Day 133: Blessings

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, July 28 2020

The news is relentlessly bad and the virus still looms, invisible but threatening. This is a moment when worry and depression become rational ways to respond, no matter who and where we are. And yet, and yet…

My younger grandson called me yesterday completely out of the blue because he was thinking about the quilt I made for him a while back. He’s never done that before. We had a delightful chat. Peaches are in season, and the ones that arrived on our doorstep yesterday looked so perfect I made a tart with layers and layers of filo dough and tablespoons of butter. My husband looked up from his reading about places we might go someday and told me that he loved me - still. A book about women and their gardens arrived in the mail, a birthday gift from one of my oldest friends. I practiced my favorite Mozart sonata until there was nothing but music in my head. And then I went into the garden.

Day 131: Keeping Count

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, July 26, 2020

I was thinking this morning, as I tried to remember if it was time again to water the plants, that there are numerous ways in which we track the passage of time, most of which are irrelevant now in Covid-land. Sunday, I thought, that’s the last time I watered. But it took a few minutes to confirm that indeed, today is Sunday once again, and it’s time to get the hose out. Watering the garden, placing a food order, Zoom calls, and taking out the trash - those are the the only remaining regular and predictable events left on our calendar. Everything else is sporadic enough to be scheduled when we have the time or energy. Cleaning the house, for example, gets done in fits and starts and usually room by room. Time spent in the garden depends more on the wind than the hour of the day. Even our entertainment is no longer dependent on a timetable, what with podcasts, music, and video always ready to be streamed. 

Usually, when one counts the days and weeks it's because there’s something up ahead we want (or dread) to do. But waiting for this pandemic to recede has made us wary of any longterm plans (my nephew’s wedding, for example, was just postponed a year). So now we count how long we’ve been here (131 days), not how long we have to go; we count how much summer we have left (7 more weeks) and try not to think about being alone for Thanksgiving after that; and we count the days until there’s any hope that a grownup will be in charge (only 100 more days - please put it on your calendar, and please, please, please don’t forget to vote!).

Day 130: Standoff

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, July 25, 2020

There seemed ample room on this single poppy as two bugs landed side-by-side to check it out. I don’t know enough about insects to guess whether they were even looking for the same thing from these delicate petals waving in the wind, but peace was, thankfully, maintained. 

I’m stressing out a bit more about the more complicated human interactions in our cities these days which cannot, in truth, be called standoffs, not when an unwelcome militia fires tear gas into peaceful demonstrators and forces people off the streets and into unmarked vans. It’s scary. These are acts of a third-rate country, so it was little surprise to read that the UN Human Rights Office called on the US government to back off, and that German newspapers are publicly warning us of parallels they see to the rise of the Nazis a generation ago. This is what we’ve come to. 

After a little while, an extra strong, gust of wind sent these two critters packing and left the poppy free to do its thing. What will it take for our country to correct its course?