On The Sunny Side

This piece is dedicated to my little sister. She is such a life line who ALWAYS answers my text and has been a huge help keeping things sunny as of late. Thanks, Trish.

I have an uninvited guest staying here in my old farm house. Covid. This guest brought with it a luggage full of fear, uncertainty and a quarantine. Don’t get me started on all the cleaning up I have to do after this guest. It would be really easy to go down a dark hole with a bag full of negative attitude. I’ve vented plenty about the people who refuse to vaccinate or scoff at wearing a mask. That said, it’s not in my nature. I tend to walk on the sunny side of life.

I could have made a stink on the day my guest arrived. I had my keys in hand and walking out the door to get a much-needed haircut. I had planned on also doing some shopping with my son for Christmas. Then the phone rang. It had been Covid and they were here, looking for a place to stay. I prepared the guest room. The appointment had been canceled and shopping put on hold. The doors shut and locked us in.

With a recently four-hundred-page book checked from the library I felt confident it would carry me through. My son had been happy to watch television all the days long. Plus, we worked on Christmas projects and I did some painting. I had plenty of exercise running up and down the stairs with trays of food, temperature takings, and pots of tea.

My pacing began on day three. The enormity of this took hold. The worries began to creep in and the ten days of lockdown started to feel like ten years. Anyone who knows me, knows I am a homebody, but watching life go by right outside my window made the walls start to close in. All of a sudden, the “what-if’s” started to creep into my head.

Quickly, I stepped away from the brink of it all because my son needed me to be on the sunny side. Kids, they see all. I could see him too.

Sometimes it is hard to practice what we preach. I firmly believe there is a reason for everything. Sometimes we never find out the “what”; sometimes we do. Either way when you walk on the sunny side, the warmth will fill you.

This morning I woke to find my farm wrapped in a blanket of snow. My driveway had been buried under six inches of fluff. Looking out my window with my much-loved morning cup of coffee, I saw my neighbor coming up the road in his big tractor. Instantly, I felt the warm tears stream down my face because I knew why he was here, he came to plow out my driveway. A few short hours later, his wife, our local librarian, came by with a huge bag of books and movies for us. She knew my son loved adventure books, that I loved a good Wisconsin story and we all loved Westerns. More tears fell when I read her heartfelt note. Another good friend called to see if we needed anything and checked to make sure we were all okay. We may have been in lock down but we were not forgotten.

I still have four more days to go with my uninvited guest, but it’s okay, because here on my farm, in this old farm house, it’s always on the sunny side.