I took my head cold out for daily walks all last week, determined to help move it along and out of my sinus cavities with some good old-fashioned fresh air and wintertime humidity. I haven’t been sick in over three years (as evidenced by the blister packs of expired decongestants I jettisoned from the medicine cabinet) and forgot for a minute how to behave under such conditions. Two negative COVID tests helped ease some initial anxiety and then I just got on with it—gallons of hot water, tea, clear chicken broth and the reliable Adamshick stand-by of refusing to accept that I was sick at all. That only goes so far, I can tell you, but I took it all the way to the edge and it helped, not wallowing in too much self-pity. Litter boxes still needed to be emptied, chickens fed, dishes washed and laundry folded. I worked from home for the first time since April, which was like remembering how to ride a bike for the first few hours attempting to connect our rural WiFi to my organization’s network. A rather bumpy re-entry but our stalwart and exceedingly helpful IT guru, Chris, got it straightened out. The added bonus of being back in Extremely Casual Working Remotely dress code (I won’t go into detail here, lest I offend with way too much information) made it a more pleasant week than it could have been.

We’re on our own for another Christmas, Patrick and I, keeping our germs to ourselves (he’s not sick but we’re not taking any chances of some dormant viral load finding its way to a loved one’s innocent inhalation across a festive dinner table) and enjoying the enduring gift of each other’s company. In the absence of the additional stimuli that saturates the senses when gathering with family and friends, we’re making good use of the rich silence that enfolds us. We have our respective studios where art becomes life each and every time, a kitchen that will need to smell like cinnamon at some point and an expanse of wonders that perform year-round just on the other side of the window’s glass, crooking their fingers at us to come out and play. We obey and are never disappointed.

It’s still a slog, though, composing emails through a thick veil of congestion, stopping in between coats of acrylic paint to blow my nose or chug the last warm mouthfuls of sencha tea. And…we achingly miss our families, the chance to create more memories within reach of one another and some excellent food. Feeling the weight of this, I try to recall what unfettered breathing feels like and realize…somewhere in an ICU down the road or in an overwhelmed city hospital five states away, someone else wonders the same thing but with far more tragic outcomes looming in the hours and minutes ahead. I reach for another Kleenex, the fiftieth one that morning, and let my tiny cares dissolve in bowed head humility.

A dozen or so years ago, I directed a cultural competency training program for healthcare providers designed to deepen their understanding of the myriad cultural layers to their patients’ health practices and beliefs. A key link in a long chain of impact indicators, this program set its sights on reducing health disparities by equipping providers with better questions, broader perspectives and consummate respect for any and all who didn’t look, think, believe or act like they did. The class discussions were lively and memorable, to say the least, and I recalled one activity where we invited participants to share how they treated the common cold in their families. We heard everything from gargling with diluted kerosene to sipping on warmed honey spiked with bourbon and one of my personal favorites involving a dishtowel soaked in tea, then wrung out and wrapped around the afflicted one’s neck with a dry towel fitted snugly over that. For maximum effectiveness, it was to be worn for the day, changed with fresh dressings as indicated by the wearer’s emerging symptoms. The common thread in all of these (with the exception of the honey and bourbon tonic) was that the discomfort of the remedy had to be greater than the symptoms themselves. If one eats enough garlic, no one would will want to get close enough to pass any germs. That’s as far as the research and development needed to go.

In my memory of childhood ailments, illness was eyed with suspicion if it coincided with a school day but treated tenderly nonetheless, with Captain Kangaroo on the black and white Zenith and a folding tray table set up next to the couch, holding mom’s nurturing best comforts: oatmeal with cinnamon and chunks of apple, Jell-O “drink” (warm and watered down so it would never set) and a couple of chalky orange baby aspirin at regular intervals. Science would say, “doesn’t matter. Got a cold? Seven to ten days, regardless of what you throw at it.” Symptom-altering medications don’t cure anything but make us feel marginally better until the next dose. I suppose that’s true and yet, last week found me on the couch wishing mom had set up my tray table with all of her curative, folksy love. I don’t think I ever asked how her mom managed things for her and my uncles, especially without Jell-O.

Being sick for any holiday is a bummer (an outright abomination if you’re a child on summer vacation) and home remedies or not, we give them whatever attention we have left, try our best and wait it out, reassuring ourselves that we can gather and celebrate any time of year. And while the pandemic has altered that view slightly or a lot (depending on your approach), it still rings true. Love is eternally elastic and does not answer to the confines of a calendar date. Patrick set his heart to a year-round giving practice decades ago and, lucky me, I’m cooped up with him for the day. Even if I dabble in fits of wistfulness, they’ll be random and fleeting in the face of his generous spirit. Family members are cheerfully telling us to get better soon and how fun it will be when we’re all parked in front of the tv to watch that holiday classic “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” with Don Knotts.

All I really want for Christmas, then, is what I already have. Pass me another tissue; we’ll get through this.

Epilogue: Around 4:00a.m. Christmas Day, my congestion loosened up and broke free, so I took my newly-cleared head for a walk. A young buck we thought had been tagged during gun season made a mighty leap across the field path to my right, a Christmas miracle on strong and elegant hooves. The shaggy grey sky threatened rain and made good on that promise just as I stepped into the northwest corner near the woods but up until that moment, I remained dry and could only hear the drops hitting a carpet of dry sycamore leaves curled and thick on the ground. Strange and wonderful, to walk in and out of intermittent showers until the skies let loose with a steady and most refreshing downpour, soaking both sweatshirts I was wearing. I made all my usual stops to greet some of the trees I have come to know, leaning my grateful forehead against them as the rain ran down their grooved skin in rivulets.

I can breathe again. I won’t take this for granted, not for a long, long time.