220123 Rain dogs and omicron

 Jan 23

One of the dogs, trying to nap in the sun.

I had not seen Rain except for quick porch visits, because it has been quite cold - I hadn't seen baby at all - since the beginning of Omicron. When was that? Before New Year's, at least. They came and visited today, at last. The house is big, and so drafty, that there is plenty of fresh air and space. I haven't seen anyone else either, except the chimney sweeps, who came on Friday. It is bad news, it turns out, to see a spark fly from the chimney into the night air.

Mother and baby need time out, to be together and there be no dishes to do or laundry to sort. And gramma wants to see baby and mamma. These days are so precious - I haven't even heard him laugh. He didn't much like the look of me - smiled happily from across the room, but if I came too close, no, not ready for that. I can wait, but to see him and let him get to know me; I want that to start now. 

I am often saying of folk impatient for covid rules to end, that they - we - need to stick it out, and here am I "want that to start now". I rationalize: but it is a mother, sometimes she needs her mother or a sister. If she had a woman in her household (not including the sun-loving canine), I would be content. It needn't be a woman, in fact, just another pair of hands, an Indonesia, fellow human, heartbeat. (Indonesia is a friend - that's his name! Like Indiana Jones, movie ref.) Before Omicron, Rain was in our "bubble", very sci-fi.* But then it was boosters, new restrictions and suddenly so many are testing positive. I am now, on two counts, a "vulnerable", being both older and unwell. The older didn't bother me until the unwell happened, so randomly.

This, about Rain, came almost complete onto the page. 

i think that you are

older than any of us knows

older than born in the firelight of an ancient

dwelling

in hills like this

how can you know someone for thirty years and not know

she is an angel

witch

or holy grown in the forest

grown in the city far away

do you see how she looks at him

the aura sea-green

mother

she knows more than one can learn in those years

how to hold him nurse him need him like breath

like water

i named her knowing

but not knowing that she had lived by an ocean

carried a thousand children on her hip

in a woodstove kitchen in winter

and plunged into the snow a hundred times after the dogs

baby snug to her chest

she is older than wise

does what there is to do goes on when one would think she'd rest

she is the grandmother who walked the child to sleep

she sings like breathing

a hundred lullabies

ancestral she is the inheritor

she has put on the coat

it fits

(my jan 21, 2022)

* Omicron, I see, has acquired an upper case. my, 220125