Day 358: Life is Fragile

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, March 14, 2021

Every day there are new signs of spring in the garden, a continuation of the cycle I’ve been sharing on these pages for a year. In full summer, this small azalea hides so well beneath its neighbor that I almost forget it’s there. How fitting, then, that this little gem sneaks its springtime blossoms in before the hydrangea has time to fill out and dominate the space. The azalea’s buds are fragile, they are fleeting, but they are spectacular, and a reminder that life is always beautiful somewhere, whether we remember to look for it or not.

We have lived in such proximity to death and tragedy this pandemic year that all our energy has gone into keeping it at bay and we, the lucky ones, have counted it a miracle that the virus has yet to touch us. But with our obsession of all things COIVD, we can forget that life and death are always lurking in the shadows. We are fragile creatures. Life itself is fragile and it is finite with or without a particular disease. But it is also a miracle we must celebrate even and especially here and now.

Day 356: Luck

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, March 12, 2021

As luck would have it, I fertilized the soil around the ferns and palm tree just before the rains. Three days later as the sun emerged, I found a miniature forest of toadstools hiding in the shadows right where I had been working. Clover, too, had cropped up overnight — not the four-leaf kind but serendipitous enough to feel like luck had landed at my feet.

We need all the luck we can get these days, and good sense, too. Hearing the president say last night that everyone can be vaccinated by May made my heart soar - but that success depends on everyone taking the jab when they can get it, and following good practices until we’re all out of the woods. What’s that saying? ‘Without hard work there’d be no luck at all.’ It’s hard to keep doing what we need to do to get us to the end, but I’m going to keep my fingers crossed - maybe, with luck and good neighbors, I’ll be able to see my kids and grandkids this summer, if we can all just hang in there to the end.

Day 354: Trouble?

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, March 10, 2021

Dramatic thunder clouds are rare in this neck of the woods, so I’ve been enjoying their roiling ebb and flow at this, the end of a winter storm that has brought (at last) much needed overnight rain and a morning spotted with sunshine. And in the thick of it, the crows have been unusually flustered and vocal overhead, careening and barking at an enemy unseen. It’s likely that they’ve spotted the red tailed hawk that sometimes rests in our neighbors’ tall redwood, too close for the crows who claim a nearby tree their turf and nesting ground. But as I watch them dive and sway and circle this morning, it almost seems these fierce and fearless birds have taken on the clouds themselves. I’m stretching the analogy, of course, to say that I am feeling like those crows but less courageous - finally having some protection from the virus that has haunted us for a year now, I find myself suspicious of what trouble lurks nearby. Would that I could screech and fly and chase it all away. Would that we ALL could see and celebrate the sunshine just now breaking through.