As I drove the golf cart through the bottom gate back to Blueberry
Hill, in the bright light of the moon that was full less than a week ago, I
felt more grounded than I have felt in days. There was crispy white frost
glittering on every blade of grass and I could hear the crunch of frozen gravel
under the tires. I had just spent the last hour opening valves and draining
pipes because the temperature was dropping into the 20s. None of us had thought
to notice that until Jon saw the weather forecast on TV and called me at 10 PM.
He was apologetic – this is really his job – but I didn’t mind at all as I
pulled my heavy rain pants over my linen pants and shoved my arms into a
too-warm down jacket. I wore my dressier gloves, which ended up being a
mistake, but I hadn’t considered the digging part of the task.
Jon explained the sequence to me carefully, telling me which
breakers to flip and which valves to open. First I went to Parents and headed
to the electric box, turning off everything because I couldn’t read the words
on the label and I knew we didn’t need any electricity there in the winter.
Opened the valve at ground level and watched the rush of brown water but didn’t
wait for it to empty the whole pressure tank. On to the valve underground in
the cold frame – that’s when I regretted my choice of gloves as I dug through
the mud that covered the lid of the box and then again more mud that was over
the valve. I went into the basement of the New House (the house is
getting renovated so maybe it will be the New New House) and walked down the
fancy new steps into the basement, found my way to the pressure tank and
flipped that switch. Went to the 13 valves that are connected to that well
and opened them all up, calmly and patiently even though it was dark and my flashlight
was terrible. I even found the spigot that is attached to a random tree, one
that my father taught Jon to install in the original waterline that went down
to the stand for the first time in the early 1980s.
This has never been my job, but I do know how the water is set up
on the farm, so I am someone who is capable of doing this, I just don’t usually
have to go on my knees and stick my hands down into the puddle and turn off the
valve. But this time I had to do it because Jon is strapped into a
hospital bed, both of his arms with IV tubes running to various bags of
antibiotics or saline solution or a steroid. And the other person who
would naturally be called to turn off the water has actual Covid, in spite of
her two vaccinations. So it was my job this time and I was fine with that.
Jon had been in the hospital for only about 24 hours when he saw
the weather report on TV and was jolted out of the priorities that had allowed
him to forget about frozen pipes. We had arrived at the emergency department
the night before, after a series of uncertain decisions based on very little
information (What in the world was wrong with him? He could not get a breath,
but he had been Xrayed and EKGed and blood worked and there was nothing to see,
so he had been sent home twice from Kaiser.). It felt like we barely made it.
He could not get enough air to walk a step and was struggling to breathe while
sitting in a chair. The urgent care doctor told him to call 911 but Jon
didn’t like that idea. We would just get ourselves where we needed to go.
In hindsight, we probably should have let the ambulance take him.
However, we made it before anything really bad happened, so maybe he was right
enough. For me the hardest minutes were waiting at red lights while no one else
was using the intersection. And listening to him sound like he was drowning,
that was bad. We didn’t really talk because he didn’t have the air to talk
and I was focusing on driving without causing any more trouble. I kept thinking
that we did not have time to have any side disasters. I was imagining what
would happen if we had a flat tire or if someone crashed into us – then I would
absolutely need to call an ambulance because we didn’t have time to cope with
anything beyond the need for air.
After the hospital took responsibility for Jon’s well-being, I
didn’t have to worry about my role anymore. I became the plus one, just
company, the wife. I sat next to the bed and watched them work. Eventually
they found the pneumonia that was somehow hiding in his lungs and then they
knew what to do. The night in the hospital was disorienting because there
was nowhere for me to sleep except on a bench next to the bed, but I figured it
was just one night and then I would spend the rest of the nights at home in my
own bed.
I went home that afternoon to gather my wits and get some sleep.
Rebecca took over the role of plus one, company, the daughter. So when Jon
called me to tell me I needed to go out into the cold and do some work, I was
glad. I was glad to know just what to do.
It is stabilizing to know what to do. That’s why I like my work so
much. I solve problems based on a lot of experience and a lot of information.
Solving these recent problems has been way outside of my experience and
expertise. And while in this case I wasn’t actually solving problems (I
was following directions), it made me happy to have a clear task with a clear
outcome. I smiled as I closed the gate at 11:30 and looked up at the
moon. I was that happy.
