Drifting...

... for Knots in the String.

I think of a feather floating on a wave. Or a dandelion, those delicate featherlets drifting on a breeze.

On Monday, the Day of Fate, I can’t work out whether I want to dream myself into flowers or the sea as I drift off.

Monet says: ‘I must have flowers, always and always.’

Equally, Jill Davis says: ‘The waves of the sea, help me get back to me.’

But then I remember the heartwarming words in Will’s Red Coat by Tom Ryan, where dear Will (an aged and blind schnauzer that Tom rescued) took his greatest pleasure from burying his nose in fields of flowers. He could see little to nothing – neither shape nor colour, but his senses pulled the beauty of what grew before him into his soul. So profound was it and touched on so beautifully by Tom’s writing that soon, the florist of Tom’s home town was inundated with floral orders specifically for the courageous little dog.

So I wander our house and find stitched flora and it reminds me that by the time I’m fully recuperated, spring will almost be here and everything will be a nasty dream well behind me.

(Astute observers might see a depiction of The Terrier in the left corner of this needlecase, but in many ways, it could just as easily be Will)

To fill in the witching hours at night as I count off the seconds to Monday, I continue to stitch and during the day with husband overseas, I meditate, I write, I garden and the Terrier and I walk and walk. But as each day is marked off, I get the jim-jams.

To displace the jitters, I haul a wetsuit top over my swimsuit, pull on tight neoprene gloves and step into the chilly seawater.

With that first step, any angst disappears as my toes curl. I utter a grunt as the cold permeates to my bones, nay, not just my bones but the very marrow! The water runs down the neck of my ziptop and I gasp again but I say to myself, ‘You can do this!’ And wonder if I’m talking about the swim or surgery, but I push off against the sand and begin anyway. Just an easy breaststroke. In a blink my head is empty of anything but the moment and I’m at one with the sea.

I roll onto my back and drift, the small swell rocking me, as I revel in being alive. The water is unblemished in its crystalline sparkle, the sand white and ridged from eons of waves rocking it back and forth. I roll onto my belly again and swim a 100 yards there and back, can’t feel my feet and legs at all and think it might be time to get out.

By the time I’m allowed to swim again, the water will have chilled much further and I shall be pulling on a full wetsuit, gloves and boots, but do it I shall and know in the doing that recovery is well under way.

We watched the Southern Lights this week, the Aurora Australis. So unique. How lucky we were that the sea cloud peeled away for time enough to be breathless with the sight. The colours vacillated across the night sky - pink and green and almost musical as if a delicate harp arpeggio could fall from the stars. What a small cog we are in this Universe of Wonder - it put things into perspective momentarily. I’m just a speck of dust in the cosmos. Aren’t we all?

I have to be at hospital admissions early on Monday, and my bag’s packed potentially for 7 days (hopefully less) - my computer for writing, embroidery kit, with The Wartime Book Club by Kate Thompson, and LJ Ross’s Holy Island on audio. On Kindle, I have another Antoine Laurain (of course) – French Rhapsody and an almost finished Light Through the Vines by Fiona Valpy, of whom I’m a fan. Comfort literature. With a curated selection of things to do (aka displacement therapy), I’ll be able to breathe in and out evenly, I hope. It’s part of the recovery therapy apparently… to prevent pneumonia and to encourage healing.

But let me tell you this: I’m not ready for what’s coming. I’m not at all brave. As they wheel me to theatre, my heart will be thumping, and my blood pressure will probably be sky high as I watch the ceiling lights flash above me (so clichéd, I know). I’ll talk garbled rubbish with the anaesthetist about drifting in oceans as he begins to put me to sleep. He’ll look over my head at the theatre nurses and offer a wry grin no doubt. But I won’t see it because by then there’ll be that wave-like roaring in my ears and my vision will fade to the black of night.

Prior, of course, I’ll have tried so hard to breathe the way I am supposed to but I suspect I’ll have to leave it to you to have a go for me.

All I hope is that I’ll drift pleasantly and easily into my dreamland and when I wake, it is gently, to see my husband as he waits by my bed.

A tout a l’heure, mes amis…

Music?