Here’s some coronavirus advice: Be like an orchid
During the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems advice has flowed more freely than the Mississippi River.
Stay home. Stay six feet apart. Scrub your shoes. Wash your groceries.
Wear a mask. Don’t wear a mask.
Wear gloves. Don’t wear gloves. Or, if you do wear gloves, change them often and wash your hands anyway, which seems to defeat the purpose of wearing gloves.
During the coronavirus pandemic, we’re also supposed to be creative.
Never written a book before? Go to it. Paint a picture, knit a sweater, make sourdough bread or raised doughnuts. Figure out how to weather the economic storm the outbreak has handed us.
Be productive. Clean those closets and drawers, paint the dining room, remodel the kitchen, plant the strawberries and veggies, make masks, work remotely, teach the kids, entertain the kids.
Be philanthropic and helpful. Donate to people who lost their jobs, order lots of take-out to help support struggling restaurants, buy gift cards or order online from local businesses to help all of the above survive.
Be introspective. Use the time when you’d normally be running around doing things to finally figure out who you are, who you want to be and how to get from here to there.
It all sounds so … tiring.
Me? I’ve skated around all that for the past couple of months and haven’t yet had the chance to feel bored, restless or housebound.
I’ve been recovering from ailments unrelated to COVID-19. That’s why I’ve been essentially AWOL from the pages of The Cambrian.
Getting better has been a fight, with a week’s stay in the hospital — mostly in the intensive care unit — and subsequent surgery. That sent the medics down a research rabbit hole until we puzzled out that the true mystery illness is probably unrelated and gastrointestinal. Maybe.
I’m finally doing better now, improving in baby steps day by day, even though the docs still haven’t yet definitively pegged what’s wrong with my gut.
Thank you so much to all of you who reached out to find out where I was hiding and why. Your caring and concern sustained me.
Yes, these are tough times in many ways, uncharted territory with potentially terrifying, life-changing results. But while we can’t control much of the random stuff that’s coming at us from all directions, we can control at least some of our reactions.
So, since we’re all handing out coronavirus advice, what’s mine?
Strange though it sounds, be like an orchid. Be content with who and where you are.
Obviously, I haven’t tried growing the finickiest of those notoriously pissy plants, like the exotic disa, subrosa, isas and tripetaloides orchids. They’re prone to yellowing leaves and falling blooms — the plant equivalent of a Scarlett O’Hara faint — from the slightest variation in proscribed care, humidity or chanted mantras.
No, for my plant-to-human simile, be like the cymbidium orchid plant in our tiny respite spot. That’s our Zen garden with its babbling pond, croaking frogs, lots of greenery and warring hummingbirds, the aeronautical engineers of the bird world.
Or, echoing the epic lyrics of Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry. Be happy!”
I don’t even remember when we bought the orchid, or where. Maybe the plant was a gift. That’s how long we’ve had it.
We water the orchid when we think about it, or when we’re watering the rest of the small oasis. Feed it? Yeah, I think so, but I don’t remember the last time I did.
The big orchid seems comfortable, getting marginally bigger each year. Staying green, strong and content to be a background note, kind of a floral backup singer.
Except every once in a while. That’s when the orchid puts forth great effort and springs into songlike blooms.
Like this year.
After I got home from the hospital, I had tottered into the kitchen for some reason, and looked out the window into the garden. I saw the plant’s first buds, hints that our orchid had a springtime melody in mind.
What a joy and inspiration!
Throughout my recovery, I’ve watched as huge, heavy spikes of nearly three dozen hand-sized, fuchsia-and-cream blossoms burst into full glory as the orchid revels in being what it is, where it is and when it is.
The orchid is content just being an orchid — and sharing all that entails with the rest of us.
Be like an orchid? Seems like good advice to me.
