And it was morning. And it was evening. The first day.
Every day is the first day now.
Re-creation - 6 am
Seven months in (post-stroke) and I am profoundly different. I wondered, in the beginning, if it would last. This sense of having been reborn. Funny, that just before the stroke, I’d told my daughter: I am starting a second lifetime now. “This year, I will be 66. My first second birthday.” We laughed together, playful. Then, I came home and two weeks later, I was hit by lightning.
In the beginning, I was sleeping a lot—resting, rebuilding in ways no one could see. There were things I could do and things I could not. I was glad to be rid of some of them. Others, I still reach for, and… oh, it’s not there.
My husband brought me tea and small bowls of food—oatmeal over-seasoned with cinnamon and butter, the way he likes it—and, eventually, as we got used to this new way of living together, a separate portion made my way: plain, just a half cup, which I ate with a hard-boiled egg.
He built me a shelter behind the back door where, protected from rain and harsh sun, I could sit outside and not miss the summer. All day, I lay on the big white cushion, sleeping, answering emails and texts, then sleeping some more.
He made a hand railing from a closet rod so I could hold on as I came down the stairs. He organized a folder marked Amy’s Blood Pressure Adventure, trying to keep up with the potions I was swallowing and tracking their side effects. He drove me to doctors’ offices. He brought me my slippers. In the evenings, when I coughed, he called up the stairs or came to lie beside me, his arm pressed close against mine.
It was good.
Now, I can do all those things for myself. Now, I am a new thing—a woman sitting under a white wool blanket as the light appears, a crack of gold at the base of the trees. I watch it spread across the fields of the farm.
Now, every day is the first day. Every day is let there be light. I come down to sit in the gathering dawn. Fresh from sleep, my thoughts are galaxies constellating at the edge of thought the way crystals form; the way that frost gathers on the other side of the window.
Seven months since the eve of summer solstice, when the buds on the black walnut were just bursting into leaves. By the end of August, when I had the brain surgery, the fuzzy green walnut pods were already falling to the lawn. Now, nearing the end of winter, the trees, shrouded in mist, are bare, but I can smell it in the air—spring is almost here.
And I am sitting by the window, sipping black tea from a white china cup, eating cream cheese from the package with a demitasse spoon.
In the beginning, after the stroke, I couldn’t write. My hands worked, but my mind had nothing to say. Writing had been my companion since my mother taught me to shape the letters of my name: the A, like a teepee; the M, two mountains—up, down, up, down. At the end was Y, arms outstretched. I wrote it over and over, filling page after page with AMY—me, me, me!
After the stroke, the words were gone. After the stroke, I didn’t dream. My dreaming was doing other things—I felt it, flowing in and out of the rooms and interstitial spaces of the one I feel myself to be.
I didn’t need to know anything. I didn’t need to do anything. This was doing itself. And then, one day, I wanted to.
It started with a feeling of wanting to change something—to make a mark on the walls of the world. One day, it was just there: a surge of Now! A burst of Yes!
I retrieved my mother’s paintbrushes from the kindergarten cabinet that I inherited when she died—32 drawers filled with art supplies: a drawer of papers—tissue paper, origami paper, thick handmade papers, doilies. A drawer of scissors—snub-nosed and pointed. A drawer of tape and push pins. A drawer of acrylic paint, one of oil pastels, a drawer of watercolors, and another one filled with broken pottery.
I experimented with the colors. I painted my stroke (the image above).
Then, from the drawer filled to the top with paintbrushes, I chose the one with a red wooden handle. I opened the top of a can of paint. It was dark gray—almost black—a sample of Railings from Farrow and Ball that I’d ordered on impulse. I sloshed the black wash over the cream-colored walls, darkening everything.
My husband said it was a bad idea. Dark colors, he said, would shrink the already small room. I did it anyway.
I liked the way the room changed. Each brushstroke felt like reaching into the quiet, drawing the shadows closer, painting myself into the silence I could feel but couldn’t yet see.
