Notes from my COVID-19 quarantine journal: Be careful what you ask for.
After 10 days of going it alone, the one thing I was longing for most was a visitor. I wanted to sit down at the breakfast room table and share a cup of tea with a friend. Maybe dig into some of the goodies that well-wishers had been leaving on my doorstep.
“Are you feeling better?” my wonderful neighbor Sue called to me through the closed window as she left her homemade lasagna outside the front door.
We both knew I would have to wait until she left the front porch before I could open the door and take in the blue and white casserole dish that held a new surprise each time she left it.
“I’ll feel much better when you can actually come in for a visit,” I mumbled through my N95 mask. But she was already too far away to hear me so my longing for company went unheeded. Or so I thought until I reached the kitchen and discovered a counter full of ants. They arrived, families on their backs, seeking food and shelter from the rain that was leaking in from an unseen entry to the garden window.
“What are you doing back after I worked so hard to get rid of you last summer?” I asked.
“You said you wanted visitors,” the leader at the head of the pack responded.
“How do you know what I said?”
“We were listening from the tiny crack in the garden window tile.”
If Lark had actually been a cat, instead of a princess, I would have asked for her help with the ants. But she looked at me with disdain and exited the kitchen leaving me to fend for myself.
“What happened to the raisin toast crumbs that were always next to the toaster in the morning?” The pack leader asked. I had moved the toaster during the summer ant take over.
After some thought, I offered them a one-time deal. I shredded some raisin bread and put the crumbs on a paper plate. They could share the food and stay until the rain stopped if they agreed to keep out of my office, no ants on my keyboard. They surrounded the sweet bread and nodded in agreement.
It was not the company I had been hoping for, but I am making do.
Email Patricia Bunin at patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Twitter @PatriciaBunin. Website patriciabunin.com
