Up and down

Wednesday night, for the first time since I hurt my finger, Ian said to me, “Let’s go for a walk after the children are in bed.” As we usually do, we strolled towards the western edge of our lawn, through the trees that form a shelter belt around our house, and we stood looking out over the cornfields. He loaned me his jacket because I was shivering.

After we admired the wispy clouds and the gentle rolling land, we each chose an aisle between the rows of corn, and we walked south, followed by one of our cats who also liked the idea of a companionable evening walk. I looked over at Ian and the fields behind him, and it seemed like a scene that I would see longingly while my eyes were closed in worship. I had the mildly uneasy sense that maybe I was just worshiping or dreaming. The image of Ian walking beside me like that is stamped in my heart, with colors that are almost too bright.

We circled around our garden and headed back for the house. “It is good to have you back,” Ian told me.


Thursday night I was feeling woozy again, and I lay on the couch, unable to shake the feeling that the space around my body was blinking with colors. The colors were too bright, and they were blinking too fast. I was afraid to open my eyes and look out the window at the treetops swaying in the wind, because I was afraid that they would feel menacing. I made myself look at the treetops anyway, and it was almost painfully intense to see the blinking lights as the leaves shifted front of the cloudy sky. Nothing looked menacing though, and I forced myself to keep looking. The longer I looked, the more peaceful the trees seemed.


Today, I drove to the post office to pick up 15 ducklings in a box and bring them home to our brooder. I felt spacey and disconnected with my body as I drove the car home with the ducklings peeping beside me, and I worried that I might not be the best driver. “You are in the fields,” I reminded myself, and in my peripheral vision, I could see the wide spaces of green, hemmed in sometimes with trees. I relaxed instantly. It is a feeling that I remember from early childhood, when the presence of my mother made the world safe and right.