FINDING JOY

Shondra dragged herself out of her disheveled bed after another sleepless night. She stumbled to the bathroom not looking in the mirror because she knew what she would see—a hollow-eyed, bedraggled woman with tangled curls and without a spark of life. She didn’t want to see this version of herself. It was bad enough feeling like this, so she wouldn’t look. After relieving herself, she washed her hands, the one act of caring for her body she still enacted due to engrained habit.

She shuffled to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and grabbed a yogurt. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually cooked anything. She was basically living on yogurt, bananas, and coffee. If what this experience was could be called living.

She didn’t know what to call it. Since the death of her last beloved husband about six months ago, her writer self said, “This is mere existence.” Would it change? She couldn’t say though she knew from various life experiences that change was the only constant in the universe.

She took another bite of yogurt and mused. Over the last few months, she quit answering her phone, email, texts, or letters. Gradually such communications had dwindled away. Only two very loyal friends still left messages, even though she never answered. She only paid the most necessary bills. She existed frugally, waiting, wondering, crying, sighing, writing in her journal sometimes, but continuing to shut out good memories when they intruded on her grief which went far beyond her own loss. So much death. So many good-byes. So much pain. She remembered Charles Dickens writing in Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” She had lived in the best of times and then came the worst of times with the deadly pandemic, the consequences of never-ending wars all over the globe, mass shootings, and the ever- present threats of fossil fuel burning exacerbating climate change like melting glaciers, rising seas, fires, warming oceans bringing hurricanes and tornadoes, floods and many short-sighted responses from governments. So many dead. So many fled their homes with nowhere to go. It all made her weep.  

She had stayed put.  At first, she had watched the news on TV. In this way she had witnessed and shuddered until she could witness no more. She had closed herself off to news from the outside. Thus, here she was alone, sad, aging, clinging to life one bite of yogurt at a time. Why? She sighed as she had no answer as to why she kept breathing. She just did.

She opened both doors to her small balcony and stepped out for a breath of air. One, two, three deep breaths and then she retreated back inside away from the bright spring sunshine. She  didn’t close the glass door, leaving the screen door in place to let in the spring air.

Unbeknownst to her while on the balcony, a spark of crystal sunlight had seeded itself within her. Later she would trace that moment to the beginning of her return to truly living once again.

Meanwhile in the present back inside her apartment, she scratched her head, caught a whiff of herself, and realized for the first time she was filthy from head to toe. She still had access to running water, so she decided to take a shower. She gathered soap, washcloth, and towel, and she turned on the shower. She couldn’t remember when she had last showered, but in she went and began to wash with soap. The water ran over her body, turning gray, before it swirled down the drain. She shampooed her head with an old but still useable bottle of shampoo. All that rubbing and scrubbing started an inner awakening she never had thought would come. She actually began humming one of her favorite songs. As she toweled herself dry, she was overcome with the urge to wash her bedding. So, she did. As she remade her bed-nest, the smell of her clean self and her clean bed brought a smile to her lips. She crawled naked into her fresh bed-nest and slept dreamless but deeply. It was a short sleep but upon awakening, she felt rested and renewed. A glimmer of hope arose within her heart. She pulled on a clean but paint spattered house gown and wandered into the kitchen.

She sipped a cup of coffee gazing out her window. Stars were shining in the moonless night sky. Carrying her coffee, she was drawn into her home studio. She switched on the overhead light. Although electricity was rationed, she still had it. She rarely used it, so she knew she had enough to paint for at least an hour as stars twinkled outside her north facing window. She loved to read and thought if she still wanted to stay up and read after painting, she could always read by candle light, which she was accustomed to doing.

She pulled out a blank 24 x 24-inch canvas and acrylic paints that were stored and waiting for her. Just touching these supplies caused a tingle in her hands. She hadn’t painted since before her husband died. She dived in letting her hands go, pushing paint and acrylic medium around, adding scraps of cloth, string, pictures cut and saved from magazines, glitter, and buttons, all materials that had been waiting for her in the studio. She worked for a while and then turned out the light. She lit a candle and sat in her great grandmother’s rocking chair rocking gently, waiting for the painting to dry, and remembering good times she and her artist husband had shared in this studio. Now and then she got up and watched the painting dry. It was satisfying to do that. As needed, she pushed on a piece to make it adhere more to the canvas. Then, she would return to her art-centered reverie in the rocking chair.

She got hungry and ambled into the kitchen. She hadn’t really felt hungry in countless days. She thought, something is happening to me. She cooked herself two sunny side up eggs and two pieces of toast. After plating the food, she poured herself a cup of coffee and returned to the rocking chair and set her plate and coffee on the little table beside her chair. She ate slowly giving her stomach a chance to get used to the food and sipped on her coffee. She checked on her painting. It was progressing well. She always enjoyed the changes that happened in the drying process. She carried her dishes into the kitchen just as the first light of dawn shimmered on the hills which she could see out the studio window. She smiled, and as she did so, she heard a mewing that sounded like it was coming from her balcony. Intrigued, she looked out and sure enough, curled against the lap of the concrete Buddha statue she had out there was a small calico kitten plaintively mewing.

Shondra loved cats. She hadn’t had one in two decades since she had to put to sleep her last cat. She didn’t really want another cat but she couldn’t ignore the plight of little kitten sheltered by her Buddha.

“Hello, little one," she said softly, slowly sliding open her screen door. “Where did you come from?”

The kitten stopped mewing and looked at her.

“Would you like to come in?”

“Meow,” answered the kitten.

Shondra stepped back and waited.

The kitten didn’t stir.

“Oh, I know. You must be hungry. I’ll get you some milk.”

When Shondra came back to the door, the kitten had left Buddha’s sheltering lap and now waited at the door’s edge. Shondra placed the saucer of milk just inside the door, murmuring, “I am so sorry I don’t have anything else to offer you. You are beautiful.”

The kitten cocked her head and carefully stepped over the threshold and began lapping the milk. She finished and looked around. Then, with her tail held high, she padded over to a corner, sat down, licked herself a few times, curled up, and fell fast asleep full of milk.

Shondra closed both the screen door and the glass door to the balcony. She fetched a towel and gently transferred the sleeping kitten to the towel, stroking her ever so softly. The kitten purred her approval, so Shondra gathered the kitten and towel into her arms and sank again gently into her great grandmother’s rocking chair. The kitten cuddled closer to her. Shondra’s heart awakened and she felt an unexpected tingle of joy.

“You are welcome to stay with me,” she whispered to the kitten. “I am going to call you Joy.”

The newly named kitten purred and slept on. Shondra drifted off and slept peacefully with Joy in her lap.