Procrastination, The Dreaded Lurgy, and the Healing Effect of Friends

The ice woman cometh, and her chilly heart is melting.

The soft rain falls outside my open window creating a gentle symphony I haven’t heard in a while. The windows of my lovely little basement apartment haven’t been opened much since I arrived back in Canada a couple of months ago. The cold has been brutal but today marks the spring turnaround.

I can hear many of my Canadian friends laughing. “You fool,” they say as they read these lines. “It’s spring in Canada and just like that we can be right back in the thick of winter.” I’m aware that this is a probability but I choose to focus on what could be an amazing spring. Just as this thought enters my consciousness, a bird adds its song to the falling rain as if wholeheartedly supporting my encouragement of spring.

Regardless of the chaotic nature of spring above the 49th parallel, the weather will improve. Spring will bloom and luscious shades of green will burst on every branch of every tree I pass as I walk my trail along the river.

How much of it I will be privy to remains a mystery, however. Time is ticking as it always does whenever I touch down in the Great White North. I was only planning on staying three months this time, long enough to pack up my life here and head down to Central America to write.

I have completed all that I wished to accomplish in record time and with a good dose of precision, but procrastination has grabbed me like a bulldog with a chew toy. While I know that delaying the inevitable is not going to change my trajectory, I can’t seem to let go just yet.

My days are becoming kinder, allowing a little more fun and some rest from the packing, sorting, and selling that has gripped my life over the past three months. From South Africa to Australia to Canada, the journey has been a sewing up of times past.

Last week the reprieve settled in me with a gentle release. I smiled as I sat in the backyard listening to the orchestra of birds singing with gusto in the surrounding trees. The weather was sublime and I was happy.

The following day brought a drop in temperature of twenty degrees - yes my Canadian friends, you may now chortle - and an organized crime group of airborne pathogens decided to feast on my rested cells.

I could almost hear them as they took hold. “She’s resting gentlemen. Completely unaware of our advance. Ready? CHARGE!” And charge they did. Attacking my throat first before marching, millions strong, toward my nasal passages and my greying head. Thankfully, my immunity fought back limiting their invasion to a mere head cold, but nights were not pleasant as I tossed and turned trying to breathe through congested nostrils.

What my invaders had discounted in their attack, however, was the love of friends. Throat lozenges, syrups, and food were lavished on me as they threw their shields in front of my ailing body. Slowly, I made my way back to the land of the living. As I pen this piece I am still not 100%, but I am close.

My teaching schedule is demanding and I long for a break, one I intend to take relatively soon as I head to the Caribbean to write. My passion is calling to me and I intend to answer that call. Writing nourishes my soul and provides a warm and inviting place to quiet the noise of the outside world.

Despite this, I don’t want to go. My friends here are resuscitating me. The last few years have stripped away the person I used to be and I miss her. As if they knew this, a collective group of women have begun Love CPR, breathing life back into my weary body with each smile, hug, gesture, and utterance of support.

They have metaphorically placed their hands on my chest and begun compressions. A collective call of “clear” was followed by a series of shocks back into who I used to be and I can’t even begin to thank these strong, beautiful women. Many of them are reading this and they know who they are.

From offering me a place to stay to gifts of support, from dinner invitations to simple errand runs, from gifts left at my door to calls checking in, from words of love to warm arms wrapped around me, I am unable to express the depth of my gratitude.

To my warrior women, I say thank you. It is you that are bringing me back to life.

Please feel free to buy me a coffee if you like what you read.