I have learned a lot about myself during the quarantine. I don’t need much to be happy. Strip me of my $7 coffee or tea, take the take-outs away, and I am still comfortable and content. The simpler life suits me just fine. Being at home with my husband, cooking every day, cleaning up together -declaring dishwashing part of his Physical Therapy, because he is still not allowed to lift anything that’s no heavier than a coffee cup.
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
I have neglected my blog and my blogging friends. I didn’t write much and read even less. I have been busy; tried to juggle too many things all at once, bit off more than I could chew. Whenever life demands my full attention, the virtual world has to be put on hold.
I often babysit the neighbor’s kids or they babysit me -however you want to look at it and there is a lot I learned from watching babies, toddlers and yes, even teenagers.
I wondered if I am the only one who looks at it that way. Does not being a parent make me more of a pushover or perhaps more observant?
Learn child they said and so I did
knowledge is the key,
the more you know, the better it is
and I believed them.
Religion made the word DOUBT a bad word. “Don’t doubt what I tell you, child. Believe what I say.” Isn’t it like saying, don’t you dare question anything, because I don’t have any answers?
I was a bouncy, happy little girl who was full of questions and laughter. The silence came later when I grew up and rooted deeper.
I studied hard to learn English when I came here, and I did it the old fashioned way. I listened to TV and radio and wrote down the words that I didn’t understand; I looked them up in the dictionary and scribbled the meaning and the translation in my notebook.
Just the plain sight of the vacuum cleaner, throws our older dogs into despair and panic mood and each and every time I try to clean our living room floor, we go through the same procedure.
They stop whatever they are doing and act like their life would be in immediate danger. No other machine in, or around the house causes so much panic, not even the lawn mower or the yard blower.
I remember the last day in school, like it was yesterday -it was 35 years ago. I had spent the last 9 years here at the boarding school, so far away from home and it felt bitter sweet. We all were excited, children and adults were running around like chickens. It was time for our theater play, afterwards the nuns and our choir would sing for the last time, before it was time to part.