Devoted to the doorstep

Chronic Fatigue didn’t get the birthday memo

Chronic Fatigue didn’t get the birthday memo! I thought we’d sent it out?

A birthday is a happy day, a day of celebration, fun, games, balloons, cake.  Maybe a song, a dance, you can blow candles out and eat your favourite foods all day.  Get drunk if you want, party the night away if that’s your jam.

That’s how it is.

But what if you wake up that day and you can’t do any of the things you love. Instead of the dizzy heights of a helium balloon, you feel like you’re drowning?

That’s what happened to my husband on his 45th birthday.

I remember last year as we approached his 44th clinging in desperation to my word of the year… 

HOPE

And embodying that there was always and is always hope.  Isn’t there?

Even if it took until mid way through the year (2021) for him to feel better we could do it.  He would climb mountains again and enjoy life to it’s fullest the way he had before…

He would be better.  We would solve the mystery together.  I could give him absolutely everything he needed and all my love and energy and beautiful food and make space for loads of rest and cut through all the crap life throws and it would make it totally better.  Eventually. 

It didn’t and I couldn’t!  

I’m human and I got tired and sick and fell out with myself multiple times. 

Breast feeding a new born pushed my limits and I had little capacity or patience for anything out of our tiny family unit.  

Deep in the bowels of survival I got fierce about boundaries and energy.  I had to.  

The same lessons were cropping up again and again and by digging deep I was just finding myself knee deep in quick sand taking on other people’s BS. 

I let the front and back step get dirty (*) and sometimes my hair.  

But I’m not sad about that or feeling sad or angry writing this post.

Of course it is sad by nature for David and for us but being with the sadness as it comes in waves helps me know it moves through.

It’s merely an emotion in the range of human emotions we are designed to feel and it will definitely pass the same way rain clouds do.

I can’t live a life of waking up sad every day.  It doesn’t serve me as a mum and a wife and a creative spirit.  And so I don’t.  

This started as a post of recognition of how far we’ve come. How proud I am of my husband and us all for finding new ways through.  

18 months of pretty much unexplained sickness post covid.  Dark days and even darker desperate nights…panic, breathlessness, feelings of something awful is about to happen every single night.  Fatigue, fed up, broken sometimes but not all the time.

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash

Then summer and peace and endless light and realisation we can live this new life and our marriage might even survive.

As it panned out on the birthday day, we bustled the kids into the over hot car on a glorious day and had a nice walk in our local seaside port, gelato (ice cream) and GF fish and chips.  I bought a broom shank and pirate dress up for our son. (He’s watched all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies with his friends)

Dave rested in our sun filled yoga room with endless cups of tea and a few surprise doorstep gifts from thoughtful souls in the afternoon.   

The wind picked up and the baby fell asleep in the perfect time slot for me to whip up a gluten free Victoria birthday sponge.  Strawberry 🍓 jam and clotted cream generously spooned and smoothed into the middle.   I felt quietly proud and connected back to when baking was easy and not a full scale event haha.

I worried I’d added one too many eggs after our chickens presented me with four not three as the recipe suggested.  I paused and thought about the abundance then the science of the recipe.  I added three and then a few months later an extra.  It was a risk I wanted to take.  It was fine actually, it just took longer to bake.  

And I even found the candles instantly even though the kitchen drawers are more chaotic than we’d like.  

The sun shone. I planted giant sunflower seeds given to me by a friend in anticipation and in prayer for my beautiful husband who is living a nightmare and at the same time the most precious existence.  

I found the new broom shank I’d bought didn’t fit any of the four broom heads we have kicking about including the brand new one I bought.  

Photo by Jozsef Hocza on Unsplash

It was just another day but like everyday it is such a gift and a special day in honouring life is temporary and so are the big emotions it throws in our way.   

Birthdays are a celebration and we tried to honour that.   I must note Dave’s PTSD really doesn’t like balloons for next year as I enthusiastically let our seven year old choose a blue one to blow up as we all know balloons = birthdays!  

As I pottered down to the greenhouse I found two brooms with broom handles already attached.  

Ironic - probably.  Useful.  Definitely!  

Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash

(*) cleaning the steps to your home is a 1950s (or earlier) tradition I think originates in the North as a daily chore and a sign of “everything is ok, I’m on top of things”. 

If a woman (and it was always the women) wasn’t seen cleaning her step for a few days or the step got dirty you would know something was off inside the home.  

I know this and have searched for more references but can’t find many. 

For me, I like the task of a clean step (front and back) and regularly clean the front entrance way to our home and re-paint the white step each summer. I tend to the pots as it’s the threshold clients use most and it feels important. 

I notice everyone’s doorstep.  In the unique was I see the world I notice every detail on someone’s step. I make judgements about them and their life choices because of it. Maybe other people do or maybe they don’t see anything and are able to look past the visual noise.