I work (officially) one day a week. I’m at the age when I can work when I want, and I’m supremely blessed to say that.

On Tuesday, I spend part of the day with one of my grandsons, and that is always a day of love and fun.

Sunday’s I go to church – small group and church service.

Friday I teach a small group for 90 minutes.

Those few hours a week comprise my interaction with people.

Every day, I wake up and do my devotions. Feed the dogs. Do some kind of exercising.

For 10-12 hours a day, I am alone.

There is no going to coffee with friends.

I’m not shopping with the girls.

I go to the gym three times a week for yoga – alone.

I train for my races by running in the neighborhood – alone.

I don’t go to parties. I’ve had no birthday gatherings for my birthday since I was 13. No gang of friends to celebrate with me.

Which came first – the introvert, or the great aloneness?

I’m really not sure.

When my kids were home, that kept me busy – I was working, caring for them, repeat.

Now that the nest is empty, I wait for my husband to come home. It’s the only consistency I have for not sitting in a silent house.

This really bothered me a few years back. I guess I’m resigned to it now.

I’ve spoken of this on many occasions- personally, in groups, and privately to my counselor.

Here I am still, sitting in the quiet house, with my dogs and cat to keep me company.

Now I scroll past the dozens of happy posts of coffee clubs, birthday celebrations, gal groups running together.

I put down the phone, grab my dog, and go run. Alone. As I have done for several years.

I walk through a neighborhood and smile and wave at people I don’t know…despite the fact I’ve lived here over 12 years.

Every few weeks I get my hair done, and get some girl talk.

So many years of this have gone by, I figure it must be meant to be.

I live my life of quiet solitude, where the phone only rings if it’s my kids or spouse. I call my parents regularly.

And I still sit here.

Alone.

It’s still 2020.

I had my annual mammogram yesterday. I’ve been faithful to get them since I was 42. I know, I should have started at 40, but frankly, I was terrified. SO many people I know have had breast cancer.

This morning around 9am, my gynecologist’s secretary called and said “Dr S just wanted to make sure you’ve got your follow up appointment.”

“Uhhhhhhhhh….for what?” I stammered.

“He got your mammogram report, and wants to make sure you are getting follow up.”

October 1. Breast cancer awareness month.

A rush of adrenaline courses through me, and I feel light headed. The room spins. Cindy. Sharon. Melissa. Beth. All lost to breast cancer.

I call the hospital, and the kind voice in the other end of the phone hears my calm terror. She works me in.

October 1, 2020. I’m sitting in the waiting room, same as I was yesterday. Same exact time.

Today, though, every turn of a door makes me jump. I’m waiting for them to call me…and one by one I am passed over for other anonymous numbers.

They were 45 minutes late yesterday. Today I am 30 minutes early and yet, tick tick tick… my appointment time comes and goes.

Terrible thoughts try to race through my head. I pull out my phone and read my Bible devotions for today.

A side door opens. My number. My turn.

Another mammogram – more specific, much more painful. Cheerful sonographer helps lighten my gloom.

The scan is still suspicious. Now to door number two – ultrasound.

I feel the earth spinning. I slow my breathing, closing my eyes to keep myself from straining my eyes to try and see the screen. The sonographer works methodically, and she, too, sighs as she says it looks fine. She can’t see anything suspicious.

She has to go give it to the reading radiologist. The clock ticks loudly to my right. The ultrasound hums it’s white noise. Time stands still.

After what seems like hours the door opens again.

All clear. Fibroglandular tissue. The doctor reviewed past scans and today’s findings. I’m reassured. Reviewed. Reassured.

Cindy. Sharon. Melissa. Beth.

I only had a nanosecond of what you went through.

I’m back to eating vegan and planning my half marathon. Back to life.

Gratitude is pumping through my veins.

October 1, 2020.

Par.

Life and death.

The days are long. They start early, full of hope.

