I was in my greenhouse this very morning, watering away when a certain mishap occurred with a hose, a wheelchair and God knows what else. In any case, the watering of plants in a greenhouse is not without precedent, so this does not require an elaborate description. Still, a meticulous account of things might reveal exactly how the ridiculous occurred.

But, damned if I’m not digressing. Or, more accurately deflecting. It was a small thing that revealed a big thing. OK? Ready for the big news?

My greenhouse hose is collapsible. With water, it expands. Without it, the hose contracts. Somehow, in the course of things, I was dragging amid expansion and contraction, water flying around tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, basil, and so on…and the labile hose got jammed between the wheelchair’s front tire and its anti-tip tiny front wheel.

Which means what? Well, it could mean that I was ensnared in the greenhouse and unable to get free. Without ripping the hose apart. And I must say that the latter occurred to me. And of course I didn’t have my cell phone, did I? So a moment of angry panic ensued. How could I be so stupid? Was I going to have to yell for Jane? And note that the latter is a considerable challenge. Jane was upstairs at that very moment cooking waffles. At which she is very good, I must add. Greenhouses are designed to be sealed, not only from wind and rain/drought, but sound, inadvertently. So there you have it. A perfect, and rather unpleasant storm of fate.

My reaction? More panic and anger followed by an attempt to calm myself down. The latter was essential. Because a moment of calm and an examination of the mechanical principles quickly showed that by pressing down on the hose and rolling forward the wheelchair would naturally untangle itself. This occurred. Freedom. End of self-recrimination. Beginning of the rest of my life, admittedly shortening at a rapid pace. Never mind.

My independence is on the brink. That’s all there is to it. I have lost just enough neurological function here and there to suddenly make me much more dependent, and damned if I’m going to put up with this without a fight. And the problem, of course, is that there’s no fighting it. So what to do, but get angry again and again?

And another thing. Speaking of getting angry, what am I to make of my fellow countrymen? The anti-VAXers are making things worse, encouraging COVID-19 to further mutate and so on and so on. Everyone knows this. But no, they don’t. And all kidding aside, what is one to do? Getting angry at these people doesn’t help. It just drives them further into their clans. I don’t know. But if there is any lesson to the current pandemic it is that we are all interdependent. There’s no solution without a collective solution. Which means dialogue. And frankly I am all dialogued out. I would conclude with the not terribly helpful suggestion to stay tuned. But actually there’s no reason to conclude. Yet this is what one has to do now, constantly. Stay tuned in. Listen. Be receptive. Wait and, yes, pray.