WordSisters

Category: Perspective

  • Avoca, Wisconsin – July 2019

    The Avoca summer house backs into a hill on one side. On the other side, the deck juts into oak tree tops. A friend and I are eye level with squirrels. Equals. As if tree tops are our place as much as theirs. Given a chance though, Nature would push down the house and reclaim the landscape.

    I don’t know the deep rhythms of the natural world, but for a few days, I’m immersed. Midwestern summers speak to me. Lush green cornfields exhaling. White daisies, purple crown vetch, and yellow bird’s foot trefoil cascading down hillsides and overflowing ditches. Ponds greening. Humming flies diving toward my head again and again. Gnats’ silent pestering.

    At dusk, the day has barely cooled. Humidity blankets everything. The air is still. Near the edge of the gravel road, a doe startles then bounds off through a cornfield. Birds begin their call and response. When evening deepens to inky black, fireflies as bright as falling stars flash: Find me. Find me.

    Nature’s abundance and persistence energizes and soothes. I know all is not right with the world, but for the moment it feels like it.

  • Uncertainty Is Its Own Trouble

    This week, I expected to write about a reunion in Ohio with a handful of my graduate school friends. I haven’t visited with them in more than 20 years, because we live in five different states. I was eagerly anticipating seeing them in person. We would have unearthed long forgotten stories, laughed about our younger selves, and discovered who each of us is now. Last week, during the days we intended to gather, we emailed and expressed our disappointment along with our hope that we’ll be able to meet in the fall.

    Uncertainty is its own trouble. Especially for a person like me, who thrives on planning and likes to take charge of my life. It’s even harder for people who are missing out on milestone events: canceled study abroad programs, postponed weddings, and trips of a lifetime on hold. For certain dreams, there’s no do-over.

    I feel for anyone whose major life event has been short circuited by the pandemic. Those disappointments pale in the face of death from coronavirus, but it’s understandable to be depressed and frustrated by the loss.

    Reading and watching shows about life during WWII is surprisingly comforting. From day to day, people in Great Britain and Europe didn’t know if they or someone they loved would be bombed, arrested, dead, or alive. Many days, just carrying on with ordinary life would be all anyone could manage. No doubt, some people couldn’t spare the emotional energy for dreaming of a happy future. But others projected all of their hopes to when the war was over and things got back to normal. The same way we do now.

    These days, I remain hopeful for the future, but am learning to accept how much is out of my control. And always was. Tamping down my expectations is one of the lessons of the pandemic. I’m not planning too far into the future, not counting on anything unless it’s something that I alone can make happen, like writing, reading, laying out a new vegetable garden, or making a strawberry pie. I’m more at peace than I have ever been with taking each day as it comes.

    Will I get together with my grad school friends in the fall? I hope so. If we can’t meet then, we’ll try again for next spring or summer.

  • Time Suspended

    Ancestral Pueblo people, including the Anasazi, lived in the New Mexico cliffs for centuries. The view from one of their dwellings helps give me perspective about the pandemic.

    Whenever I travel, time suspends at the airport. I’m not flying the plane. I can’t control the weather. I’m at the mercy of the airlines and TSA and whatever rules they impose.

    So I wait. In limbo. Crowded into a row of airport seats, keeping my arms and legs close, pinned behind my roll-on suitcase. Listening to announcements. Unsurprised by delays. Constrained.

    Onboard, I shoehorn myself into an airplane seat. And wait. Wait to be given a snack. Wait to be allowed to get up. Usually, I accept the waiting, don’t expect anything different.

    Often, I relish the flight time. No one needs anything from me. I can watch a silly movie that I wouldn’t have bothered with in the movie theater. I read, write, or doze. Eat all of the snacks.

    Like air travel, sheltering in place is restrictive—close quarters, limited amusements, and out of my hands. I wouldn’t have signed up for it, but now that I’m on this journey, borrowing from my air travel mindset helps me accept this limbo. For the most part.

    Cosmic smooch

    In flight and during quarantine, time suspends. After an indeterminate while, we will arrive, and time will re-engage. Life will start up in a new place.