The End of the Residency, Re-Entry, and Prepping for Surgery

Sunset from the ferry, leaving the San Juan Islands behind

The End of the Residency

Like all good things, the residency at the Whiteley Center on San Juan Island had to come to an end. This picture is a view of the sunset on the ferry home form the San Juan Islands, maybe the most beautiful sunset we experienced the whole time. The last few days included multiple seal sightings – and seal pups – and a visit to an alpaca farm where I was sneezed on by an overly excited alpaca, and an incident getting stranded at the bottom of a very steep gravel hill in a wheelchair at English Camp – which was getting ready to close for the year, unbeknownst to us – and a rescue by an elderly woman who was a volunteer park ranger from East Tennessee in an ATV. Also, many hours gazing at beautiful vistas, visits to farm stands, and writing on my latest manuscript. Do I have pictures of all that? No I do not. But I do have at least two pictures of the baby seal!

Re-Entry Can Be Tough

Underwater harbor seal

Just like this beautiful harbor seal represents a creature that lives both below water and above it, we writers have to re-enter regular life after spending a week just devoted to nature and writing, going to sleep when the sun goes down, no internet or television or social media to distract you…and then coming home. Not that I hate coming home – fluffy cats and hummingbirds awaited – but it does take a little while to shake off the glamour of small-town island life. Unpacking, getting ready for Glenn’s surgery on Monday, responding to a ton of e-mails, catching up on what’s been going on in the news – well, it’s not exactly the stuff of sparkles and rainbows. But in a way, being a writer during regular life is a more important practice than doing it under special circumstances, right? Because that’s most of life.

Prepping for Surgery and Our Welcome Committee

Glenn and I at Cattle Point, American Camp

So now we’re home and shopping for soft foods and trying to clean in advance as Glenn has to have soft foods and not lift anything heavy for three days (sorry, 17-pound Shakespeare!) after the surgery on his paralyzed vocal cords. We’re so used to me being the one going through these medical things and not Glenn, so it’s up to me to be the caretaker for a few days. I’m just glad Glenn had a week completely away from work (though he still managed to mostly attend his virtual grad school) to rest and recover before the surgery. That can only help a person’s immune system, right?

The cats and hummingbirds were both very glad to see us at home, which made the re-entry to regular life a little less painful. Also, I had the pleasant surprise of having a poem appear on Verse Daily a few days ago. And my nephew from Tennessee is visiting, with an eye to moving out here eventually this coming week. So we’ll hope for Glenn’s treatment to be successful so he can get his voice back, and things to get back to relative normalcy, I mean, plague years notwithstanding. (Month 20 of the pandemic, did you guys know that? I’m hoping that we mostly reach its end by Month 24…we’ll see. I hate making predictions of this sort anymore.)