Feeling the joy

Trying to give myself grace.

When I met with the psychologist at the hospital a month ago, she went through a checklist asking basically how depressed I was, and the last question was, do you feel joy? And I responded, “I have a three-year old grandaughter”. I may have said it with a “Fuck yeah, I feel joy!” intonation because that is definitely what I meant.

Friday evenings as a rule, Ella (nearly four) is dropped off at my flat after school (sometimes we have had to reschedule to Saturdays, and we adapt accordingly of course, but it’s not quite the same). As soon as she arrives we walk to the pizza shop, where we select three (or four) slices of pizza and a (cacio e pepe) supplì of which she is allowed half (“the big half!”) on the way home. Back home we assess hunger levels and grubbiness, and decide whether a bath is in order. If the bath is in order she is subsequently deposited on the sofa in her matching towel, bathrobe and slippers, because what is being a Nonna if you don’t get to provide the whole set? otherwise we skip straight ahead to pyjamas (there may also be matching pyjamas and slippers here). We choose a Disney film, heat up the pizza, and then put it between us on the sofa. She mainly eats the sausage off the toppings and then hands me the remains, trying to pass this off as kindly sharing. Eating on the sofa in our pyjamas, watching an entire film from start to finish: these fall into solid “treat” categories, things that only happen on a Friday night at Nonna’s. And then there is a cherry yoghurt decanted into a pink cup, her parents being healthy and responsible types who don’t favour fruit yoghurt and only her grandmother being bougie enough to insist on eating sugary treats out of a nice piece of pottery. After that we always take the same two books to bed, and she reads Ten in a Bed to me first (she knows it off by heart), so that she might close her eyes while I read The Bed Book. Sometimes we snuggle and chat a bit before she falls asleep, sometimes she’s off before I’ve got to the end of the book. Sometimes I’m asleep by then too.

We wake up and get up around six thirty, which is a challenge for me, as I like to have a long period of coming-to between waking and actually being up: I don’t mind the waking up at 6:30, but the getting up five minutes after waking - that’s true love. I try to retreat to the sofa with my tea and coffee after I’ve given her breakfast, but invariably end up sitting on the floor doing the donkey work of building a castle or doing a puzzle, whilst Ella directs works. Sometimes we draw, or read books, sometimes she raids my jewellery boxes. Eventually we get dressed and walk back to her house, stopping off to pick up breakfast treats for her mother and my mother on the way. While we walk, both to and from the pizza place and going back to her home, we chat incessantly.

Every age Ella has been, I have found her fascinating and, as soon as she started properly responding to the people in her life, entertaining. At regular intervals throughout the past nearly four years, I have thought rapturously, “This is the perfect age!” But what I love about this age is that she’s such good company, and hanging out with her is joy, even when she’s being a pain, which of course she sometimes is (but rarely. And anyway if she ever is, I’m the grandmother, I just bribe her with treats rise above it).

In Italian, you’d say that I haven’t been living this past month well. As soon as I assured the psychologist I was doing well, I wasn’t. I’d say that my general personality in normal times is tranquil with a side of chaos. There are things that make me anxious, and I make sure I avoid them when possible. I am not used to living in a state of anxiety, and I haven’t handled it with much grace. People, including psychologists, acupuncturists, my nearest and dearest and even passing acquaintances assure me that it’s natural I feel anxious: my father had a stroke, then he died, then my mother got sick, and just as she was recovering I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Even when I think I should be more stoic about it, I have to agree, that’s a lot to get through in two months. Of course I appreciate that my current distress is explicable and has an endpoint, but it is still not much fun being in it.

But my life is full of joy, and I cannot and do not ever forget that, and I never don’t feel it.

In all the years (54!) that I have lived in Italy, I only remember two actual springs. I mean springs that were a season in their own right rather than a colder one and a hotter one smashing into each other and producing vast amounts of torrential rain. I’m sure there have been past springs, but not since I started seeing weather and seasons purely through the lens of what I wear - now I think about it, I’m quite sure spring was a distinct season in the years when I was gardening, and certainly the family garden reflects this, relentlessly focused as it is on spring-flowering plants.

