This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.
'Do you feel up to walking to the cricket pitch?'
'I think so,' I reply to my partner as I lock the door, my walking stick still inside.
The last month has brought some ease into my life. Brain fog is not such a strong component of my days. Fatigue remains in my body but its hold lessens.
We walk down the street and I remember my mom's words from my brief time in France a couple of week ago. Walking slow exacerbates heavy legs. It makes sense and yet I've never thought about it, but walking anything faster than snail pace still feels a momentous task. My body may be capable of it but my brain is hot wired to fear my heart beat rising. I tentatively quicken my pace, slowly.
We cross the road full of cars diverted from the main road. The council is building cycle paths and footpaths after years of pedestrians and cyclists squeezing by the hedgerows in search of so-called safety. The noise of speeding cars reverberate in my ears. For a brief moment I am in pain but I know the cricket pitch will soon come up.
We walk past the pub, past the apple tree laden with fruits, past the young chestnut tree whose leaves are already fading to yellows and browns, past the nursery, and finally turn into the car park where the kebab van resides all year around.
We walk along the concrete expanse that holds cars and a playground at the edge of the road before we disappear behind the cricket club building and enter the large not quite circle vastness of the cricket pitch. The cars dim to a mumble.
I slip out of my sandals and spread my toes in a patch of still supple damp wet grass. There is no game today and we can cross the grass in a straight line to the one usable bench. We settle in the shade of the trees and open our books. Kids and teenagers whack cricket balls high in the air. One of them disappears behind the locked gates of the bowls club.
A dove flies above, alone in the sky. I seek the olive branch of peace but their beak is resolutely empty. I watch faint drifts of white clouds and breathe in the cooling air of evening. Everything is still around us. Leaves, flowers, and fruits no longer grow in a frenzy. I love the exhaustion of late summer's evenings. The world has released a sigh after the heat of the day and folks spread across parks and gardens to relax after a day of work. I am doing just the same, glad to have been able to reach the cricket pitch.
In the days that follow I repeat the exercise. My partner and I leave the house before dinner. We walk to the end of the street, often to the cricket pitch too. I leave my walking stick inside, attempt to quicken my pace, to tell my brain things are okay. All the while my brains screams that I am a fool, that this is a fluke and I will relapse into full fatigue any seconds now. A part of me believes this, but another part of me fights against it. I cannot know what will happen. This may well be a fluke but it could also be a permanent change, one in which I am once again a little more of this world, and whilst this lasts, whilst this grows, I intend to enjoy it.