Day 75 - Presence

One of the gifts of family and friends is the help they give me, keeping perspective on my life.  It seems it’s harder and harder for me as I spend so much time isolated from others to be balanced.  It’s easy for things to get distorted.  Texting, email, phone calls and zooming isn’t enough.  I need presence.  There nothing like sitting down together and having a relaxed real conversation, sharing a laugh.  There is so much more than words communicated.  Bob and I have been taking sheltering in place seriously.  We are very careful in our contacts with others, wearing masks and keeping our distance.  I find it a very isolating and sad way to be.  Wednesday, as we were out walking on the fire trail, Bob recognized two people walking by.  They were two members of my book group.  We all were so very happy to see each other after nearly three months.  Nevertheless, we maintained our distance, standing at least ten feet apart as we happily chatted.   Another friend’s husband is having serious health issues and I wish I could sit with her in the hospital waiting room.  How I wish I could have a visit with my sister or a trip to Michigan, but neither seem in the cards any time in the near future.  I’d really like to just go to church.  Even seeing our Palo Alto grandchildren is challenging because of our need to keep safe distances.  It breaks my heart.  Will they remember a distant gramma?  It is in these usual simple times together that perspective is found and true love is shared.  Presence really matters. Maybe, recognizing this is a little piece of wisdom about the preciousness of presence will help us not take simple things, like being together, for granted ever again.  Maybe this strange limbo in which we find ourselves will become our teacher.

“Try not to resist changes that come your way.  Instead let life live through you.  And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.  How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”  Rumi

Week 11 - Another Week

This Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, I’m sitting in my usual chair, feeling the cool morning breezes gently waft on my face and seeing the bright morning sun move slowly into the living room.  Bob is in his place reading the Sunday NY Times.  We’re sipping fresh coffee.  It seems supremely normal, yet it isn’t.  It’s as abnormal a time as I’ve ever experienced.  Week 11 of our lockdown starts today.  I’m feeling the isolation and the sameness of our days very much.  I’m worn down by it.  I’m very tired.  I’m imagining what it might be like to be in jail, under “house arrest” and thinking about my sentence, which is an undetermined very long time, probably years.  I’m very grateful for Bob’s genial companionship, for his evenness of mood, for his endless ability to find things that entertain him.  The muscle in my hip is better so we’ve begun short walks.  It’s good to be out walking, if only for a half hour at a time.  I try not to think ahead too much as it only depresses me.  Nearly 100,000 people have died in the United States: people  from all age groups, from all walks of life; good  people, bad people, the virus has no preference.  I still don’t know anyone who has died from the Coronavirus.  While I hate wearing a mask, I do wear one whenever we go out.  I wear one to protect others from my potential infection.  People who don’t wear masks for whatever reason make me very angry for their selfishness in putting others at risk.  We’ve been working in the yard.  Over the last two days, Bob has done a huge job of clearing all the overgrown bushes along 50 feet of the north side of our garden giving us 250 feet more space.  We go on.  I am grateful our family is safe and well.  I am grateful for people who reach out to us.  I am grateful for long walks and surprises of beauty and humor we find along the way.  There’s not much else to do.

Week 10 - Suspended

Time is passing, marked for me in the changes in nature.  The days are markedly longer.  It’s light before I wake up.  The grass in Tilden Park is browning. The weeds have set their seed and now are drying.  The tomatoes in the garden are vigorously growing.  There are fewer spectacular flowers in gardens on our walks.  Yet, for me, time feels like it has stopped and I’m stuck between what was and what will be.  The days and weeks slip by, faster and faster.  Our walks have grown longer: we walked down to the University this week and back, up Centennial Drive.  On Friday we walked down to get a latte at Pete’s original shop at Vine and Walnut.  Walking back, up Oxford to Marin, I found gates and garden art to photograph, but not flowers.  I was surprised the walk up was hard for me.  When I got home, I was in terrible pain.  Something in my left hip had given out.  I’ve never had a “sports injury” before and I don’t quite know how to deal with it.  Rest and Ibeprofin, I’m told.  I despair that what has brought me so much joy in this time of sheltering in place is now for the indefinite future gone.  Alameda County’s Covid curve has stayed up, not begun to lower.  The virus is still here.  How do we deal with this time of just waiting it out?  How can I keep calm and centered?  Where do I find joy to inspire me and help me hang on?   I guess the answer is just taking one day at a time, just putting one foot in front of the other and count my blessings.

Week 9 - Gates

With a FaceTime Mother’s Day visit including piano concerts by my granddaughters in Michigan and a live visit from our Palo Alto grandchildren,  I was honored and loved by my family.  I even received a big purple, yellow and chartreuse floral bouquet delivered on Thursday, a hand painted by Erik card and a hand-made by Bob metal box with a wooden top on Sunday.  Bob had been busy in his workshop since Wednesday making this lovely surprise for me.  We had my favorite food and a long long walk through more beautiful Berkeley streets.  This morning, we walked down to campus and were amazed and surprised it was so completely deserted.  Aside from a few mom’s and kids,  only person I remember was a student in a cap and gown and a backpack walking toward the Campanile.  It’s Cal graduation time and all the graduations are virtual these days to avoid any contact.  He must have wanted a photo of him on campus.  On our walks, I delight in taking photos of what I find beautiful.   Usually it’s flowers, sometimes houses, but I notice that I am increasingly drawn to beautiful gates and entry ways.  Today’s photos were all of gates, from the grand entrance to U.C. Berkeley- Sather Gate- to a rundown somewhat shabby gate that caught my eye mostly because of it’s ordinariness and the overgrown shady path with a  tunnel of greenery behind it.  From the grand to the ordinary, I’ve been reflecting on what gates might mean to me.  What is it we are entering in this time?  Clearly in the future there will be a new way of life I can’t even imagine.  Maybe also the point is that I am finding beauty that is all around us.  I think beauty is a passageway to the holy.  I like to think in the simple ordinary things we have around us, shabby things, usual things that we seldom pay attention to, there is great beauty and meaning.  We don’t have to travel the world seeking grand beauty though that is fun and gives a change.  All we need is right here where we are.  We don’t have to go on long meditative retreats to seek the holy.  It is right here wherever we are, if we take time to pay attention to it in our ordinary lives.

