Today is July 1st.  It’s the beginning of the year’s second half.  I’m certain I’m not alone in saying that the first half of 2020 was the most astonishing, disorienting, and scary six months I’ve ever lived.  It is simultaneously the longest and the shortest six month period I can remember experiencing.  And I feel pretty confident that the second half of this year is not going to be smoother or less eventful.  A bone-deep sense of being tired permeates my physical body.  I sleep like a rock, for almost 9 hours every night.  My legs ache walking up the stairs.  I just feel absolutely exhausted by the world.  The not-knowing is wearing on me.  There is so much uncertainty right now.  Of course it just points out – to me at least – how much of a fallacy our ordinary sense of control is.  We are never in control.  The universe has just seen fit to make that REALLY clear of late.

And yet, through it all, in this time of almost hysterical news, of fever-pitch terror and change, there are views like the one above, which is a photo I took on Friday night.  These moments remind me of my favorite book of the year so far, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, and of this passage in particular:

…it seemed for an instant I saw the world was he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.

Onward.

Mid June.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who is having the strange experience of time crawling and flying at the same time.  It’s groundhog day around here, every day, and yet time is whipping by.  March feels like five years ago.  I wonder if time will feel “normal” again and then I start wondering if there is such a thing as a normal sense of time – it’s all a fabrication, anyway.  This is a gerbil run I don’t entirely recommend.

Still reading a lot.  Read and LOVED An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and Tin Man by Sarah Winman.  I’m now in the first half of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins and finding it engrossing and entertaining.  I also read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo which was powerful and compelling and I know I have a lot to learn.

Grace and Whit have been out of school three weeks already.  Our attention has turned firmly to the fall and we’re all desperately hoping they return to school in some in-person way.

These are my favorite masks, and Grace, Mum, and my sister Hilary are all wearing them now.  Working on a family composite of us all in our masks… stay tuned.  I’m a  mask evangelist.  Wear. The. Mask.  If that’s what it takes to get the kids back to school, aren’t we all happy to do it?  Honestly.  I don’t totally understand why we are even TALKING about this.

As I’ve discussed, I find that I can’t remember things as well as I used to.  Some of this is just middle age, and I hope it’s mostly that.  I joke around that my hard drive is full.  And I realized this past weekend one thing it’s full with. Indigo Girls lyrics.  I was listening to old Indigo Girls as I drove an realized I know every single word.  To every single song.  For hours.  That is taking up hard drive space that I’d like to repurpose for other, more important things! (no offense to the Indigo Girls, who I truly think are poets, but I’d also like to remember, for example, what I did this morning).

This is week two of my peony share from Five Fork Farms. The gorgeous blooms that I pick up every week provide me far more joy than I can express.  I’ve shared some photos on Instagram.  I just love peonies, and love supporting a local farm, too.  The photo at the top of this post is today’s batch.

Matt and I are watching Ozark. I’m really not sure.  It is SO DARK.

I’m stepping into the class correspondent role for my grad school class (with a partner).  This makes it a hat trick – I’ve now been correspondent for my high school, my college, and my grad school.  World’s biggest sucker?  You tell me.  I love my grad school section so I am happy to do it.

What is happening where you are, right now?

I woke up with Yeats in my head:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Things feel terrifying right now, uncertain.  I ache for my children, who face a wall of questions about what happens now, while I at the same time feel certain that this time of dislocation will make them stronger eventually.

I was touched by an email this weekend from Harvard president Lawrence Bacow to the university community in which he acknowledged these disorienting, scary times and responded with a list of what he believes.  It was beautifully written, I shared many of his beliefs, and it seems to me a good way to respond to such universal uncertainty: to return to what we know, what we trust, what is right in front of us.  So much of this time has been, at least for me, a return to what I always believed, knew, felt, and loved.  A reminder of what matters.  Of course that happens in the context of a larger fear – now our country’s deep anger and racial divisions, not just the threat of coronavirus – and I recognize just writing that is an act of privilege.

Still, it’s the only thing I know to do.

What does he believe, and I share?  I believe in the rule of law.  I believe that those who wear a uniform and have a position of power should use it responsibly and right and those who do not should be punished.  I believe in the American dream.  I believe in science.  I believe in the power of art. I believe that sometimes the greater good is more important than what we individually want, and that now is one of those times.

So I will look out the window, hear Yeats in my mind, read literature and poetry (David Brooks was also wonderful, in my opinion, last week, and he referred to the way that a training in the great traditions of art can instill empathy and leadership).

I don’t have a neat conclusion here.  I just wanted to reach out to say I’m here, I’m paying attention, I’m thinking of you.