It’s not all bad, even when it rains
Katherine Mansfield wrote a story called ‘The Tiredness of Rosabel’ about a young hat shop assistant, poor and fending for herself in a harsh world. Maybe I should be writing about the Tiredness of Moira, since being tired is what I’m best at right now.
I’m wakened by the early July dawn, and the cat’s small weight shifting on her rug at the bottom of the bed. Drowsy, I glance at the clock, relieved it’s not time to get up yet. Then suddenly it is, the alarm shrilling, the last hours of the night fled in a confusion of dreams. I want the dreams back, but can’t remember them well enough for recall, or for getting any pleasure from the night stories, always richer in their relationships than my real life, however complex that might be.
Then weariness overcomes me and I struggle to sit up. The cat tries to help by padding up the bed purring, because it’s getting on for breakfast time and her dish has been empty for hours.
Animals fed, I go out for my run. I was getting on so well, doing a little more each week, but now I seem to have regressed to the run-walk-run stage. It’s very disheartening. This morning, it poured with rain, not that that matters, but even the cows, gazing soulfully at me from under dripping branches, were fed up. In the field beyond the house the Shetland ponies stood quite still, as if by doing so, they’d avoid the worst of the wet. They too looked at me, hoping for a cheering word, but I didn’t have one today.
Everyone in Highland says ‘how are you?’ all the time. Usually I just say fine or ok or pretty good, thanks, but today all I could manage was ‘all right’, so that at work Lorna, who had asked, said ‘just all right?’ and we both smiled, because it was how we both felt.
All right means not all right, lots of things are wrong, and not just being tired. It’s the sort of tiredness that goes all the way through, so that the phrase ‘bone tired’ comes to mind. Kind colleagues say ‘you just need a holiday’ and that’s true of course, but it’s strange how the tiredness lifts when I’m in the garden. Then I can work hard for hours, hardly noticing the time. All the simple tasks of weeding, tidying, potting on, don’t wear me out the way everything else does. Perhaps it’s the solitude, or exercise in the open air. It’s like playing the piano or drawing – both tasks I used to love for the way they shut out everything else, needing absolute concentration.
Out of doors, peacefully working, I forget about the problem that can’t be resolved and won’t go away, that punishes me over and over for making a choice I had to make, had always longed for and needed more than almost anything else. It is true that you should beware of getting your heart’s desire.
Tonight I lifted the first of my new potatoes for the first time, and ate them for supper with chives and oatmeal, and a bit of salad I had also grown myself.
I’ll tell that to the ponies, tomorrow morning. It will be dry then, a fine day.