Getting out of the Jeep in the morning, I breathe free until I walk up to the hospital. Then the paper mask goes on.

Walking up the stairs, my asthmatic lungs protest more each day…but I walk the stairs anyway.

I put my hair in a scrub cap. Wash my hands for the first of dozens and dozens of times.

Behind glasses, only small areas of my face are open to air. I feel anonymous. Adding the face shield, I’m trapped in my own bubble.

I computer chart with my right hand while I hold the hand of a frightened patient with my gloved left hand.

I look deep into the almond eyes of a young girl as I tell her I’m sorry for the unacceptable tragedy that’s come into her life, which will never be the same.

I carry the IV tray into the room and look pointedly into my colleagues eyes as I let the patient know we are starting a couple IV’s, my mind and emotions bracing as we try to get ahead of an emergency.

We work together, masked and gowned, in that taunt reassurance that our carefully modulated voices try to convey, our covered faces the calm before the storm.

Fifteen hours after I first got into the Jeep, I’m heading out of the hospital.

The night is clear and warm. I throw away my mask on the way out, sanitizing my dry hands as I walk away.

I peel away the windows, and pull back the roof. I replace my scrub cap with a ball cap now.

The music I usually listen to is replaced by the wind, rushing freeway speed across my face, whipping my ponytail around my face in a chaotic swirl.

I sigh, breathing in the smells of brackish water as I drive over the bridges, the water still as glass as I race by.

Home now. I take off my shoes and spray them with antiseptic. Piece by piece, I wipe down every object I carry with me with bleach wipes.

I remove my uniform, and place it in the wash. The hot shower and scrub is next.

17 hours after I woke up, I finally kiss my husband as he welcomes me home, and he hands me a plate. I’m eating takeout Chinese that I’m not hungry for, because I still need to eat dinner.

Tomorrow, I’ll do it again.

I long for times before the pandemic. when human touch and expression – so essential! -were taken for granted.

My practice has changed, but the mission hasn’t.

I say things I may have thought or whispered under my breath. I voice my care. I make eye contact – and keep it.

I hope it’s enough.

I’m weary.

It’s a tired that goes beyond physical. I’m tired to my very soul. Weary, and just “over it”.

Yes, there are stressors all the time.

The pandemic has been some stress, but I do what I need to do to stay healthy – physically and mentally.

I don’t overeat – I eat healthier. I read more books instead of watch more streaming services. I do outside, plant things, care for things. I exercise. Breathe. Pray.

The hate, though…that’s getting to me.

It’s coming from both side of the divide – a divide created on purpose to embroil our nation in the very hate you see happening.

I won’t participate.

I do not put one people group over another. I never have and I never will.

Love is the answer – and I’m not seeing it outside these four walls much.

Anything or anyone that causes division I am limiting – or ignoring. I pray for them – that they will see that what they are doing will hurt them the most, ultimately.

My devotional time keeps me going. My family time sustains me. These moments of human interaction are all I have – but they remind me that there is good where there is love.

For those that are angry, sin not. For those who hold a grudge – you reap what you sow. For those that are demanding – it never works out that way.

Consider your heart. Your ways. Try kindness. Find God.

Be the good you want to see. Because the changes that are happening are tearing our country apart.

When I became a nurse, one thing that was stressed over and over was the need to meet all of the patient needs. Not just physical, but emotional, and spiritual as well.

During this strange time we are in, I have been tuning in with all my senses as a way to take care of myself.

The time I spend on my front porch is most indicative of this.

The first thing I worked on when I started concentrating on my wrap around front porch was the visual things – cleaning up the dead leaves, trimming plants that needed to be cut back, pulling weeds and tiny tree sprouts.

Then I added flowers and plants that made me happy to look at. A variety of shapes, plants, and colors, all blooming and growing at different speeds and vibrancy.

That used to be the end of it for me – look at the pretty flowers and trees. Now, being outside is so much more.

