It's been a gray day here in Illinois. The air is moving, tree branches are bending in the wind. Leaves closer to the ground are lifted by the wind within their own limited space, anchored to stems and twiny branches. Everything around me is in continuous motion.
As am I. My brain feels like that spinning rainbow or the circling dial you see as a web page is loading or a computer is searching for something it can't find and is stuck, in that way that necessitates a reboot or a restart or a force quit of the software.
It seems that I just can't make sense -- human sense -- of this COVID pandemic life. I am not wired for this.
Do I even remember what I used to do on a Saturday night -- though, to be honest, it was not much. But this "not much" is different from then -- fewer possibilities, less freedom, and always the questions about what's the sweet spot for staying sane while minimizing exposure to the virus. There are lots of things that people do that are relatively "safe": there's the long, socially distanced line to get into the Farmers' Market here in Oak Park on Saturday mornings. There are the young adults laughing and talking at sidewalk tables outside restaurants. (I'm old enough to be a little suspicious of them.) My email inbox is full of links to programs on Zoom from museums and arts organizations, but I despair of keeping track of such things and actually showing up to listen. And then, I fear that while listening, I'll be let down.
I have nodding acquaintance with three or four people who walk their dogs past my back fence every morning as I sit outside to drink my coffee. Cold weather is coming -- how much longer will I see the very tall man with the very little dog most mornings before 8am? The dogs will still need to be walked in winter, and their walking humans will be warm enough. Me, sitting in a chair, bundled in wooly things, coffee cooling too quickly in the mug -- I can picture it, but I shiver down to my sit bones as I do.
Seems like we should be homing in on some essential values or on the meaning of life, some great lesson from this pandemic. I don't know why I expect this -- or maybe it's only that I yearn for such transcendence. Life is suffering, says the the Buddha, echoed by other wise teachers from many traditions, including the Lutheran -- though perhaps less explicitly, in different words and wrapped up in theology.
A time for this and a time for that, says the wise author of Ecclesiastes. Time to sign petitions and support Democrats say my text messages tonight. I'm there, sure. But I am just one person, in one raggedy suburban backyard.
Last Sunday a righteous attempt to clean hair and gunk out of the drain in the bathroom sink resulted in a broken pipe and a twenty-minutes-before-closing trip to a local hardware store. I hate it when I start a simple project and end up in a mess, unable to put pieces back together. I am sure that there's some technical expertise, some knack just beyond my grasp, that keeps me from solving the problem and more important, feeling competent.
In hardware stores I waste no time trying to figure things out for myself. I march up to wherever the hardware store guys are hanging out, show them my broken part, and pretty much demand they solve my problem. And so it went last Sunday with the pipe, but I was dismayed to learn that the only solution was going to be installing a whole new drain assembly. Even with half my face covered by a mask the hardware store guy could see I was unhappy. He patiently opened the package, pulled out the new pieces out of the package, showed me what to do, gave me a couple of very sensible insider tips. He also responded to my incredulous-about-the-whole-thing face. It's only hard, he said, if you're frustrated and angry. In fact, it's much harder if you let yourself get frustrated.
It was good advice. Maybe it's something he often shares with customers. I don't know. But it cheered me up. Something about being seen and understood and called to be my better self. I went home and did what he said, and even without the tool he had shown me (giant, plumber-size locking pliers), the old parts under the sink came apart without too much trouble, and the new ones went right into place. For a while last Sunday I stopped spinning.
I'm outside as it grows dark this evening. The air is still swirling around me. There's cooler weather coming in for the week ahead. A friend reminded me today via text that nobody is super-happy right now. How could we be? When I look back on 2020, and maybe 2021, too, from four or five years in the future, I'll remember a long period of flattened emotion. Nothing really great, but much guarding of self to prevent being kicked into the hole of despair by repressed anger and frustration.
The trees that I see from my seat in the backyard have been my companions these last six months. A few weeks from now I'll be raking their leaves from the parkway and heading inside for a long winter. I'll be lighting candles in the living room, and doing what I can to hang on to wonder and freedom and imagination.
