Spring’s presence populates the outdoors in full-force now, a steady beauty arriving, this year, when most needed. This is true every year, when the cold leaves New England exhausted- too many layers of clothes, too much wind and mud. Now the craving for sunshine and new life takes on greater depth. We need green grass and blue skies and birdsong to rescue us. News feeds are dark and drab; every day, more death. Spring, then, an antidote. So we worked some and played some and mostly stayed home, minus walks or runs, a trip to the pharmacy and the grocery. Now with expectations adjusted, in some ways things feel easier. We’ve worked on budgeting and meal planning; we’ve reconciled a slower life for the time being.
I’m aware we are fortunate. My home is safe. The town where I live provides ample access to necessities and outdoor space. My family remains healthy. Days pass with a decent amount of relative ease, of peace. Night falls, though, and the odds are about fifty-fifty on more than four hours of sleep. Because the every day, in my little world, goes on with some discomfort and inconvenience- not ideal. But I know many, many others’ similarly sized worlds are shattered with immeasurable loss. Said losses came closer this week- friends of friends, a friend of my grandma; colleagues are sick. The insomnia, I think, a right response to the world’s collective grief.
One day at a time is really the only way through, with each of us essential to seeing the pandemic curve flattened. One afternoon we walked the few blocks to friends’ house, a normal enough occurrence. We took excess butternut squash we had, knowing their baby would eat it. They gave us flour, knowing we’d run out. Ty and I stood on their back patio, well away from the back porch where Al and Lisa stood to greet us. We ended up talking for the better part of an hour, an abnormality of normalcy. This is the present tense at least for now. Good days. Bad days. Abnormally normal days. New and different even as they’re very much the same. We’re all in this together, even as we are, for a time, apart.
