everyday life

Just revisited this post which was almost exactly a year ago.  The longest and shortest year of my life.  Time is flying and crawling.  Was then and still is.  I find it remarkable that at the end of March 2020 I described hope.  I feel hope now and it feels new.  I do feel like I’m hitting the wall these last few weeks – I don’t know precisely why, but probably the accumulation of these fast-and-slow weeks.  Anyway.  No neat message. Nothing specific to say. All of that is still true.  But, also, still here.  And hoping you are too.

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I am still here.  I hope you are too.  This is a strange, echoing, eerie time, one of lamentation and hope, one of fear and frustration, one that is, for me, about most of all a profound confrontation with the unknown.  I really don’t have anything to say.  But I want to be here.  I’m hungrily devouring anything anyone’s sharing about their experience of this time out of time. I’m curious about what you’re feeling, thinking, reading, eating.  We are all at home, and I am certain that in the future one of the themes of writing about this time will be empty nesters suddenly finding themselves with full nests again.

That is surely the silver lining of this, if there is one: prodigious amounts of family time.  Both Grace and Whit have classes most days (but not all) and they are doing a good job managing their schedules.  I am adamantly not a homeschooler and I feel grateful that they are old enough to handle this themselves.  Both Matt and I are working at home.  I quipped in the first week that I must be one of the only people experiencing this quarantine as MORE people in their office.  I have three other people in my office all day, every day.  It’s noisier and messier than I’m used to.  We are going through food and laundry at a record pace.

And we are so replete with blessings, I know that.  There are more ways than I can possibly count that this could be worse.  So far the four of us, and my mother, who lives nearby and with whom we are practicing social distancing but still in close touch, are all safe.  We are able to work from here.  I am so, so lucky.  We all know it.  I even had a moment last week of knowledge that there will come a time when I miss these days.  I told Matt and about it and he laughed at me because it was such a classic thing to say.  That’s just how I live in this world: shadowed always by the anticipation of loss and of missing.  But I tried to channel that into being here now.

It’s not easy.  I feel a huge amount of fear.  What does this mean, in every way?  What will the world look like “after”?  Will there even BE an after?  I am buoyed by my close friends and family and actually feel MORE in touch with a lot of people than I have in a long time.  But every day, multiple times a day, the questions start to come.  They wake me up in the middle of the night.  There is so much that is unknown, and that’s always been the hardest thing for me.

So I don’t have a neat message here.  I don’t have anything specific I want to say.  I would love to hear what’s on your mind, your kindle, your TV, your heart, your table.  I really would.  Stay safe.  Stay home.

Update from this part of the woods.

These are long dark days, there’s no question about that. But I can see the light staying longer every afternoon and vaccines are happening and I can’t help feeling some measure of optimism mixed in with my exhaustion. Photo by Crate Escape, where Phoebe is currently enjoying her second day. She LOVES it and we are grateful to have such a wonderful place in our neighborhood.

Grace is going to class with the windows open and Whit is doing drivers Ed with the car windows down. It had been very cold the last few days. These feel like such 2021 details and I’m hugely conscious of our good fortune that she’s in class and he’s taking driving lessons at all!

I’m dealing with a creaky hip and seized-up back (middle age is so glamorous) and Matt is doing great. Time is flying even as it inches forward, groundhog-day-like. Phoebe brings us all so much joy and I can barely remember life before her.

How is your February going? #everydaylife #february

I’ve posted these candles on this day before.  This photo was taken right after the winter solstice in 2011, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  I love this light and this darkness. I love how the Coco Luxe Melts into the whole darkness. I’ve written a lot over the years about the solstice, about shadows and the holiness of this day.  For many years my family celebrated the winter solstice, a tradition I’ve shared before.

This weekend I read and loved a glorious piece in the New York Times called How We Survive Winter.  I shared it with several friends and with my mother and sister and then I woke up to the best compliment this morning, when people I trust and loved sent it to me saying “this reminded me of you.”  I love this piece.  My favorite line is:

It is precisely at the point that the night is longest and darkest that you’ve actually turned a corner.

Has there ever been a solstice where we’ve longed more passionately for a sign that the light is coming back?  For me, there has not.  I don’t have any insights here, only an exhortation to read the beautiful Times piece and to know, deep in your bones, that we are turning towards the light.  In ways literal and metaphoric, we are.

My favorite photo from the last Solstice Ball.  My parents are just out of the frame, holding candles also.