Yesterday, as the sun kissed the fields good morning, a slender heron waited still and unblinking on the edge of the pond below my window, right where the long grass meets the water. For the first time since we arrived in the heart of Vermont ten days ago the deep green mountains were flecked with red and green. This is late August in Mad River Valley, a magical turnover season when sultry summer yields to fall, the high sun beginning to cast low shadow. Where I retreat to give care to my family member who has had surgery, grateful to a friend who has lent this sprawling house tucked between hills. While I wrap ice packs and count pills, make meals, load laundry and begin again, I am surrounded by unsurpassed beauty that has almost (almost!) made the long days of mending secondary.
A care giver is only as good as their own mental and physical health: I make lists, rise around the clock to check vitals and hunger and pain scale but I also take care of myself. Ten unread books stack on the dining room table — not so much thinking I would have spare time to read them all only to ensure I had just the right genre for the mood and fatigue roller coaster that comes with doing this for another person. There is a fresh dress or two in the closet for the down days. I take showers, grab long walks during nap time. There are digestive biscuits in the pantry. We are in the land of Ben + Jerry after all, so the freezer is stocked. We are lucky a daughter and husband can stop in with a dog to cuddle and make meals with me, distracting us from the tedium of healing and surgical trauma, the countdown until the cast comes off and the boot lightens the load.
Yellow finches sweep through the evergreens and snack on the coneflowers as the garden rests. There are short excursions this second week, a coffee shop where we can sit by a stream, a store up the road bursting with produce. The experience these weeks is not un-similar to the feeling of quarantine during covid — seclusion (for wound health), non-weight bearing slowing the days to a crawl, nothing on the calendar but shifting from couch to chaise to bed. Early bedtime. Early rising.
I fill my social media with photos of my walks. I choose the book with 715 pages and lug it to the stream. I rise at 4am and read, make notes and gaze out the window. Self-care goes hand-in-hand with giving care; be wary, if you are needed, of the Florence Nightingale myth. These days are work, there can be anger and misunderstanding. All of this is the reality of getting well, understandable and human. We get by it.
A mountain of trees rises over the pond, called by the locals ‘sugarloaf,’ the conical shape evoking the century-old method of storing sugar before cubes or bags. There is one in every valley, distinctive and hike-able. This morning, as the sun swept over dew so heavy it looked like frost, a doe and her fawn stepped out from underneath the sugarloaf shadow to drink from the pond, white tails flicking as I slid the door open to watch them watch me. The coffee machine splutters. The tea kettle steams. We turn over our bodies to what is in store for us.
Another day begins.
Alexandra Dane 