Ides of March

In thinking about moments that keep me sane right now, I’m considering what quells my fears for a bit. Loosen anxiety’s grip around my throat. Turns my head to a view that doesn’t include any monsters who disregard the chaos they leave in their wake.

I’ve written before about finding whatever builds our resilience and nourishes our strength. We are all called to do world-changing acts, contribute to the good of others, especially when things are out of whack as they are now. Things we do to sustain ourselves in private moments matter to keep ourselves going. These are some of mine, in no particular order. 

1. Making a home for Finn the wheaten terrier, whose training takes up a lot of our time
2. Morning coffee made slowly in a pour-over pot that lives on the back burner of our stovetop
3. Evenings on the couch with Mick, watching detective, medical, and mystery series of all kinds
4. Cooking for and with family and friends as often as possible, and lingering around our dining room table
5. Reading book after book – novels, nonfiction, poetry
6. Enjoying a glass of red wine while preparing food for dinner, music or news playing in the background
7. Stepping outside with Finn right before bed and looking up at the night sky
8. Waking up between five and six a.m. when Mick gets up, then snuggling under the covers to doze off a little more
9. Singing granddaughter Maeve to sleep at naptime after a lunch of buttered angel hair pasta – always pasta with this kid
10. Daily walks around our neighborhood, usually with Mick, always with the dog, sometimes with Maeve

I am grateful that I can add things to that list on a daily basis, find moments of loveliness that remind me the world is a balance of good and bad, unbearable and magnificent. 

We can choose which to focus on.

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It was five years ago that the world as we knew it shut down. March 13, 2020. Suddenly, everyone was at home, scared out of their minds that a new and deadly virus was killing people all over the world, threatening everyone but especially older people or people with compromised immune systems. We didn’t really know what we were looking at, didn’t know exactly how COVID was spread, didn’t have a vaccine for it, and disagreed on how to tackle a pandemic in a modern world full of misinformation. Many thought things would go back to normal in a few weeks or months. Tempers flared the longer lockdowns, distance learning, and remote work went on, dividing people into those who masked and those who did not, those who believed in public health efforts and those who did not.

I have a close friend who was on the front lines as a nurse in a Twin Cities hospital. I remember her talking about her face getting sore from being masked all the time, families of patients being unable to visit their loved ones in the hospital, how she took off her scrubs and shoes before she even got into the house so that she didn’t expose her own family to anything and headed straight for the shower. The suffering patients she saw should have convinced anyone of the wisdom of taking care and masking up and being smart, but we all know the rest of this story.

My granddaughter Camille went to distance learning and spent hours in her bedroom, learning through a computer screen, her third-grade self adaptable but probably quite confused about what was happening. And then her parents, my son and daughter-in-law, moved to remote teaching so that all three were at home in a two-bedroom apartment trying to work without interrupting each other Monday through Friday.

My daughter, an employee of Target but not at the corporate level, did not have the option of remote work. She had to show up and hope that she didn’t get COVID herself, because as someone with type 1 diabetes that could very easily have landed her in the hospital. She masked up religiously, washed her hands constantly, and somehow made it through three years of the pandemic before she contracted COVID. By that time, between vaccines and the evolution of the virus, her case of COVID was not too bad. 

I remember scheduling weekly video chats with both kids and their families so that we could see each others’ faces and hear each others’ voices on a regular basis without risk. Every Friday night for most of the first year of the pandemic, we sat down in front of our computers and talked to each other. And we figured out how to do holidays via video chat so that no one was at risk of exposure. I remember dropping Christmas presents on Abby’s and Shawn’s front steps and picking up gifts from them, then all of us getting online so we could open them together. 

At the end of the first year, we decided to discontinue the video chats because everyone was sick of doing things via computer screen. Yes, they had offered us a lifeline. And then we craved real time. Vaccines were coming out, so it was just a matter of time before we could be together again in a normal way. But we did a lot of things together outside and we limited who we spent time with, so that we could prioritize family time and be safe. 

My granddaughter Maeve was born during the pandemic. She was a bright light in the middle of that time. Her other grandparents and Mick and I all agreed that we would be the ones to provide child care for her, that it wasn’t safe for her to go to a daycare and potentially bring home COVID to the whole family. The arrangement has held to this day.

I had so hoped living through a pandemic and coming out the other side of it would make us more aware of the beauty and strength found in caring for one another. How disappointing that we’re not there yet. Here we are, five years later, and the world isn’t safer. Those things now making us unsafe cannot be deterred by a mask or a vaccine. 

They can only be deterred by us.

Focus. Focus. Focus.

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Finn sleeps on the floor near me as I write this. Mick and I took him for a walk this morning, one in which I ran with him around an empty church parking lot and let him sniff things all along the way. In the three weeks he’s been with us, he’s met everyone in our family and many of our friends, wagged his tail at every dog we’ve seen, and relaxed into napping anywhere he lays down in the house, belly exposed, completely trusting that he’ll be fine here. 

Granddaughter Maeve sleeps like that when she’s here, too – fully relaxed, trusting that we’ll be there when she wakes, and that she’s safe. 

To provide a safe space for children and dogs is a gift, one that feels like a little bit of magic. 

While Finn sleeps, there’s a coyote who thinks our backyard is a safe space. He (she?) lounges in our garden as I continue to think about this post, continue to tap on keys and try to find the right words. But the coyote proves to be a complete distraction, and I keep going to the window to watch. The coyote lays down, nods off, sleeps in short spurts. He wakes, glances around, returns to his rest. I remember others who have bedded down in the same area behind our wildflower garden: deer, foxes, a stray cat, an opossum. 

I like to think there’s honor in this coyote’s presence, in his use of our yard as a sanctuary or – at the very least – a good place to pick up a rabbit for dinner and then fashion a coyote couch upon which to digest his meal. 

More than that, I wish I felt more like my home truly was a sanctuary within all the chaos of our country right now. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I could lose it at any moment.

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Is anything really permanent? It doesn’t take a government shifting gears to alter lives. There can be tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, floods, crop failures, wars, and so much more. Our hopes for a permanent place to live are a denial of the very nature of the universe: constant change. But amidst that change are always small offerings of joy: the play of sunlight across a dining room table, notes from a saxophone played for pure pleasure by a beloved spouse, pink tulips blooming in a pot on the windowsill, a dog sleeping at one’s feet. Today is a weirdly warm day in Minnesota and I have the patio door open; I can hear the slap-slap-slap of a basketball from a driveway on the next street over. Our white pines sigh in strong March wind. There might be a thunderstorm tonight, one that cleans the air of dust and old winter smells. 

I think of the changing of seasons, the changing of life as an American, the shifting seats of power in the world and know that this is something that happens time and time again. Power rises and falls, people reach for justice over and over, mistakes are made, rules are changed. Right now, it feels like hope is a thin thing. But we still have our words, our actions on the community level, our resilience, and our small moments that belong to us alone. 

To fear what the future will look like is a waste of time. To do our best in this moment is not. I will sip my tea, write to my senators (again), cheer on my friend who went to the veterans’ march at the capitol this week, care for my granddaughter and tell her stories about strong women who don’t let anyone tell them who they can be. I will try to be that strong woman for her and her big sister. 

And then we’ll go outside and smell the spring air, listen to the birds, welcome another day with new choices, different battles, stronger light. 

I’ll tell her I love her.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com