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| Struggling green, March 2020 |
Five years ago this week, when a handful of cases of a new virus was making the news, my husband insisted that I pack up what I needed and take the dogs out to our farm in Central Massachusetts for an indefinite stay. I had to head out there from Boston anyway for a meeting, but I had fully intended to return home after one overnight.
That was the start of lockdown for Covid-19.
My husband - a physician - spent much of 2020 and beyond as part of a specialized team putting central lines in ICU patients hospitalized with covid. He was adamant that I not come home.
Remember, this was long before we knew that PPE would be effective in limiting transmission of Covid. Long before we understood that Covid was airborne. Certainly long before any vaccine or any kind of treatment. We lived apart for the longest stretch of time since we had been married in 1988 because he did not want to risk me being exposed to the virus.
I spent many weeks in this liminal space where the days were all the same, worried about my husband. Worried about my adult children and extended family. Isolated.
In some very profound ways that I am still not able to fully articulate, I am not the same person I was five years plus 1 day ago.
My sense of how fragile life is has sharpened. Perhaps I worry more, but I also revel in the small marvels of my world: A green shoot pushing through thawing ground, the cacophony of birds clustering at the feeders, the full moon shining through the cupola in our house, the peepers chorus in the woods, even a surprise spring snowfall.
I take more time, both for myself and others. Ironic, as I know I have fewer years left in my life than I have already lived, but not feeling pressured by ambition suddenly stretches out the minutes and the hours.
I am more patient that I once was. Is that a natural consequence of aging? I am now 61, not 'old' (whatever that means), though certainly not young. And contrary to popular wisdom, I have gotten more liberal as I've aged. More certain than ever that what will make society thrive is ensuring everyone has the basics as a matter of course: housing, medical care, education, healthy food, clean water, leisure time.
In my naivete, I had believed that the world's brush with Covid would force us to see that we survive together or not at all. That my neighbor's health and well-being directly effect mine. That hoarding - wealth, knowledge, power - makes us less secure, less well-off. That we would learn to both offer and accept help with grace.
The world we inhabit five years on is not that world.
It would be natural, easy even, to despair.
But there is no future in despair and I am at my core, too stubborn to give into it. This quote, by a Jewish sage (Rabbi Tarfon) has always been a source of hope and comfort. I've even used it as one of two epigraphs in my latest novel.
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it"
("Pirkei Avot" 2:16).
I will hold onto what living through 2020 taught me. I can't heal the world's grief, but I can continue to walk this path with gratitude, with compassion, with hope.
I will continue to write my strange, earnest novels, believing that the right readers will find them.
I will continue to make knitted and crocheted things for my loved ones, imbuing every garment with caring and love.
I will continue to make pottery and find joy in playing with clay.
I will continue to tend our fruit trees and plant for next autumn's harvest, sharing the bounty with our community.
None of these acts will change the world, but they will nourish and enrich me and those around me.
And if you are reading these words, I wish for you to find what strengthens and feeds you for the work to come.
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