I’ve been gone. I went dark on my blog. Truth is, I didn’t want to keep writing about my wounds and keep dragging whomever is reading my blog entries through my muck and mire.
So much has happened since I shared an entry. My last one was a bit of commentary on living in the dark during the power-downs last fall. Not for the first time, I reflect on the irony of those couple of months—we felt has though that was isolation! Another responsive reflection though is that it gave my little town of Auburn a chance to practice coming together as a community to make sure everybody had what they needed.
So, when March 13th rolled around, and sheltering in place and social distancing and self-isolating became a real thing, I think we were better prepared for having been through the power shut downs. Yay us!
In between all of that, life was really feeling as though I’d found an equilibrium I’ve sought and not had for some time. My health and strength and vitality — the things that I always identified as some of my core qualities—have slowly returned. I’ve been regularly attending a wonderful CrossFit class four days a week for a year.
Well, it was a year in late February. And, of course, it stopped being four times a week on March 13th. But in that year, the old “me” has at least let me know she’s still there, if still hard to spot. And, after a few weeks of literally drifting and wondering how I was going to keep myself accountable and fit, I realized that my sort-of daily habit of calling my mom and offering to bring the dogs over to walk was really something we both wanted to turn into a daily commitment.
So, for most of about the past five weeks, Mum has been joining me at 6 pm and we take a brisk 30- to 45-minute walk with three exuberant doggos. In that time, daylight savings has returned so we can walk later and we’ve gone from wearing fleece jackets to T-shirts, and even shorts a few days. We began by walking our two girls, Sunny and Sonja, and since then have added the puppy, Nelson, who was finally old enough to have reached full vaccination and immunity status, and is now enthusiastically learning all the lessons of being a canine good citizen while out and about in the world.
Back in January and February, we had a great deal of work and also a lot of emotional processing, as my father was deemed by his doctors not truly a good candidate to remain in independent living any more. It was a heartbreaking transition for him, and one that he resisted mightily. I felt, all through those long weeks, that I wanted to write about the whole of it, but, again, it was so fraught with emotion, it seems almost too much to make public.
My father is actually doing well, and in yet another ironic twist, since he was going to be stuck in a room for a few months, it’s almost a strange blessing that so was the rest of the world. He didn’t miss time going out, because he could not have gone anyway. I take a small comfort in that.
And, as talk of venturing out begins to seep into the minds and conversations of my friends and neighbors, my father’s wishes have been granted, and they finally have the apartment he’s waited for so patiently. Truth be told, they were not only his wishes, but my daily prayers as well.
With all the uncertainty and, yes, fear, that swirled around the events across the globe these past four months, the stillness and relative security in my life and the lives of most of those I’m close to is something I find stunning. I feel it must be fragile, and I even hesitate to speak of it. These past few days, the overarching emotion I’ve felt is sheer gratitude.
In the darkest hours of the night, I wake from dreams that I know are the product of the never-before-experience of the entire human race, stopping; holding its breath; and keeping silent as though stepping out of the path of a spectre just as it nearly engulfs us whole. Quietly, we freeze, hoping it has not seen us, and will not return.
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