Staying Alive

by Musetta Joyce--

Week One

I sit in the garden, surrounded by budding shrubs, and thank Mother Nature that I am so lucky. What Sage was it that said that ‘Our houses are for our bodies but our gardens are for our souls’?

While I’m confined to my home, overlooking Cork city in slow-motion, my husband is isolated on the Sicilian mountainside. He too is surrounded by nature of a different kind, while our eldest son is locked down with his family in their apartment near Madrid, with no garden, like most people in Spain and Italy in their high-rise palazzi.

It has just snowed in Madrid for the first time this year, a sprinkling that soon melted. In Sicily it has rained, at last, while in Ireland, the sun is a welcome daily visitor.

Being a lazy gardener, at this time of year I usually haunt garden centres for plants already blooming brightly. Now instead, while clearing out the shed, I find a bagful of geriatric flower seeds I bought over the years but never planted. Well past their use-by dates? Never mind, they’re worth given a chance to bloom before it’s too late.

The hardy seeds -Nasturtiums, marigolds and poppies- I add to outdoor pots and manage to find a little compost for the more delicate Sweet-peas and Mimosa Pudica, that sensitive plant that magically reacts to human touch. I gently press the tiny seeds into the black compost, spray them with water, place them on a sunny window sill and hope for the best.

Week Two

The Irish Sun is advising us, reluctant home-birds, to ‘Get out the Back and Tan!’ and Lo and Behold, not only did the sun obey its call to duty, but the cold wind that had been annoying us has slunk away. So here I am, squeezing the last of an ancient bottle of sun-cream, baring my limbs and lounging in the warm glow chuckling over The Dud Avocado just as I did when I was twenty.

Walking barefoot on the overgrown grass round and round the fountain, I feel like a nun in an enclosed order saying the matins or whatever they do in their cloistered convent gardens. Still, it makes a nice relief from housework.

Strega, my little tortoiseshell cat, who has known me for some twenty years, has been alarmed at my sudden passion for domesticity. Clearing, cleaning, decluttering, cooking exotic dishes that, once ready, I don’t feel like eating, seeking tasks long put off my priority list. She is delighted to see me outside so much. She loves to roll around on her back in the grass, paws airily flirting just like she used to do long ago to attract the amorous intentions of Clark Gable, the handsome cat next door who fathered her gorgeous kittens. Seemingly, outdoor cats risk road deaths, whereas indoor cats risk dying from stress. Only cats? Back indoors, I search frantically for something useful to do.

Found one! A Kefir kit. And it’s not even past its use by date. Boil and cool the filtered water, add sugar and the dried Kefir, cover with muslin and leave for 3 days. Repeat the process and in a week the Kefir should be ready to drink. Something to look forward to.

Now, all I have left to do is watch the cherry-blossom tree about to burst into bloom in time for Easter.

Week Three

On Easter Sunday in Sicily my husband listened to Mass broadcast by loudspeaker around the mountainside by a priest outside a tiny chapel. On Easter Monday, when everyone takes to the countryside or beaches for the first picnic of the year, Police are on the warpath with helicopters, clamping down on any roof parties and spraying anyone found on beaches.

Back in Ireland, Someone up there must love us, for the weather has still been consoling us. When did we ever get day after day with so little rain and so much sun? I’ve abandoned the extra housework and adopted a new regime: brisk walk up to the garden gate, around the back yard, through the lawn and back to the gate. Over and over again. Strega is dumbfounded, but she has discovered a plant I had brought back on our last day of freedom: Catmint. She goes into ecstasy over it! Sorry, puss, I wish I had got it years ago, but sure it’s never too late.

Meanwhile, my daughter lives in Kinsale with her family, roughly two kilometres from an empty beach and they all have been swimming. Instead in Madrid, my son and his family are recovering from the virus but still housebound. The children haven’t left the apartment for a month.

Week Four

I sit at the edge of the garden and gaze at the river below, with occasional ships silently coming and going. On the other side of the river are the tall ugly flour mills that I hear are no longer in use, and the former Dunlop and Ford factories, now turned into a business park.
 

During the last great Emergency, Fords stopped production, laying off hundreds of workers. My father, having had a key role in the assembly line, was kept on, while working from home. Not that he could do anything much by staying inside, but he would be called upon occasionally. There were hardly any cars on the roads, a bit like today.

My father enjoyed his freedom so much that, when Fords reopened and he had to return to early morning rising and long hours repetitive work, he left and set up his own business, which gave him a much more creative and satisfying career. Who knows how many people will find alternative and, hopefully better, lifestyles after the crisis is over.

Meanwhile, in Italy bookshops are allowed to open, although I know nobody in Sicily who reads books. I never thought a bookworm like me would marry someone who has always point blank refused to even try. But, miraculously, now, at last, he listened to me at last and rooted out a Montalbano novel that I had bought last year. ‘But there’s lots of Sicilian dialect with many words I don’t understand!’ he protested. First day he read five pages, next day ten and now he phones me every day with the latest progress.

Back in Cork I’m enjoying the latest Montalbano novel published last year, just before Camilleri died. It’s very challenging as it’s totally in the Sicilian dialect. Well, they say learning a new language is good for us elders, and I’ve plenty of time and few distractions.