Thursday 07 January
I’ve just heard that Mum has tested positive for Covid19. Sadly, so have many in her care home. They have done so fantastically well to avoid it till now, but undoubtedly another sign of how virulent this latest strain of the virus is.
It’s a very strange feeling and I am glad I have this blog to be able to write everything down so immediately after receiving the news. Otherwise I would be stewing over it, wondering over and over what might happen next. The truth is we don’t know. It could be days or weeks before symptoms start to show, or there could be no symptoms at all.
I tend to race ahead with my thoughts projecting what the worst outcome might be (pretty obvious) and what the best might be. My mind then quickly withdraws, like a rubber band being stretched and then snapping back. My default is to be be quite calm and stoic under emotional pressure. I think that stems from a particular incident that happened when I was growing up (I’ll keep that one to myself).
I know that because it’s the first thing that pops into my mind when faced with a moment of potentially traumatic news. It’s like when you smell a certain smell or hear a certain sound. They trigger thoughts or feelings from the past. In the summer, I walked past a number of ripe gorse bushes with purple heather shrubs carpeting the ground space between. It was just a dog walk, nothing special, and my mind wasn’t concerned with anything in particular.
The colour combinations of the acid yellow flowers of the gorse and patchy purple of the heather were scattered liberally over the dark army green of the needles and miniature leaves. It was a warm evening and the faint coconutty smell of the gorse flowers was subtle but noticeable, even to my nose.
I was transported fleetingly to memories of (all to few) walks on Dartmoor’s western beacon, which looms over the town where I lived. I wish I had more memories of childhood with Mum. She was always working or running the house or doing community stuff, but mostly working. But I do recall her with me, holding my hand whilst walking along a track as part of a sponsored walk. At least I think it was a sponsored walk as we were walking with other families. The track was an old disused railway track scratched into the gentle slope of the tor.
The gorse and heather was bountiful that bright late-summer-into-autumn day, during or just after the school summer holidays. My mind’s eye has me letting go of mum’s hand to run ahead and squeeze the almost poppable yellow flowers and then running back to hold her hand again. Did it really happen like that? That doesn’t really matter.
The Bald Birder 