Coronavirus Survivor’s Log- Day 12 (I think)…
Yesterday was an interesting day. I rose early and drank coffee with a friend via skype, I showered and did my hair and put makeup on and pants that weren’t stretchy for the first time in a few days. I preached a message to my church via webcam, zoom and Facebook Live about faith in the waiting and I took a long nap in the middle of the day. It was almost 8:30 by the time I made dinner and you know what? It kind of felt like a weird sort of normal. This is what our days are beginning to look like everyday. It’s odd and sort of comforting and I vacillate wildly from loving it to hating it in the same heartbeat.
Today’s prompt provides much the same feeling….Home. Where or what is home for you? Write for ten minutes….GO!
I have lived in the same house for the last 18 years, but home moves around for me. Two years ago it was the poolside lounge chair of my best friend’s back yard while I healed from an abusive business relationship. That summer I floated on blow up rafts and sunburned the tops of my shoulders an thighs and journaled my heart. Sometimes she and I would chat about what I was feeling, but most days, she just let me be and let the sun heal me the way summertime heat can do and just accepted that my quiet woundedness was part of me for a season.
Last summer, I decided that I wanted my own place to turn my face to the sun but I needed more color, so I painted murals of ocean sunsets and waves on my back fence and sanded down the boards of sixty year old porch swing my husband’s grandparents left us. We painted everything bright yellow and white and teal and bought cushions that screamed Mexican villa and for the first time in a long time, a part of my house became my home. I spend every moment that the weather is even slightly bearable out there…writing, reading, just sitting. It’s been invaded by new neighbor children behind us on their trampoline and sometimes with their nerf darts, but I don’t mind….it’s a song of life that drifts over my little island paradise in the middle of land-locked Arkansas. Since the social distancing order started, I’ve been out there a lot. Resting on the porch swing that my husband and I refurbished together, reading, checking email and just enjoying this escape I have carved out of our reality. It’s bright colors nourish me and the sun stamps vitamin D in my arms and my heart continues its healing process.
Clamoring to be Visible 