyone is home and looking for something to distract them. And you better believe that everyone was looking at this giant machine with great anticipation to see a late afternoon shit show. Literally.

The lone driver was a young guy who couldn’t have been more than 23. First came the noise – some kind of whirring that was probably a vacuum within the tank. Nina and I looked at each other, and I lifted her up to peek as far as we could over our fence without being too obvious that we needed entertainment. And then came the smell, one unmistakably of all things bathroom business. Prout Prout Prout we sang. A little pet here and another pet there. Here a pet, there a pet, everywhere a pet pet. (This is the kind of stuff we sing. I’m not proud. But I’m honest.) When we got to the upstairs bathroom to draw the water for Nina’s bath, I realized I had a direct shot at everything that little guy was doing in the neighbor’s yard. He was using that hose as a giant straw through which the vacuum in the tank was sucking up tons of shit sludge from a hole the size of a car tire to travel the distance of my neighbor’s house, up over a fence, and into that tank. And, who knows, maybe it’s because we are in the middle of a pandemic that this guy wasn’t wearing any gloves. It bothered me for a second. Bu then, do you care about fecal germs when this is our reality? Probably not.

I wish I could say the hose came loose and started whirling about like some Pecos Bill episode involving a lasso and a tornado. But there was none of that. Just your typical septic tank cleaning in the middle of a pandemic.

Since yesterday, a few updates have come down the line:

— No use of bicycles while exercising. Run – run with your child – but that’s it.

— The marché in Vannes is going to actually be open tomorrow. They’ve moved 40-50 food-only vendors to an open-air park and will only allow up to 100 visitors at at time. I feel for small businesses, but I don’t understand the logic here. We’re literally locked in for an indefinite period of time and need a permission slip to leave the house. But the market is okay to organize and attend? I’m confused.

Back to singing prout prout prout and wondering what’s next.

No Need to Argue

There is something about the voice of Dolores O’Riordan that makes me stop what I’m doing. That brings me to a halt yet makes my mind race. That transports me to age 17 to a time when my naive heart was lost and broken, and I thought any chance of waking up happy once again was over. I cried my eyes out on the plant green carpet of my teenage bedroom with No Need to Argue playing on repeat. I’ll get over you. I’ll get over you. Yes, Dolores. Sing it again. Dolores gave me hope that I’d push through. To what? I wasn’t sure. But I hung on in large part thanks to Dolores (an Irish treasure that ironically years later would leave this world too soon) and those words and that album.

I was lucky enough to see The Cranberries in concert one night long ago in a past Las Vegas life. It was likely sometime in 2009 after the band had gotten back together. From wall to wall, each of us in attendance was tuned in, mind, body, and spirit, almost as if we all had a story to reflect on in which Dolores and her talent saved us. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I was subconsciously rowing through images and emotions from my past. Of every time someone close to me let me down. Put me last. Shut me out. Took me for granted. Tears slow rolled down my face from the first note Dolores sang through the encore. And I can’t say for sure, but I imagine that everyone in that concert hall was crying.

Day three of home confinement in France. The sun is blaring like it’s the month of May. I pulled our Quechua tent out of the garage and plopped it into the backyard amid the jungle of weeds that make me crazy because I actually think they’re edible makings for a nice salad (they’re not – we just need to mow). The inside tent lining was full of sand from one of last year’s beaches, so Nina and her posse of poupées had to patiently wait outside while I brushed and cleaned in preparation for a morning outside. After I got Nina her list of requests (two blankets, a wash cloth to clean baby Kiki who had peed all over herself, her bicycle, and a chair), I left the sliding door open and went inside. The remnants of an early morning in the kitchen were sprawled on each counter, the kitchen table, and floor. I had a mental list of work-related items I wanted to knock out before mid-morning Eastern time. A voice in my head was reminding me to get another run in, though my calves were singing another tune. I missed my parents. I missed the beach – but all Morbihan beaches have been closed during this unprecedented shutdown. I wanted a magic pause button to freeze everyone but myself. I’d sleep and read and drink and dance and run and repeat without worrying about any timeline or geographic restriction or attitude or audience. Any language or meeting or caprice or question after question after question. As I stared at the mess, as the exhaustion in me burned my eyes, as a wave of thoughts about this confinement and this virus and this buy-in-bulk bin of uncertainty (THIS UNCERTAINTY that was so palpable at that moment that it stood in the kitchen staring me down), I grabbed my phone. Made all the necessary clicks. Turned on the speakers and listened.

Understand the things I say. Don’t turn away from me.

I wonder what intention, if any, was behind Dolores making those lyrics and Ode to My Family the first track on No Need to Argue. Whatever the case, I hear you Dolores. Heard. Mother fucking HEARD.

Took the work day off. Tucked that peanut in for her nap. Thawing out a pack of beef to make burgers for dinner because that’s what Americans do when it’s nice outside. And going to put on my running tights (with my attestation in my pocket) and head back to the woods.