I know that the title of this post is a little long. And I know that it doesn’t really make all that much sense. But bear with me. I just moved across the continent, my life has taken some sharp right turns, and now sometimes I come home from work to find members of my family trying out new power tools while other members, dressed as Wonder Woman, observe them.
Perhaps I should explain. It’s not that she was dressed solely as Wonder Woman. She was also wearing sunglasses, a pink and white tutu, and gardening gloves. Maybe I don’t really need to explain. Maybe those of you who have young kids are reading this and going uh-huh, yeah, that’s exactly like my house on a normal day.
But just in case, let me elaborate. Last Monday I finished orienting at my new job. After more than two weeks, I got signed off on everything I need to make me a competent and effective hospice nurse in the state of New York. It was a very satisfying moment for me. I drove home feeling pretty happy. I was listening to my favorite songs, and finding my way home without Siri telling me to park in my own driveway. I was excited because the next day I was going to meet my new work team. That’s meet as in see in tiny squares on my computer screen for four hours.
Then I pulled into my driveway and I saw the chainsaw event and the diminutive Wonder Woman. Turned out that she had been running round naked until her Grandpa advised her that lumberjacks always gear up before they started chopping down trees. She asked what a lumberjack was. Grandpa elaborated: plaid shirts, boots with really thick soles, jeans and really thick gloves. She disappeared and returned in a Wonder Woman leotard, tutu, sunglasses, and gardening gloves. Lumberjacks could learn a thing or two.
I watched the inaugural bite of the chainsaw and then I drove up to the house and commenced unloading the ridiculous collection of hospice nurse supplies I had just packed my trunk with at the office. Suddenly my car was full of plastic buckets and containers. Plus endless other plastic plasticnesses that I couldn’t even really fathom a purpose for and just wanted to instantly set fire to in a really eco-friendly non environmentally threatening and yet entirely obliterating way.
At my old hospice, the nurses ordered patient supplies from a company called Medline, who kindly delivered them the next day to the patients’ houses. In my new hospice, the nurses have to bring all the supplies with them. My capacious trunk will be entirely stuffed at all times with adult diapers, bed pads, and boxes of gloves. Not to mention PPE. Supplies are limited so we have a complex system of reuse - paper baggies containing N95s we have worn and are quarantining for 7 days till we wear them again for a total of 5 times. I think of all the other times in history that people squirreled away their life-saving masks in paper bags for a week till they could wear them again. Right, that would be never.
I spend lots of time in my new life comparing California with New York. Seasons. The rhythms of them, they’re so much more pronounced on the East Coast. Take squirrels for example. We have them in California. In the Fall they scurry around gathering nuts. But here, there are so many of them that you constantly nearly kill them just driving down the road. Maybe it’s their numbers, but they seem particularly fond of running across the road. They’ll have a giant nut in their mouths, so big it often falls out as they cross. I thunder towards them in my Subaru. They freeze. Nut! Car! Nut! Car! I yell at them to head for the verge but I’m not sure they can hear me.
One of the patients I visited last week, a woman clearly in tune with the seasons she has lived through all her life, was of the opinion that the copious squirrel population this year means we are in for a long cold Winter with lots of snow. I was impressed, and yet I badly want her theory to be full of holes.
And the turning of the leaves - people have been banging on about New England Fall colors for my entire life. Now here I am. And they were right. Spectacular doesn’t even begin to cover it. One day, I’m driving along and there’s a streak of red up a pole. It’s ivy, that turns first. A day later, splashes of yellow. Then one day, all the sugar maples on our hill simultaneously change from bright green to yellow brown and every puff of wind sends a dance of leaves eddying down to the forest floor. I’m reminded of Masahide’s poem: barn’s burned down, now I can see the moon. Soon, there will be both more and less light.
When you move from California to points north, you realize that most of your clothing is made of tissue paper. Fine for the perpetual blue skies of the Bay Area, not so appropriate for a place where the word blizzard is an actual weather forecast. The trick to surviving my first Winter in snow, I have been advised, is twofold: warm underwear and a pair of Blundstones. Having now purchased these, plus a down vest, which I also cannot apparently survive without, I am feeling confident. Snow? Bring it on! I’m ready to tromp about in it in my Uniqlo thermals and my awesome Tasmanian boots. I may be a milque toast Californian, but I am ready to crush Winter in upstate New York!
Talk to me in November. The temperature already dipped down into the 30s here at night last week and I had to put three quilts on the bed. I’m determined not to spend the entire Winter whining about the cold though. I’m excited to throw myself into frigid temps, snow drifts, and ice storms. What I’m not sure about is the notion of skidding on black ice. The idea of getting stuck is also less than appealing to me. I’ve been seeking tips from my workmates, and even my patients. Cat litter. Apparently that is a thing you should have in your car in New York. Not in case you come across any cats who really need to pee, but in case you get stuck in snowdrifts. The cat litter will prevent your tires from spinning.
Other tips I have been given, entirely free of charge: when the ice starts, I should go practice driving in a parking lot somewhere. Practice driving? I repeated, not quite getting the concept. I’ve been driving since I was sixteen. Yeah, just spin around and around for a while till you figure out how to do it when you’re on the roads.
This is not sounding like fun.
Today I visited the patient again who told me about the squirrels and the long Winter. I asked her if she had any more tips, any further portends of doom. Appearing to relish the challenge, she told me about woolly bear caterpillars. Apparently there’s this breed of caterpillar that appears in the first two weeks of October in these parts. They are black with yellow circles. Sometimes they are furry. If they have lots of yellow and not so much furriness, it will be a mild Winter. If they are really black with very little yellow, there’s nothing for it: I should just put on a Wonder Woman leotard, sunglasses, tutu and gardening gloves.
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