Welcome and bienvenidos to my blog.
Spring laps at the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains like waves on a sandy beach. The warm sun revives the end of the plains and creeps into the foothills, only to recede as storms roll the spring back with fresh snow. The temperature swings like a trapeze, and with it our emotions – fright to disgust, joy to hope.
This is the time of year we are now stuck at home, self-quarantined against the virus that has ravaged the world. The dystopian writers were wrong, something doesn’t have to change everything to make the future completely different, it just has to push on one element of society. In this case, our belief that we are not all just one species on earth. The belief of our leaders that people can be separated for their gain. That people at the bottom could stay there, in great numbers and poor health, and not affect the whole.
It is a time of despair. But, at least for me, this is not a time of sorrow. It is a time to question. A time to realize our modern world is based on science, not markets. Faced with a peaceful onslaught by a natural force, the world appears unable to meet the challenge. Our supply chain has held remarkably firm, however. I am working where everyone is acting as though there will be a tomorrow. So I am in these first few weeks, still employed. Though it seems surreal, that people work at all, or that they get paid for it, or that everyone accepts money. If money can only buy you groceries and take-out, will people still accept it? The supply chain and the internet cables are the fabric holding up the world.
But, I repeat, at least in this opening period, this is not a time of sorrow. This is intermission.
Especially for me as I turn 45, ideally right smack dab in the middle of the whole story. My family is no longer this group of people I see on weekends and vacation. My family is my unit. My unit in a world where everyone must be for themselves and their unit as company. How lucky I am, in the first place, to have company.
Not to mention the niceties of a house, yard, and hundreds of miles of trails in my town alone. There are many who are suffering. But I am not one of them. My suffering is all in the form of expectations. But at eight and five years old, my boys are in a blissful peace. We are not rushing. In everyday life – even to have fun, I had to rush. Work and school rush us all out the door by 8:30, and then back together at 6. Work bleeds into the evening and into vacations. In the middle, Kati is rushing to take care of children’s schedules and her own wants and needs, not to mention taking care of the house.
Work is mentally and sometimes physically draining. The kids are drained from 8 hours of social interaction and school. We are all drained, and so we stumble through dinner and then onto bedtime chores and maybe have an hour for Kati and I usually to discuss business, or take care of some online task that has to be done. All of that is gone. And it makes you wonder why its there in the first place.
Turns out I have a family I love. Yes it is exhausting for any group of people to be stuck together for so long. But we are being with each other in a way we have never gotten the chance to be. We never got the chance to just be. I mean, our youngest child just had to merge with the raging river that was our lives. And here it is. Slow. Calendarless. Appointment-less. It is a discovery, of what is inside, a chance to built a fort of our love and caring and climb inside. And we may never get this chance again, how lucky we are to be at this time, in this place, with each other. Playing legos and having pillow fights instead of board meetings. So I am not suffering, while the cocktails are still being poured.
It is also a time to come home and nest. To get to every pesky thing that needs attention around the house, to work on something I an fix poorly. To pay attention to our dwelling, our family, to keep the car idle. To feather the nest, as they say.
There is a field hospital in Central Park. The lights are out on Broadway. The highways are exposed. I don’t know if we will have enough time to see what to do in the next act.
Love this paragraph “Especially for me as I turn 45, ideally right smack dab in the middle of the whole story. My family is no longer this group of people I see on weekends and vacation. My family is my unit. My unit in a world where everyone must be for themselves and their unit as company.”