The Wind In The Trees

Who needs to go away, my garden this morning

It’s Sunday morning and my first lie in for ages.

I watched YouTube and Tictok videos with Dorothy’s head on my chest until the twentieth ping of my phone galvanised me into action. 

I knew who was pinging messages, it was answers to The Velvet Voiced Linda, who runs the community Wardens group. Her weekly check ins during lockdown have been a constant during cloudier times 

And it’s fitting that the warden group no longer needs such a sweet natured manager.

I had bagels and eggs for breakfast with lots of coffee, and after watering them, I put some of the house plants out into the sun for a warm

I’ve been listening to the delightful Amanda Khozi Mukwashi on Desert Island Discs and one of her childhood memories sparked an old one of mine.

Her memory, so eloquently told, was of her grandfather who allayed her childhood  fears when walking in a wood by saying the noises of the trees in the wind was of them joking to each other about how she jumped to their “voices”. 

When I was a staff nurse on the mother and baby unit at Bootham Park Hospital in York, I remember a patient called Zara who was incredibly poorly with Postpartum psychosis.

She was heavily medicated , slept for long, long periods and had to be supervised when caring for her newborn daughter at all times , but , daily, and in all weathers , she would ask to sit outside on a small bench where she would enjoy a cigarette and look out on the long , tree lined drive leading to Bootham Bar , one of the ancient Roman gates to the City of York.

I took my fair share of sits on that bench. 

Trying to engage Zara’s waxy, and frozen countenance with snippets of small talk and bland efforts at reality orientation.  

But she would stare at the giant horse chestnuts and take a draw on her cigarette and say little to nothing as her arms grew stiffer under the surges of phenothiazines as they kicked in.

One afternoon, after crying silent tears on the ward, Zara Sat with me on the bench without her cigarettes, it was breezy and the wind through the trees had made several conker cases fall onto the grass field in front of the hospital.

I caught her half smiling as they did so and I asked her what was on her mind

The trees know I’m so sad and are sending me gifts to help heal me she told me seriously and her face sort of lit up beneath the drug mask

I watched her smile and was moved.....

And for once I wasn’t going to divert her from her delusion 

As comforting as it was