May 2020 BBC Wildlife 47
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The rst breath I take as I walk into
the garden elicits a tiny gasp, as it
lines my mouth with a newness
that spring dawns create.
I know very well that I must make
every day count. We must all make
every day count.
Dressed, I slump against the kitchen
worktop and swipe my mobile open,
tap on the ‘notes’ file and scroll down
to a page that I now need more than
most people need a morning caffeine
hit. I can recite it verbatim anyway,
but for the sake of the exercise I read a
passage from Paul Bowles’ 1949 novel
The Sheltering Sky. I’ve depended upon
it when I’ve been really low, when I
needed to be sharply reminded of my
fragile mortality. I re-read it when I need
some clinical perspective. Here it is...
“Death is always on the way, but
the fact that you don’t know when it
will arrive seems to take away from
the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible
precision that we hate so much. But
because we don’t know, we get to think
of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet
everything happens a certain number
of times, and a very small number,really. How many more times will
you remember a certain afternoon
of your childhood, some afternoon
that’s so deeply a part of your being
that you can’t even conceive of your
life without it? Perhaps four or five
times more. Perhaps not even. How
many more times will you watch the
full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet
it all seems limitless.”Staying connected
I close the phone and turn on BBC
Breakfast and, thanks to COVID-19,
that passage attains even more
relevance. The news is grim. I’m
worried about my dad – that bloke
who bought me books, took me to
museums and drove me to nature
reserves on those certain afternoons
of my childhood, to peer through the
binoculars he’d bought me with the
last of his wages. He’s vulnerable.
He’s got a suite of pre-existing
conditions. He mustn’t go out.