Healing With Ivy

Overly familiar with her defiance patterns of fetal alcohol confusion, neuro-systemic habits of resistance, I, the consummate ecofeminist, was sure my daughter felt I was shutting wounded Ivy out when she wanted me to enter her toxic on-line stream of Sponge Bob consciousness When she came to me, in self-care mode, while I was meditating reading reflecting writing breathing deeply in, then out One gasp for hope at a new pandemic time, searching for one hour without unmitigated despair at this unhealthy contagion time, one calming day at a time, one therapeutic glimpse at a week, one unimaginable month, one lifetime of a year, One retiring stage, one quickly ancient life, one emerging seamless love at this time. In exasperation with her insistent interruption in my sacred space, I exclaimed "Ivy, I can't take care of you if you won't let me take care of me!" To which she replied, "Can I sit here quietly next to you?" I was skeptical, cynical about cooperative deep breathing with screaming screen-time Ivy, but "You may, if you can" And so she did sit next to me at the head of my bed where her paraplegic brother slept post-seizure, She leaned her black curled head against my old white man shoulder peacefully breathing side by side And that is how we resiliently entered into this passing evolving rising and falling, erupting and disrupting pandemic of Earth's green and sacred virally emergent health care.