Blessings

Where to even start?

This life I have:

so charmed and so hard,

so full of both and all.

This life I have, 

contained within this moment:

the scent of the lilac blossoms

plucked from the neighbor's tree,

its fragrant bough heavy with bloom

bending over the fence into my yard;

the view of the yard

through the window above the table,

which supports both the lilac vase

and the page on which I write these words;

the weight of the dog’s head on my lap

as I sit, writing, at the table;

the feel of his fur against my fingertips,

soft and warm from the afternoon sun;

the rise and fall of his chest

as he inhales . . . exhales . . .

inhales the lilac-scented air sustaining us both.

This life I have,

holding so many moments within it:

the rise and fall of hope

as I wake . . . sleep . . .

wake to the dappled fullness each day brings;

the feel of joy and sadness in my hands,

spilling out of my cupped palms

over the sharp contours

of the space I have carved out for them;

the weight of knowing and not knowing

what it is I hold in my hands

and what they can never contain;

the view of a life perpetually transformed,

the hardnesses – fierce agents of change –

highlighting the bright, the soft, the sweet,

then becoming light themselves;

becoming with time and grace,

the scent of the lilac blossoms.

A travel journal entry from the place where we now live

I expected it to feel more foreign, this place we now find ourselves in. But I feel the lack of shopping trips and dinners out and friendly hangouts less keenly than one might have thought. Even the loss of my livelihood feels softer now that the initial wave of shock and sadness has rolled through. Instead, I am struck by the pervasiveness of the mundane and the familiar, the daily rituals that mark the passage of time and carry me steadily from one moment to the next: brewing a pot of tea and sitting down to write my morning pages while the house is still quiet and dark; stretching out last night’s stiffness with a YouTube yoga video and a quick walk through the neighborhood with Zoe; checking the to-do list and planning out the day; later, preparing dinner, doing dishes, and reading in bed until my eyelids grow too heavy to continue. Also: sneezing countless times a day, almost never while in reach of the tissue box; mixing yogurt into the dogs’ kibble and letting them take turns licking the spoon; telling J he can put on whatever record he is in the mood for after dinner – I don’t mind either way – and tucking my cold toes into the warm arches of his feet when we go to bed.

Yes, there have been changes as well: waiting for a two-hour delivery window to become available in the Prime Now app instead of a weekly trip to the local market; sitting on the deck in the late afternoon, soaking up the sun’s rays on my back and neck, instead of sitting at my desk, struggling to stay motivated for the last few hours of the workday; washing my hands so frequently that the skin on the back of my knuckles becomes cracked and dry; living under the same roof as my brother for the first time in twenty years and chatting with him and J over dinner about recipes, New York City, or Hannah Arendt.

All of these things are new, but none of them feels strange. The additions and shifts, like the thinnest of threads, have been woven into the existing fabric of daily life, creating no perceptible distortions in the warp and weave. Only the closest scrutiny reveals any change to the texture and thickness of my routines; overall, they feel as warm and comforting to me as ever.

There is also, of course, the overarching sense of uncertainty infused in all of it, old patterns and newly-forming habits alike. We know so very little right now about what is truly going on, how long it will last, or what life will be like next week, next month, next year even. But this is not actually new, is it? The uncertainty was already with us, before we arrived in this place, masked by the seemingly steady nature of the status quo but teeming under the surface nonetheless. This space we are now in has simply heightened our awareness of the fact that any place, any time, any life is always, by its very nature, precarious. And so I must learn to weave this understanding into the daily rituals, along with all the other changes, until it too is one more thread in the tapestry, an integrated and integral part of my life.

[Like the previous post, this one is also a response to a prompt from the Isolation Journals.]