Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 22

It’s been a long time since I woke up on a Monday morning to an impending sense of doom. It’s not so much that it’s Monday. Its more that we’re starting our 4th week of self-isolation and the unknown-ness of our situation is hitting hard.

It reminds me of when my mother was sick and dying of breast cancer. Knowing she was going to die was bad enough. But not knowing how much time we had left was worse.

This morning I broke one of two little ceramic hearts that hang on the doorknob of our bathroom. It fell to the floor and cracked in half.

I tut to myself before taking the opportunity to appreciate what’s now been broken.

I don’t know where I picked up those little ceramic hearts. They’re one of three pairs of hearts that hang on the doorknobs of our flat. There are four doors altogether, one to enter the flat and the other three to the bedroom, lounge and bathroom. But the front door doesn’t have a knob on the inside, so there’s nowhere to hang a heart.

On the bedroom door hangs two wooden hearts and on the lounge door another ceramic pair. I don’t know why I took to hanging them on the doorknobs of our home.

I’d like to think it’s my own little version of a threshold spell. May those who pass through this door be happy and well.

I immediately grab some superglue from our junk cabinet and start piecing it back together. It’s hard to keep from getting glue on my fingertips.

I did a solitary retreat over the whole month of January at my family’s lake house in rural Maine. One night I found my mother’s old guitar in the downstairs closet. I took it out and started strumming and singing mantras, working out the chords for them as I went along.

This is the instrument my mother taught me to play. Spring break, 1992. Eight months before she went. I was off school and she was in bed, probably recovering from her latest chemotherapy treatment. I remember spending every day, all day sat at the end of her bed while she showed me where to place my fingers and how to hold the pick.

That was the same week she instructed me and my sister to lay out all her jewelry on the duvet so she could tell us who could have what. I didn’t want any of it.

Gifts come in all shapes and sizes, but the greatest ones can’t be seen and often go unnoticed for long periods of time.

I remember all this while trying to piece together my broken heart.

I decide it’s impossible to use superglue without getting it all over my fingers. And it’s impossible to wash off. I simply have to wait. Wait for it to slowly peel away.

Until then my phone won’t recognise my thumbprint.

Throughout the rest of the day I notice I’m rubbing my fingers together obsessively, trying to get the glue off. Picking and peeling and peeling and picking.

Luckily, it doesn’t take that long to wear off. The fingers, so often used, come into contact with so much. Keyboard, phone, zippers, buttons, toilet paper, utensils, food, pen, paper, doorknobs, handles, keys, taps, water, soap, clothing, blankets, cushions, pillows, windows.

Each time just a little bit more rubs off.

What they don’t touch, which is what I wish they could, is my mother’s old guitar. If I had that I’d pick it up and play my heart out until all the glue was gone and my fingertips were worn down, red and sore.

In the afternoon we walk again to Abney Park. It keeps drawing us back.

At the entrance to the park there’s a sign that says London Greenwood, a community of green woodworkers, is offering online classes soon. Their aim is to encourage craftiness, creativity and self-reliance in everybody.

I think to myself that they sound like a good group to make friends with just now. We could all use a little craftiness and self-reliance during the apocalypse. I also wonder how in hell woodwork can be taught online. You’ve got to be pretty crafty and creative to figure that one out.

Deep in the park now spring keeps revealing more of herself. Now the blue bells are out. Now the horse chestnut tree’s leaves are bright green and big enough to take our breath away.

The park also continues to unveil her secrets. Every time we go back we notice something new. Today we discover “the den.” Just off the main path there’s a space beneath densely packed branches just high enough to stand up. Someone’s hide-out, someone’s quiet place. We enter but don’t stay long, feeling as though we are trespassing, even though no one is in.

As we leave the park we see some graffiti on the ground we didn’t notice on the way in. two figures separated by an arrow that is exactly two metres long. It’s been painted across a circular design in the brickwork, right through the middle of it, which makes me think of some strange ritual we are all doing now, dancing around each other, covering our mouths, looking away.

We could do this dance on the circular brickwork all day, never moving closer to each other, but also never moving further away.

It occurs to me that social distancing has both forced us apart and brought us together. But for how long? How long do we need to do this dance? How long before we get too tired or bored or fed up or frustrated or lonely or desperate?

Over the past three weeks so much of my life has flashed before my eyes. So many memories over 43 years. It feels my soul is doing some kind of a reckoning and I have to surrender to it. Let it play out. Let the poignancy and the unresolvedness and the grief unravel itself from deep within my psyche.

The last 24 hours started with a speech from the Queen telling us to pull it together and ended with hearing that Boris is in the ICU. I wonder if his life is flashing before his eyes.

There’s no simple way to end this day. So I pick a fight with my partner, call my sister, and binge watch a bit more TV.