I’ve been experiencing a sense of euphoria lately. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, medically, or a bad thing like somethings more wrong than it was. I seem to have come to grips with disability and death. I did that in the summer and fall of 2020. More recently, I’ve become accustomed to the idea of losing my faculties. It was a grieving process beyond that of accepting death. Finally, I came to the idea that these extra days are a gift. It’s one thing for people to do their gratitude journals for Thanksgiving, but I hope what they came to was that their lives really were miracles. Can you stop what you’re doing and feel that? Lately, I’ve been daydreaming, taking flights of fancy around the world and into the depths of space. It’s cheaper and more comfortable than traveling. I credit NASA’s photos from the new Webb telescope and the travel and macro photographers I love. Have you ever seen the smiley-face emojis magnified inside the beach grass? They’re adorable.
More often, I’m looking at my life as a whole journey taken. How did I get from there to here? I never expected to have lived this particular life. It wasn’t what I planned. It was better, the depth of the love, the places I went, the things I tried. I tried a lot of things. I’m glad that I was a person who jumped into experiences. I have lived, worked, and played in a beautiful world with amazing people. I never have told you about the men working at Bell Labs, have I? They loved when someone asked them about their experiments, even as they harbored recent scars on their faces from an unexpected exothermic reaction from an element they were testing. I hope I’ll tell you about those guys sometime.
I keep wondering if the euphoria is from not getting enough oxygen. It goes low sometimes. But I’m going with the flow. A person can’t live forever, you know. Plus, I’ve been having Disney princess moments that stem from the drought, a bad thing that feels like a miracle in the moment. I’ve talked to my wild birds for years, chickadees, hummingbirds, towhees, Pacific wrens, Cooper’s hawks, Stellar’s jays, and juncos. I make a ticking sound whenever I refresh the water in their birdbaths or the hummingbird food. Sometimes, I can tell they’re demanding something, and Mike has more than once been accosted by a hungry hummingbird when the feeders are empty.
Because of the drought, I’ve been watering my garden, the sword ferns, the tree where the Pacific tree frog sings, my maidenhair ferns, hydrangea, Japanese maple, and gardenia. The other day, I sat at my little table as the hose refreshed my hydrangea. I’d recently added some coffee grounds to the soil and it made a puddle. A Pacific wren took a bath in it then rinsed off in the puddle that spilled out under the pot. I was very quiet because the Pacific wrens are so shy.
The next day, hoping to get her to come back, I watered again. This time, I heard the chickadees cheer as I sprayed the Japanese maple. There is a difference in their calls when they want something and when they’re happy. I sat at my table and got us all wet by putting my thumb on the end of the hose and making a sprinkler for them to fly through. They sounded like children laughing. The day after that, it was a flock of hummingbirds and a Douglas squirrel. Usually, the Douglas squirrels don’t come near me. They’re wilder than the European grays.
And yesterday, as I headed to the library to pick up my holds, the chickadees demanded that I make the sprinkler for them again. When I got back home and started up the hose, they cheered and laughed in the rain I made. Maybe I need to buy a sprinkler.
What are the miracles in your life?
Thank you for listening, jules