Day 55 - What’s this doing to us?

With most the peoples of the earth hiding out, sheltering in place, in their rooms, apartments and houses, the animals of the earth are becoming bolder and coming out into places where the people used to be.  At the Botanical Garden, I’ve read reports of snakes and frogs being spotted often in the propagation areas where they were rarely seen before.  Maybe the snakes, now emboldened, are keeping the mice under control.  I imagine the hiding places the animals had and how they watched us go about our business oblivious to the fact we shared space with them.  Thinking about us, I’ve been wondering what all this isolation and social distancing is doing to us, social beings that we are.  On our daily walks, I notice that people now give each other wide berth, usually moving across the street and mostly pull up their masks if they don’t already have them up and in place when anyone comes into view.  Rarely do people acknowledge each other with a friendly nod or a casual hi.  The message is clear:  contact with people is to be avoided.  Several women we encountered on our walks stand out in my memory because they were different.  One was a very old woman, (old defined as older than me), probably a retired UC Professor, as told us she had worked at the University and I thought she had a certain professorial air about her.  We kept our distance but had a friendly, relaxed conversation about our mutual comings and goings.  Another very elderly woman with a strong German-accent was doing yard work in front of her house on Euclid and asked us as we were walking by to tamp down the branches in her green bin.  Her approach to us was totally normal and that’s what I remember and how memorable and satisfying it was.  How sad that normal human exchange has mostly disappeared.  Yesterday while walking around Jewel Lake in Tilden Park, we encountered a family group, a mother with two children.  As we were given the wide space to pass, I overheard the younger child say to her mother, “They’re poison, right?”  Are we now considered poison to each other?  Is every other person out there now seen as a potential asymptomatic carrier of the coronavirus and a threat?  Will this attitude later merge into intolerance, racism and even xenophobia?   I hope not, as that is a sad unintended consequence of dealing with the pandemic.  I think for me the biggest concern with this is that our compassion for each other might become stunted or blocked. Then the world truly becomes an individualist, dog-eat-dog kind of world, the kind that Trump lives in and promotes.  Masks protect us but viewing other people as only threat could become a big threat to our very common humanity.

Week 8 - Day 51 Carrying On

Last night I found myself terribly anxious.  I think it was the news about the coming meat shortages that did me in.  It is important to me to provide Bob nutritious, delicious meals and this was going to interfere with that.  Do I have enough canned tuna and black beans I wondered?  What is it I need to stockpile to be safe for the long run?  Before I went to bed, I told Bob, I’m really scared.  I had let my imagination run amok and somehow I imagined us going into a Wartime food shortage.  In the morning, I was still stressed and tried to think what I could do to ease my anxiety.  Breathing deeply just didn’t do it.  I couldn’t focus to pray.  I decided to reach out to dear friends who have known me for a long time.  I called one and just chatting with her, I could feel my anxiety lessening.  She is so sensible, so positive and somehow the future looked more doable.  It warmed my heart to connect with her.  I could imagine carrying on.  I emailed another and she suggested we zoom at 10:30.  So we did and talking with her, someone who has known me for so long and was so grounded, I was calmed and gained needed perspective.  Reaching out when in need is a new thing for me but was very helpful.  After lunch, Bob and I went for our walk and just walking down the paths, down the streets, looking at the flowers, trees and beautiful Berkeley houses and sharing this time with Bob, I calmed down even more.   By the time we got home, I had let go of my anxiety and life looked manageable once again.  As the days have merged to weeks and the weeks of the pandemic lockdown have merged into months, it is not unreasonable to be concerned about the future that we cannot yet see.  Day by day, taking one day at a time and holding on to what really matters, life becomes manageable once again.  I will carry on and we will deal with whatever comes.

Day 48 - Taking Photos

On our walks I delight in taking photos.  Photos of beautiful flowers, beautiful gates, funny signs and bears and other animals with masks.  It makes me happy to notice things of beauty amidst the ordinary.  Bob too sees beautiful things and points them out to me.  Today we walked nearly 5.6 miles in a big circle through the Berkeley Hills.  We walked straight down the hill to Peet’s Coffee in Walnut Square to get a latte.  There, we were pleased to see how it was very well organized for maximum safety with lines to order outside, signs on the sidewalk at 6 feet apart, then large squares 6 feet apart to wait to pick up our order.  With our coffees, we went across the street to the Friends Church steps and sat and sipped our lattes.  Just below the bench was a hollyhock.  It”s beautiful flower called to me to take its photo.  Rested and refreshed, we walked a long and gentle way up the 900 plus feet back home going up Spruce Street.  We enjoyed looking at the houses, the views out to the Bay, the flowers, the garden gates..  It’s amazing how much one sees walking compared to driving.  We spotted a docent friend of mine walking on Spruce and had a lovely reunion, albeit 6 feet apart.  I delight in seeing funny signs and ironic masks put on statuary and stuffed animals.  There are so many different ways people deal with staying at home.  Surprisingly, there were very few people walking.  Odd, because it gives Bob and me such pleasure to walk the Hills. I don’t know how I would keep my spirits up without walking.  Thank goodness in this pandemic’s sheltering in place we’re allowed to go out and exercise in the beautiful Berkeley Hills.