The magnolia trees are starting to bloom, and for the first time, I brought a large, waxy blossom close to my nose, and took in the luscious, tropical fragrance. As I pick up the spent leaves, stacking them in my hands like letters, I hear the crunch as they slide against each other, seemingly unbreakable. I feel the thick and smooth leaves gathering in my hands, moving them to the mulch pile in large, accordion like stacks.

I come out early to the porch some mornings , just to hear the birds singing the sunrise forth. I listen to the chains creek as the large ferns sway in the breeze. I hear the gentle wind chimes as they get a push from an extra burst of wind.

In the afternoon, I hear the intermittent buzzing of cicadas – to me, a distinctly southern sound.

I feel the breeze on my face, grateful for this long and cool spring we have enjoyed. The faux wicker chair presses a pattern into my arm as I rest on it, a minor distraction from the screeching mockingbirds fighting over their turf.

Today I’m greeted by new blooms – the gardenia, which certainly must be what heaven smells like. Rose of Sharon is right in my view, looking tropical with its papery thin petals and splash of color around the prominent yellow stamen.

Not many cars go by on my street…especially these days. The only scurrying is the squirrels racing around the crepe myrtles, who are stretching their branches out long, waiting for their turn to bloom.

This – this is how I’m caring for myself in these strange times we are in. Just sitting on the porch, like before.

But noticing so much more.

He’s states away from me, my grandson.

My daughter video-chatted with me this morning. She knew he was not himself, but didn’t know what was going on. She wanted my nursing opinion.

As I watched him, limp and lethargic, my gut wrenched, and caught, and dove.

I didn’t know what was going on, but he needed to be seen by a doctor.

I’m not a pediatric nurse, but two year old and lethargic do not go together.

She scooped him up and took him to the ER, leaving her husband to stay with the baby’s twin brother, and the seven month old baby boy.

I feel like I’m in the waiting room.

It’s a helpless feeling.

As a grandmother, or Nana as I am called, I am wildly in love with my grandsons. I am even more protective of them than I am of my own children, if that is even possible.

I went on long walks, praying and crying and pleading for this dear sweet grandson.

Some thing is not right. I don’t want to know but I WANT TO KNOW!! What is going on?

Diagnoses have been ruled out.

Terrifying diagnosis I cannot speak into the air are tormenting me.

An update: it might be a passing neurological disorder…but it’s just on the differential diagnosis list. I’m tempted to look up this disease, but I don’t want to freak out.

I resume my pacing, now on the front porch. I see the sun peeking through the overcast sky, and I want it to be a sign that he is going to be alright.

I just need to know that he’s going to be alright.

Nothing is known. His MRI is being bumped for a more critical situation. I say a prayer for that unknown child.

It’s a week later…labs are trickling in. My grandson was sent home after a couple of days, only to be rushed back to the ER today.

You would trade places with your child in a minute. You would trade places with your grandchild in a second.

As I try to keep busy hundreds of miles away, I pray continuously for this little family of mine, so far away, yet so dear to my heart.

I sat on my porch this morning, and the little house wrens eyed me closely. I was sitting close to a fern they are using for nest making. I say perfectly still, hoping they would continue their industrious nest building.

His eye is on the sparrow. And the wren. And my little grandson. And his family.

I remain in the waiting room.

I don’t know who invented the porch, but I feel certain it was someone in the South.

A porch in the South is an essential part of any southern home. Furthermore, in the Deep South, most nursing homes worth their salt have large porches. In the cooler evening hours, you’ll still see dozens of rocking chairs, filled with a generation who knew if supper was over, it was porch time.

Long before there were “spaces” to love and remodel, a porch was an add on everyone had to have as a practical part of life in the south.

Screened in porches were a necessity in the long, hot, humid summers. The porch would allow you to catch a murmur of air movement, if you were lucky. Inside, there was nothing but stifling heat. This was long before central air, and the fans you could buy just moved hot air from one spot to another.