Feijoa on the left, sage on the right. Both planted over 30 years ago and still going strong.

In any case, the spring of 2020 was a legendary one, particularly out here in the country. The wildlife wandering the quiet roads, the woods slowly waking up and filling up with new born cattle and horses (as they do every spring, whatever the weather, but being granted access to the woods again as lockdown started to ease meant that even more, one was aware that one was encroaching on the animals’ space). The weather got warmer in increments, the rain was occasional and served to refresh and encourage the green. Dressing was a slow process of discarding heavier layers and adopting lighter ones without needing to fret over feeling cold in the early morning and too hot in the afternoon. I finally understood why people get all excited about spring.

And this year has seemed the same, but I might just think that because I’ve been at home for most of it - although I do believe there has been a gradual, measured warming of the air, and a lot less miserable rain than in years past.

I have mainly been feeling horribly anxious and stressed during this past month in particular, but I can’t deny that I have found joy in the ordinary stuff of being home, and just being domestic. How pleasing to look at my ironed and folded linens, how satisfying to open ordered drawers. How very nice to have time to gaze at a vase of flowers while sipping tea out of my favourite cup. I ask myself if I have some new-found appreciation of home and doing ordinary things like unpacking a perfectly packed dishwasher, making sure that my plants are regularly watered. I wonder if all the events of this year so far have given me an exaggerated appreciation of the small things that make up daily life.

And then I realise, all this romanticising of the ordinary is only possible because I’m at home, and I have the huge luxury of time. I love my flat, it is well-documented that I love my things, but my normal life involves being away from home for 12 hours a day - luckily for me, doing a job I love which feeds my soul - and this whole slow-living thing just isn’t an option when you have a full-time job outside the home, especially if you then add in other people to care for and any amount of responsibilities. It’s easy to enjoy using the cloth napkins for a meal when you have all the time in the world to launder them and iron them and put them back into their place on the shelf. It’s not half as much fun when you are getting home at six in the evening and have an alarm set for four in the morning - then taking care of cloth napkins is just a chore. I’m enjoying the napkins now, but I won’t be beating myself up about handing out the paper ones when I’m back in the swing of worklife.

One of the things that has sustained me this past almost half-year, is love. When my father had a stroke at the beginning of January, our family just folded around him and my mother, and around each other. And around the outside of that were our friends, the ones who are family and the ones who are part of our daily lives. I sometimes felt - still feel - as though their care was a tangible thing, like an invisible gossamer quilt keeping us held and slightly buffered. I could say to my closest friends, I need you to reach out to me, because I don’t have the strength to, but I still need you. I could feel grateful for messages, and know the person who sent them didn’t expect me to reply. And at the same time as my normal pathological need to be alone is exacerbated by anxiety, I feel such joy at knowing my immediate family is so close by, that my friends will come and see me - both physically and emotionally - when I can’t meet them halfway.

On my bedside table: a little St.Christopher medal (blessed by the pope) from a friend, nestled in a tiny bowl from my niece.

Through all of this - all this feeling uncharacteristically lost - I am annoyed at myself that I am not more stoic. I am the person who has the drawer at work with the tweezers and the super glue and the safety pins (and luckily for me, I’m not the only one, so do my best friends, and they have been standing by with all the emotional super glue I could need). I’m the mother! I should be better at all this! I have been better at all this! My sister came out for a few days last week and achieved more in two days than I have in months, and I am so grateful to her, but at the same time I hate being this zombie person who can’t get anything done. I feel as though I’m leaning too hard on my daughter, I’m too absent for my friends. And I know that this isn’t really my fault, and sucking it all up and putting on a good face is not always the answer, particularly when you feel as though a top layer of skin has been flayed off you. I know that just as I recognise and hold on to the joy, I have to also allow myself a little more grace.

And truth be told, as soon as I got the date for my operation (this Saturday!), the anxiety passed. Now I’m just ready for the convalescence.

While I was writing this, I read this beautiful post from Xue about how she switched her focus to finding and recognising the joy.

The Month I Made Room for Joy