Last Sunday night when we returned home from our weekend at the Thayn’s house, I felt like I was coming down with a cold. I took my vitamins before bedtime and hoped that, whatever it was, it would go away. It didn’t. Monday morning I wasn’t feeling all that great, but I was scheduled to be in school, and I went. I probably should have stayed home, but I didn’t feel that bad. That night I took my daily dose of vitamins and went to bed early. By Tuesday, others in the family were reporting that they were feeling sick too – Rachel, Sarah, and Hannah. I was in school again on Tuesday, and for sure I should have stayed home, but foolishly, I didn’t. Whatever plague this was, it finally caught up with me. I didn’t make it to the end of the day. I came home early, quickly did the chores while I still could, and went to bed. I slept soundly for a while and then woke up in the late afternoon, still feeling lousy. As I laid there under a warm blanket, I was achy, shivery, and bored. I tried to read, but my head hurt too much to focus on the pages. I decided to watch a video about ancient Japanese history on YouTube. It was long, and I nodded off again, but this time my sleep was fitful, full of nightmarish dreams of Samurai and Shogun and the Divine Wind destroying invading Mongol fleets off the shores of Kyushu. In these dreams, I spoke perfect Japanese, a thing I wish was true. After forty plus years of limited use, my Japanese is pathetic.
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| The destruction of the Mongol fleet by the Kami Kaze, Divine Wind. |
For dinner that evening, although I didn’t have much of an appetite, Stacey made me some hot chicken broth with an egg cracked in it – a sort of hybrid Japanese/Jewish “penicillin.” I think it helped a little. After dinner, I went back to bed and dreamed of Japan again all night. My suffering brain must have been especially susceptible when I watched that video.
I don’t handle being sick very well. Where some people can endure the infirmities of the flesh with some degree of grace, I do not. I tend to become morbid. Lying in bed trying to keep my mind occupied usually leads to thoughts of mortality, the brevity of life, the ills that come with age. Pretty depressing stuff. During those stagnant days, I kept telling myself that if I could just go out and sit in some warm sunshine, it would help to heal me. But perverse nature, as if to spite me, sent us chilly, dreary weather. And the few times the sun did break through and shine for a moment, I wasn’t in any condition to go outside.
I slept through most of Wednesday. I don’t remember much about it. Thursday I began to feel a little better. My headache was mostly gone and I still had some congestion and a cough. I took a long nap mid-morning. When I woke, I was feeling a lot better. I ventured out on a walk around the garden. It was lovely outside, 62° and sunny. As I walked, I noted dozens of things I needed to do. The most pressing thing was the lawn. The grass is growing fast now and it needed to be cut. I told myself that I shouldn’t do it in my weakened condition, but then I checked the weather and saw rain (mixed with snow some days, but I hope they are wrong) forecast every day for the next eight days. I couldn’t let the lawn go for that long. I got on the mower and did a quick cut, sloppy around the edges, maybe I missed a few dandelions. But I got the job done.
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| Narcissus. |
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| Muscari. |
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| Primroses. |
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| Newly mowed lawn. |
When I finished mowing, I parked the mower next door under the pavilion and walked back to the house through the orchard. As I went, I inspected each tree. Every one of my established fruit trees, apple and pear, are full of flower buds. They are still tightly closed and that’s good. They need to hold off a little longer. May is apple blossom time. Oh, wait, tomorrow is the first of May!
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| Apple blossoms in bud. |
Early in the wee hours of Friday morning, I woke and realized that I shouldn’t have cut the lawn. My headache was back, my congestion and cough were worse – a major setback. But the lawn looked good. The rain came on Friday afternoon and I didn’t mind. I wasn’t fit to do anything more than watch it fall and nap.
I’ve written before of my love for T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. Many people don’t realize that three of the sections of that book were first published as separate novels. I have those three novels, The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood, and The Ill-made Knight. The Sword in the Stone is my favorite of them all. When White combined the three books and added the fourth part, A Candle in the Wind, to make The Once and Future King, he edited out parts of the first three books. One of the things he removed was a chapter in The Sword in the Stone where an enchantress named Madame Mim has captured Kay and Wart, and Merlin arrives and fights a magical duel with her to save them. When Disney made their atrocious cartoon version of The Sword in the Stone, they included the scene, but for some reason they portrayed Madame Mim as an ugly old hag where in the book she is described as a “strikingly beautiful woman of about thirty, with coal-black hair so rich that it had the blue-black of the maggot-pies in it, silky bright eyes and a general soft air of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth. She was sly.” The reason I’m taking you on this long ramble is this – while dueling, Mim and Merlin transform themselves into a succession of creatures (Disney takes great and unnecessary liberties with this scene, as they do with every aspect of this story): Mim becomes a dragon, Merlin becomes a mouse and hides in the grass and bites her tail, Mim changes to a cat and Merlin becomes another cat, they go on and on, trying to outdo each other. Finally Mim transforms herself into an aullay, a sort of giant mythical elephant, and as she attacks Merlin, he vanishes. But then the aullay “got hiccoughs, turned red, swelled visibly, began whooping, came out in spots, staggered three times, rolled its eyes, fell rumbling to the ground. It groaned, kicked and said Farewell.” Merlin had transformed himself into a virus and that had proved Mim’s downfall and demise. That scene came to me as I lay half awake on a rainy Friday afternoon, suffering from this virus that had invaded my body and disrupted the routines of my well-scheduled life. And now, having written about it, I think it’s time I re-read those books again.
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| T. H. White's illustration of an aullay. |
This morning I got up and got ready to go to church – showered, shaved, dressed in my good Sunday clothes. I wasn’t sure that I would make it, but I wanted to try. April was my month to conduct Sacrament meeting and I was gone last week and today was the last day of the month and I really wanted to be there. But I didn’t know if I could keep my cough under control. Since Covid, people are paranoid about other people coughing and although I know this cough is just the last remnant of whatever ailed me, I didn’t want to upset anyone. So I armed myself with a pack of Hall’s Cherry Cough Drops and went. It turned out great. I conducted and did not cough. I couldn’t really sing, but I was just glad to be there. And it was nice to be out and see what the world is like between Gold and Wellsville. It’s raining, but the hills are full of color and the Juneberry and crab apple trees are in bloom and it is beautiful.
Now sitting here at the start of a new week, looking back over the last seven days, I feel a sense of having lost time. I had so many plans that were never achieved, so many hours wasted, lost, never to be recovered. Spring has advanced and I feel like I’ve been left behind. Physically, I feel a lot better – better than I’ve felt in a week – but I know I still have to take it easy. I don’t want to lose anymore time. How many springs is a man allowed to know?
I don’t know what I’ll do during the rainy (snowy?) days ahead. I have seed trays to start, but that won’t take me long. All the things I need to do outdoors will have to wait. It seems April’s showers were delayed until May and winter is still fighting for control. But things are bound to warm up. The month of May begins what I consider, and what should be, the Glory Months here in Gold – May, June, and July, when the world is green and flush with flowers. I need to be as fit as I can be to enjoy it all while it lasts.
