Linnetontheleaf

…was the last normal day of my life. On the evening of January 28, as I was walking home from the train in the dark, I fell and broke my jaw. That was a literal break with my life up until then, a traumatic event which changed me in ways I am still discovering. But that was not enough — at about the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived on our shores, and my region went into fearful lockdown six weeks later. One year of altered existence has passed. When it all began, none of us (except possibly Dr. Fauci!) had any idea how long it was going to last — I recall that I was floored when a colleague told me, early on, that her company wouldn’t return to the office until June 2020 at the earliest. We lived in crisis mode — let’s just get through this hour, this day, this week of this weird extraordinary time — until things get back to normal, surely very soon.

But of course, that didn’t happen — that STILL hasn’t happened. If you escaped the worst, the initial panic and dismay mostly abated. Months drifted by. Crisis became quotidian. I regret living so much of this time in a blind holding pattern, failing to grasp how long pandemic conditions would rule our lives. I don’t know how that realization would have changed things; maybe I’d have made resolutions, like you do at New Year’s. I just feel that I haven’t made make the most of the situation. Sure, I’ve taken long walks and watched birds, rearranged furniture, painted rooms, practiced drawing and ukulele, tried to curate special holiday celebrations with my family — but this is a longer journey than we ever dreamed we were on. Those of us lucky enough to have reached 2021 without too much loss or despair, let’s not miss the still available opportunity to become more mindful. Days like these will never come again — at least, let’s hope not!

PS I just got a message from the county scheduling my first COVID shot, so maybe these weird days really are finally drawing to a close.

Happy new year, everyone. This is the first new year that really feels new to me, or at least it did until January 6, when things went dark again — but most of that fresh joy has now returned. When I think about getting vaccinated, and being free to socialize and travel again — when I see a beaming Kamala Harris take her oath of office — when I watch the profoundly normal Biden family affectionately congratulate their paterfamilias after his swearing-in — when I hear Anthony Fauci say that he is breathing a sigh of relief — well, I do too, Dr. Fauci, I do too. Am I standing taller and straighter now, without a heavy burden of worry weighing on my shoulders? I no longer awaken in the night and helplessly stress about what dismaying news the morning will bring. When I open the NYT, I need no longer brace myself for the latest manifestation of incivility, ignorance or naked self-interest. Now that sane, mature, experienced professional adults have arrived to govern, experiences like these are reported everywhere; the Times ran a story about how people are sleeping better, and enjoying improved bandwidth to devote to family, work and personal projects.

I was struck by this vivid example of 2021’s ch-ch-changes yesterday when I set out on my long daily walk. For the past weeks, especially since the election and the Stop the Steal campaign which followed, I had been playing political podcasts while I walked — pundits preaching to the choir about Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors, psychopathology and mere boorishness. Yesterday, on autopilot, I clicked through my choices and realized THERE WEREN’T ANY. Yes, he will be impeached (probably not convicted, but that is stain enough), but he is rapidly receding into irrelevance. (Good reason to hope so anyway, though given his narcissism and the passion of his remaining supporters, he may be able to slither back into the limelight.) So as I walked yesterday, I listened to British gardening podcasts — do you have any idea of how long a galanthophile (yes she actually used that term — lover of snowdrops) can rhapsodize about these tiny flowers? How utterly delightful! And what an enormous treasure trove of material for future walks.

Today, however, I didn’t play anything at all. When I stepped outside, I heard an unfamiliar bird call, so I kept quiet and concentrated, hoping to hear the call again in order to identify it. The bird went silent, but I found I enjoyed just roving in my own mind, for a change — for the first time in months, it felt safe to be alone with my thoughts. No self-affirming or purely distracting messages were needed to keep darkness at bay.

I even stopped playing my nightly porch music recently. At first I wondered at this — was I lazy, worn out after the chaos of the past months? Or maybe depressed, with no more windmills at which to tilt? No, I gradually realized, this is peace, the peace of victory. No longer am I a tiny lone voice trying to shout above the cataract, nor are we the scrappy resistance yapping at the heels of the powerful. We ARE the powerful, we ARE the mighty stream.