Spring’s slow roll, a New England phenomenon decidedly different from my Texas experience, continues to amaze me on the daily. The wearisome rain, persistently present throughout the pandemic so far, threatens joy in the way of the wizarding world’s dementors; like Harry Potter we find ourselves looking for chocolate frogs (in covid terms: sunny days) to relieve us. The rain, though, coaxes seedlings to sprout, to bloom, to flower. Our garage houses baby birds; our neighborhood continues to explode in color. Outdoors continues to be my best coping mechanism for these strange days.
Indoors, Facetime and phone calls and food prep and working at home build a routine. A friend texted me midweek last week (impossibly week SEVEN of this) “weekends feel like weekends again.” Indeed, they do. I suppose that speaks to adjusting to whatever this is, to letting whatever this is be what it is. Days hold enough space for tears and frustration and fears right alongside of laughter, hope, calm. Even as the world feels chaotic and broken, I’m learning that acceptance means recognizing that my life remains safe and relatively peaceful. I feel fortunate; I am privileged. I can be grateful for what I have even while I grieve that many have wholly different experiences.
No answers to the questions of how bad and how long and how many and who continue create tension. So much suffering. So much death. And still, there is evening; there is morning. New days dawn; their persistence reminds me to breathe out fear and breathe in hope. Last week that looked like deciding to go for walks to see the flowers. To watch the wind chimes my sister mailed me blow in the breeze, knowing in her backyard they’re twinned and chiming too. To sit across a blanket from friends and make the baby laugh. To watch my husband fall asleep on the couch, nightly, surrounded by at least two thirds of our menagerie. To bake and run and sleep and write and photograph. Some day we will have answers to the hard questions of this. We don’t yet. What we do have is the choice to acknowledge the uncertainty and decide to show up for our lives as best we can. I think anyways.
Hope you’re doing okay, friends. We’re all in this together, even as we are, for a time apart.