Later, as it turned out, he liked it. One day, when I was out, he painted across the tops of the walls where I couldn’t reach, capping my incomplete brushwork with mountains. I smiled when I saw that, and we started to play, silently, speaking in painted pictures. Cave paintings on the walls.
I left it unfinished. It was a conversation—I’m in no hurry. In the fall, he brought some raw pine paneling home from a job site—he’s an architect. We propped the paneling against the wall. “I love it,” I said. “It’s so quiet.”
In January, I started painting the bedroom—a deep rose. Coincidentally, I realized, when one wall was done, that this is the color of the shawl that I wore when I drove cross country; the color of the notebook I’ve been writing in; the color of the desktop on my computer; the color of the blanket that I purchased last spring and folded over the back of my chair. It is, it seems, my favorite color. And has been for a long time. And I did not notice. Until now.
Every day, around noon, I get up and stretch my legs. I spend twenty minutes finding the perfect outfit to wear to order a decaf oat milk latte from one of four baristas at Whole Foods: the dimple-cheeked manager who walks all the way from the bakery to greet me; the tall, lean white man with a headband and a stubbly chin; the black man who always remembers my order; the small Asian woman with the wrist brace—she is my age, and the slowest, but I like the way she smiles when she sees me. Last summer, she noticed I’d been missing. I told her about my stroke. Now we nod to each other as if we understand something - a secret that we share, without words, about being alive.
I only drink half of it — I don’t really like coffee any more. Just the first foamy sips. It’s the ceremony I like. Driving there. Ordering. Waiting. I sit in the parking lot—listening to a novel on Audible. Something about women, who ride dragons or heal people (without meaning to). Stories where they are just discovering their extraordinary powers and are still self-conscious: Am I doing this right? Did I say the wrong thing? What if my good intentions get me into trouble? (PS They always do.)
I drive home before the sun dips below the garden, behind the pasture where our landlord’s horses graze. For a moment, the sky is a painting—purple and gold. I open the car door and dozens of starlings (I think) lift off at once. They land thirty feet away and wait, hopping around until I’ve closed the back door. Then, they return to peck through the melting snow.
I craft our dinner meticulously—plating the sliced steak, buttered mushrooms, and cauliflower rice. I eat standing up, alone, while my husband speaks to a client on the phone.
I’m not sure why, but loneliness often arrives then - it’s a sunset thing. When my father was in the nursing home, they told me about sundowning. Residents who’d been fine all day grew disoriented, fussy - even violent - when the sun went down. For me, sundown brings this emptiness: What have I even done today? What have I accomplished? Sometimes, I sit down and write in my journal. Mostly though, I click on a TV show and fill the empty place with whatever I’m binge-watching. Shetland or Queer Eye or a home-remodeling program. I like mysteries and transformation shows. I like watching messy houses get spruced up. I like seeing 60 year old women remember how beautiful they are.
Around 7, my husband comes in and kisses my forehead, I reheat his dinner. He goes out to the car to get the rest of the coffee. He’ll drink it in the morning.
We watch something together on YouTube - last night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel. This Sunday, we watched the Super Bowl - or he watched. I kept him company. Knitting, doing Wordle and the Crossword Puzzle with my feet in his lap.
I go to bed early and wake at midnight. It’s cool and empty and quiet. I lie in bed looking out into the cocoon of darkness. Somewhere, a twig snaps. Three hours later, I wake again.
They call this the hour of God. I reach into the void, feeling for God. There’s never a reply, only a stillness that holds me like an answer. I fall back to sleep and dream until morning.
A new day.
I wish you beautiful sunrises and gentle sunsets.
I wish you day after day of quiet peace.
I wish you, in these turbulent times, a way of settling your heart - your body and mind.
I wish you - most of all - the fullness of the blessings that are already flowing toward you.
With love,
Amy
xxoo
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Gorgeous, wonderful, and soothing to read. Thank you for this.
The feet in my lap means automatic foot massage, what hands and feet and laps were made for...LOL...--otherwise ....lucky me ; we get to live together between all the observed and well crafted sentences.