The screen protected you from mosquitoes…although the no-seums always managed to get in and bite a spot just out of reach, as you were drifting off in the waning light.

It was a treat as a child to sleep on the screened porch. Yes, it was hot, but the night sounds were near. The thrum of frogs. The whirring of night birds deftly flying by. The deep throated bullfrog bellowing from a nearby pond.

Great, voluminous ferns are a staple on Southern porches. Hanging from the roof, blousing our over a planter, their dark green fronds thrive in humidity, licking up the almost daily misting of water that Gramma sifted over them.

In the South, even the poorest shotgun house has a porch. It only needs to be large enough to hold a couple of chairs. The porch is where Southerners watch the world go by – not that there is much to see. After supper, though, you will find the older ones on the porch, rocking in squeaky chairs that press rhythmically against the bowing porch timber.

In simpler days, a porch was a place to speak to your neighbor as they walk by, causing them to pause and discuss the latest gossip. Or you might just wave at folks as they drove by with their windows down.

Today porches are a lot fancier, I’ve noticed. This traditional Southern necessity has become a status symbol, and many are filled with perfectly matched furniture, knick knacks, and assorted decor. The ferns and plants are replaced every year, because no one can grow them like Gramma could.

With the coming of manicured porches, I’ve noticed people are not actually on their porches. A pretty porch makes for a good show, but ends up standing empty. People enter their house through the garage, and the front door and porch get little, if any, attention.

I’m a throwback to olden times, albeit in a HOA neighborhood. Our house is an older one for this place, and is tucked in the back, around a curve. From my porch, where I can hear the roosters call and the donkeys bray from the road behind our house, I sit in relative seclusion. The dogwood tree, live oak, and rose of Sharon bushes are my camouflage as I sit in the wicker chair. The geranium beside me wafts it’s peppery smell toward me if a breeze coasts by, and I’ll slap at my legs if I feel one of those dad-gummed no-seums.

It’s my place of peace. A refuge. A place to relax and remember a simpler time gone by.

I’m grateful for this Southern porch of mine.

The world as we know it has forever changed.

I live in Florida, and I have evacuated for major hurricanes more times than I can count. Even more often, I have battened down the hatches and stayed home to ride out the storms.

We knew the storms were coming. We stocked up on water, non-perishable food, and gasoline. We know the routine. I never got flip about this – there were no hurricane parties for us. We evaluated, and made our decision to stay or go based on the facts at hand.

Today, I cancelled all my plans for the forseable future.

We have a pandemic.

I’ve watched the headlines. Most of my info comes from the front line workers – the physicians that I personally know that are working in ER’s and hospitals.

The Chinese Coronavirus has been evolving. The speculators in the media are all over the place. I’m not watching the news.

I will look to the officials who are advising our course of action.

Based on the reports of my medical friends on the front lines, I am in self imposed quarantine. I have asthma as well as type 1 diabetes.

I’ve been watchful. I’ve been cautious. Now I am going to be exceptionally so.

I’m blessed to not have to work right now in my chosen career as an RN. I travel, but that’s on hold indefinitely.

Today the mall closed. The bars and clubs closed last night. Church is now closed until the end of the month. They are contemplating closing restaurants- although, already, most are deeply affected by limits on how close people can sit to each other.

The irony is, while they are seating patrons six feet apart, the wait staff and cooks are tripping over each other in the food prep area.

My family will be deeply hit by the closures of schools and restaurants. Like most people working in those industries, they have little savings, and no other prospects.

I don’t know what’s coming next.

I’m going to continue to monitor the advice…from my home. My husband gets groceries. I cook at home, which is normal for us, but going out to eat is out of the question.

I will not be going to the gym, but I’m outside and exercising more than ever. The stress of this mysterious, nebulous space we are in has me uneasy most days, and anxious others.

I believe in God, and I am praying now more than ever for my family, and for our nation…and the world.