I’ve collected these snippets over the past year. Sometimes writing in my journal, sometimes my phone. Whatever was handy. 

*March, April, May 2020. Don’t touch anything. Wash your hands 10 times a day. Wear gloves/don’t wear gloves. Wear a mask. Wear only an N95 mask. Don’t touch your groceries for 48 hours. Stay 6 feet apart. Strip and Wash your clothes ASAP. Take a shower as soon as you get home. Never, ever touch anyone. Don’t touch your face.

*March, April, May 2020. One of our daughters is in Brooklyn. FaceTiming everyday. We are glued together over air space. She is so frightened. Frightened to leave her apartment. Frightened to go outside for a walk or a quick trip to the small grocer a block away. She is glued to the screen, reciting the latest human stats. Deaths from Covid, number of ICU beds with Covid patients, refrigerated tractor trailers filled with bodies, the wide empty streets, the loneliness, the uncertainty about how you can contract Covid. The daily news briefing from the mayor and then governor. 

*March, April, May 2020. Another daughter in Hawaii. So terribly frightened. Doesn’t know whether or not she should fly home to the east coast. So many dangers. Should she risk the gauntlet of two flights, three airports, taxis? What if she makes us sick? What if she gets sick? So far from home. Life threatening Danger in what was a special trip to paradise. Hell.

*March, April, May 2020. Still another daughter here in Maryland. Now working from her apartment. Mostly safe. Thank god. She has autoimmune problems and almost died nine years back in every parent’s worst nightmare – a very sick child. We know she is careful. We can see her in our backyard patio, six feet away, masks, no hugs. A heartache but not heartbreak. Thank god.

*September, 2021. I’m slowly absorbing the fact that I’m living here in upstate New York for Covid – in this place I wrote about from Pennsylvania. Beauty is everywhere, part of every day. Amazing. You can feel it and see it in all of the people who live here. When you’re walking on the road the guys in the pick up trucks slow down, move over and wave instead of speeding up and getting as close as they can like they did in Pennsylvania.

*Fall and Spring Semesters, 2020, 2021. A hard Zoom class. Many students missing. Some emailing me about Covid sick selves, mothers, aunts, and siblings. Everyone looks exhausted. Everyone has had enough. Enough of everything: school, family, work and life. We all need months of restorative care on a tropical island. Floating in blue water and snorkeling with the 1000 yellow, orange, and turquoise fish.

*February, 2021. “Is it true? Is it kind? Does it need to be said”?  Priya Parker quote heard on interview podcast with Brene Brown. My daughter sent me Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering. I thought, how strange we are listening and reading about gathering when we are all in our own silos or pods. Still. Maybe that’s the point. Reflecting on gathering when we can’t and therefore have a different perspective, one we’ll perhaps never have again. 

*March, 2021. Two thousand Canada geese (my guesstimate) fly overhead. It’s spring. It’s March. In upstate New York, these are the real deal migrating Canada geese flying from the USA to Canada, not the domesticated and then released Canada Geese of Maryland, Pennsylvania and other states.  Did you know that the Canada geese you see in Maryland stay all year long, flying from one local body of water to another, were domesticated in the 1700’s? Their descendants escaped and grew into large flocks that stick around all year long. Canada goose for dinner anyone?

*March, 2021. Song of Rapa Nui, the film. Watched it and was filled with hope. If a person can make such a beautiful life filled with music, grace, hope and love with the support and care of many, Can’t we? Can we open our minds and arms and act to help those in need, to help those who are different, to help those who have less. What has happened to all of the pledges and ideas of real social change and equality since the spring 2020 demonstrations?

*March 8, 2021, 2:00 PM. The pileated woodpecker on the Sumac bushes in early March. Eight inches of snow on the ground. None on my sun baked picnic table perch overlooking Wadhams and the mountains. 25 degrees. I lie motionless for 10 minutes as he perches on one branch after another gathering and eating sumac seeds. A late winter feast. Six feet away. I study his magnificent red pyramidal crown. His silken black feathers. His near miss fall when he reached out too far. I swear he glanced over to see if I’d noticed. I didn’t flinch or breath. A miracle.

*Fall and Spring Semesters, 2020, 2021. My students’ family members are dying. Three so far. After twenty years of teaching, I’ve had students with every trauma you can imagine. But, that’s usually one student with one big trauma every couple years or so. A mother who died in Nepal before her son could fly there. A father who died in three short weeks at Johns Hopkins Hospital as his daughter sat vigil.  Surreal. Numb. Unbelievable. I go outside to ground myself. The woods are my solace.

*March 2, 2021. That’s what I came for – black-green pines against this incredible Meissen blue sky. Nowhere else has this. This combination of trees against sky fills me up so much that I could cry. How lucky am I to be here, mostly safe and sound and surrounded by beauty.

*March 25, 2021. Another challenging Zoom class day. Many students not there again. Someone’s dad checks me out as he walks by his son’s computer.  My student is embarrassed. He apologizes. His dad just wanted to see what I looked like. After class, I need a walk. I grab my sneakers and step out onto our porch. Unbelievable serendipity. Coming round the corner are three of my friends who are taking a pre dinner stroll.  That’s what they call it. A stroll. It’s warm, 70 degrees. I join and vent my Covid teaching frustration. Ahhh. I’m outside, home with friends, trees and the lake. I’m good.

*April 12, 2021. 9:00 PM. When you take away the stars, you take away everything. Crisp, clear, no moon April  night. The Milky Way. Once you’ve seen it, you can imagine anything. No wonder, we’re in such bad shape. Most of us never see the ‘unadulterated’ night sky. The ‘heavens’ as they were once called. Now I see why.

*May, 2021. First dinner at a restaurant in months. Girls’ night out. Amazing. Outside on Chez Lin’s porch overlooking the lake. Chilly. No mixed drinks. We don’t care. Delicious scallops.  Smiling and laughing. Lightness. Home at 10.  Almost hit a deer but didn’t.

Later, nightgown and a small Basil Hayden on our rental house porch while down the hill on the lake live music plays, people laugh and sing. Floating up, filling the small neighborhood. The Westport Restaurant closed for 18 months. Opening night. Lovely. I lean back on the rocker and listen into the dark. A treat on top of a treat.

*Saturday, May 15, 2021, 11:10. Life goes on with or without us. The osprey hatchling cries and cries for more and more food. They have no idea about our Covid madness. Now I have an idea about their lives on the edge. Horseshoe Pond, May, 2021.

*May, 2021. “Frogs are our heartbeat at night”, I write in my journal in mid May. First night hearing peeper and tree frogs. The darkness pulse with their sound – the pulse of us all – together and apart.  Listening. Connected.