Rediscovering pleasure during these dark days

It’s time to look elsewhere to find joy to get through these difficult times

I used to derive pounds of pleasure sitting around bars, quaffing a pint or three, playing pinball or later video games, doing crosswords or sudokus, honing my karaoke skills, and listening to people, mostly old guys where I lived, fill the space with stories about the ones that got away, accompanied by jokes about drunks or bears. When I moved to Hanover in 1986, I hung out at the Queen’s Hotel with two Irish Catholics, Patrick Kiely and Terry Halpin. They made every day feel like St. Patrick’s Day.

There is a joke Patrick used to tell at least once a week which I told myself a few times in February to help get me through that “godless month,” as I heard it described recently by a kindred spirit. February held me prisoner in my own home as I was sick with a plain old flu or cold or both for about three quarters of it, listening to stories of other people from my radio with far worse conditions experiencing enforced quarantines under much more duress.

So once a week when I would rally for a day, I felt like the guy in Patrick’s oft repeated joke. After many Guinesses, an “Irishman” is walking home from the bar. He cuts through the cemetery and falls into a freshly dug grave. He passes out. When the sun hits him in the morning, he crawls up and out of the deep, dark hole, takes a look around and exclaims, “Well, faith and begorrah, it’s resurrection day and I’m the first one up!”

The rest of the days I was either bed- or bathroom-bound, too sick to work or watch anything, including the cats. I listened to the radio in the dark and became just well enough to work from home to save everyone from my germs except for my Beloved Renée, who eventually succumbed to my generous offerings of emissions. (For the record, she only had a simple cold compared to the dark days of illness I faced. Just sayin’.)

Not much of a movie watcher, I finally watched, “Eat, Pray, Love.” I had watched every other Julia Roberts’ movie as many times as I heard Patrick recite his jokes, but somehow missed this until now. It gave me so much to think about.

There’s Julia in Italy, not the abandoned streets we see today thanks to COVID19, but the vibrant scenes from old, sitting in a barbershop with her new friends. From the barber’s chair, Luca Spaghetti shouts, “Americans, they know about entertainment but nothing about pleasure!”

What do I know about pleasure anymore? I started to worry and catastrophize, one might say. (Well, Renée would say.) From the vantage point of my sick bed, I would never play tennis again, one of my most pleasurable activities. I thought of the pleasure I used to get sitting around bars laughing, doing crosswords with help from strangers and friends, talking politics, practicing opinions, learning how to debate men, some with influence and all under the influence.

Then four years ago my annual Lenten attempts to give up booze became a permanent reality and now the only alcohol I drink is on Sundays when I receive Communion. While I miss many of the characters I used to hang out with, bars don’t provide me with the same pleasure they once did.

I started looking around for the things that did. My guitar and trumpet, my Calvin and Hobbes and Charlie Brown collections, my Life and Time and MAD magazines, a multitude of unread Louise Penny mysteries, playing cards and “adult” colouring books, calligraphy sets and greeting cards to write. Now I seem to pass them by on my way to the computer or out the door.

I wondered whether it was a sin to pray for a self-quarantine for 14 days so I could reacquaint myself with pleasure.

Thankfully wisdom intervened and my heart was directed to the most vulnerable people in our communities who may have to endure quarantines in housing that is inadequate and even infested. This is no time, if it ever is, for self-centred prayers.

However, it is time to do more washing and less shaking of hands from here on in.

Deirdre Pike is a freelance columnist for The Hamilton Spectator. Hopefully you will find her less on her computer and more practicing calligraphy from here on in. In the meantime, feel free to write at dpikeatthespec@gmail.com.