Parking place

I've been caught in dreams lately in which I cannot find my car, cannot return to where my car is parked. I'm going up and down streets parked solid with vehicles that are not mine, with a sense that my glacier blue Honda CRV should be where I think I've left it, and yet I can't find it. The streets are near places I went late at night with fellow theatre people after shows in the early 80's. Or I'm on streets near the high school where I dropped off and picked up my kids a dozen or more years ago. Those kids are waiting on corners for me, Kurt in one dream, Eliza with Kris in another. But I can't do what they're expecting of me, can't make it work. 

This morning, as I whirled through the bathroom, putting in contacts, pushing my hair back into place, almost late for a coffee date with a friend, it hit me. Those dreams are about chaos. 

In other words, 2020.

I'm taking a few necessary days off from work, to slow down, think my own thoughts and clear out stuff from my home. Yesterday I cleaned the garage and filled the garbage can with junk and dirt and stuff bought fifteen years ago to fix twenty-year-old problems. There's an old bicycle and an old push lawnmower out by the garbage cans which I expect will disappear on Sunday or Monday, before the regular collection day on Tuesday. One man's junk is another man's garbage-picking prize or something else to add to the pile of scrap metal that can be turned into cash and used for rent and groceries. 

There's less than a month left before the election, and it's twelve weeks beyond that, I believe, until Inauguration Day. Then, I hope, with new leadership in Washington, we start to pick up the pieces and set things right after the four-year tornado of the present administration. I'll be dropping off my ballot in the next few days (vote yes for the Fair Tax in Illinois!) and then phone-banking this weekend to encourage Wisconsin voters to get those ballots in early. 

In the meanwhile, there's beautiful fall weather, golden orange and still-green in bold contrast to deeply blue skies. Warm afternoons in the sun this week, and early mornings and early evenings cool enough for wool and fleece and hats. 

The earth goes on. The trees stayed rooted in the parkway. I don't have to look for them to find comfort. The birds and squirrels, bees and butterflies go about their business. Yesterday a red-headed woodpecker made a brief visit to my patio, close to where I sat -- like I was seeing it stuffed in a museum case. It was a young bird, still spotted in places and tried to perch on the metal pole that holds up my grape vine. It's rusty enough to look like bark. The bird slipped a bit down the pole, then quickly flew away. 

It is hard to stay rooted, hard to stay grounded in these pandemic days.  So many things look the same in substance but are different in how we allow ourselves to live them. Restaurants, choirs, shopping, baseball games--nothing is the same. Snatched up by chaos, dislocated by the virus, whirled into confusion by the all-day onslaught of crazy news,  I can't find where I parked my car. I'm not even sure where to find myself.

I close my eyes and breathe, cool fingers held to my face. Shielded thus, I search for reverence -- another word for gratitude according to Diane Butler Bass. What is sacred on this day? Where is God — and God's greater and more graceful world — breaking in around the edges?  That is where I will make my home. I'll park my car. I'll be able to find it again.