How I'm Getting By...
My community and my garden are keeping me sane; dealing with the reality of what is going on requires a strategy.
“MIDDLETON! What’s cooking?” I heard a booming voice from the front of the store just as I stepped inside the pharmacy. I nearly jumped out of my skin. And then I realized it was Stan, proprietor of the apothecary, the small up-Island store where all of us rural dwellers go to get everything from prescriptions and tick spray to birthday cards and lip balm. Stan loves to cook; he used to stop by my farm stand for eggs and greens back in the day. He’s got a quick wit and a big personality. I like him.
“What’s up Stan?” I asked, moving past the stuffed animal shelf and the anti-itch creams to greet him. “Where you goin’?” I noticed he had his coat on and his arms full of white paper bags.
“Heading out to deliver to the old folks, the ones who are housebound,” he said.
“That’s good of you, Stan,” I said.
“Someone’s gotta do it,” he said, adding with a smile, “It’s a mitzvah.”
“I get it,” I said. “That will come back to you!”
The conversation shifted to canned tomatoes and pasta sauce, and then, after a safe zone was established, politics. (Stan began delicately: Well, things are crazy right now. Susie picked up the clue: Yes, just terrible. Stan: Horrible, embarrassing, sad!)
We commiserated, shaking our heads and throwing our hands up, and parted ways.
Then I was on to the post office, one parking lot over, just past the grocery store. We have pretty much everything we need all in one place in this town of 3,500 people.
“Hi, Susie! How ya been?” I heard from the back of the post office when I came up to the counter with my yellow pick-up-your-package cards. It was Jack.
Jack is an ex-New Yorker, a talented artist whose pointillist cityscapes are mesmerizing, and as it happens, he is also a patient and friendly postal employee. This might seem odd, but the fact is that every single person who works in our post office is nice. Really nice. It blows me away.
One of Jack’s co-workers went to search for my packages, and another, Diane (a smart lady who is also a fit runner), signaled to me. “Susie, don’t go, I think I’ve got another package for you that just came in.”
I said goodbye and thank you to all three of these good people and headed towards the door with my tower of packages (three books — not from Amazon! —and a big box of Momofuku noodles). Before I knew it, Jack had come around from the back and grabbed the door to open it for me. He didn’t have to do that, of course. But it was kind and thoughtful.
As I was leaving the post office, my phone rang. It was Frank, the nurse who gives me my allergy shots.
“Susie, hi, it’s Frank. Come get your shots! I’ll be here until 4, come any time.”
I had missed my allergy shots the day before because we were off-Island. I wind up missing them a lot and we have to start back at the beginning with smaller doses. I’ve vowed to get better about this, so I called the doctor’s office in the morning to see if I could come in on this day. Frank is only in two days a week, and I didn’t want to mess up his schedule. I figured the secretary would call back and let me know, but I didn’t expect Frank himself to call.
“Okay, Frank, I’ll be right over.” I got back in my car and drove to the doctor’s office which, miraculously, is also right nearby, on the other side of the pharmacy.
Frank is the brother of a colleague of mine. So sometimes we talk about the newspaper. Other times, we chat about ordinary stuff: ferry cancelations, the concert at his church, marauding deer. But often he has a story to tell me; on this day it was an anecdote about his time in the Air Force, stationed on a base in Alaska. Frank chuckles and grins a lot.
After asking me for my birth date, he filled up the needles; the one from the red vial for my left arm, the blue one for the right. My arms began itching almost immediately; Frank gave each wound a little cooling spray and wound up his story.
“Bye, Frank. See you next week,” I said, passing the next patient on the way in as I went out.
I stopped back by the grocery store for raspberries and chicken, and said hello to Bianca, the manager. I ran into my friend Tina in the meat section. This happens a lot. We talk about food allergies and fish recipes. I have virtually never been to this little grocery store without seeing someone I know.
In the parking lot I saw my friend Bert getting into his truck, where I bet his two Boston terriers were probably hanging out in the front seat. I’m sure he had his camera with the long lens with him. And his rake and basket for clamming.
On the ride home – it’s about eight minutes back over to the south side of West Tisbury – I looked for signs of spring. There wasn’t much, but it was enough: daffodils halfway up in spots, a witch hazel in bloom, two horses out grazing, a delightful swath of white snow drops.
At home I dumped the groceries and the mail and slipped on my boots. Time for a garden check. Only a few days ago I restarted the daily ritual that will continue straight through October.
I began with the hoop house. On sunny days, it gets so hot in there now that I have to open the windows or the doors, even though it’s still 45 degrees outside. I’ve got flats of lettuce and snapdragons seeded and they don’t like heat. Nor do the tulips that have survived in crates from last year and are coming up.
But me? I am always happy down there; the hoop house is peaceful, a light-filled refuge. There are bits and bob of life all around inside. Overwintered violas blooming. Roses leafing out. Flowering oregano coming back from the dead. And lots of empty flats and pots waiting for me to fill them.
I continued the garden check with a stop at the new viburnum hedge we planted last fall. Still not entirely sure the shrubs made it through the winter. I walked past the big fenced garden and stopped to stare at the piles of manure that are half-raked out. We have so much to do in there.
Back up the hill, I offered my daily encouragement to the rhubarb plants, which have just poked up from the soil, unfurling their chartreuse leaves as proof of resilience. From there I went past the daffodil cutting bed to the banged-up hellebores and into the small vegetable garden, where a big cleanup job awaits us.
The best surprises were the second-year tulips coming up in one of the raised beds, the perennial poppy I bought last year in Delaware that survived, and the lettuce planted last fall that’s finally started to grow again under the fabric row cover.
Back inside, I sat down at the breakfast room table across from my husband, who was eating his Dagwood sandwich and scrolling through the latest news.
“People in this town are so nice,” I said. “I went out, still half asleep, feeling like I didn’t want to talk to anyone. And I came back feeling so grateful that we live in a small place where you know people everywhere you go.”
Husband smiled and said, “See?”
“I know,” I said sheepishly. It’s always the same with me. I have a tendency to hibernate and isolate, but it’s not always the best thing for me, especially not now with the way things are. And then I go out and interact with people and I’m glad I did.
“And one more thing,” I told him. “This garden – our garden – is saving me.”
He smiled again. He already knew this. “It’s your joy, Susie.”
I never realize just how off-kilter I am until I slip into my muddy boots and pull my wool cap over my unruly hair and stumble outside into the inevitable grey spritzy fog of March. I can hear the wind-whipped ocean roar from our house. The red-breasted robins are everywhere, poking in the field for worms, popping from limb to limb on the bare oak trees. I grab a tool – a rake, pruners, or simply a watering can – and I begin to futz around. Soon I have soil under my fingernails, leaves in my hair, and dirt on my knees. And I am transported.
For a time, I am nowhere but here.
I will be honest with you, when I go back inside, it’s not long before the feeling returns: the feeling that I am on watch, alone, in the dark on a storm-tossed sailboat. It’s called hypervigilance.
