We are in the waiting room leafing through Time, remembering Life. Wisconsin is running out of ICU beds. Harry and Meghan are renovating their new place in Santa Barbara. Everyone in her right mind is masked, of course, because not only are we waiting for some resolution to the constitutional crisis, we are also living in the midst of a pandemic with covid cases rising every day. 160,000. 177,000. It's a lot to ask. We are only human after all and require, deluded as we are, some base level of certainty. But this is the period between the MRI and the diagnosis and nothing is certain. We are waiting for a specialist, or maybe a bearded prophet, to lead us out of this wilderness and into the promised land where a safe and effective vaccine will be universally available, all pre-existing conditions will be covered, the electoral college will recede in the rearview mirror, and black Americans will not be identified for target practice. In the meanwhile, we are in limbo as we steal glimpses of redemption engineered in Georgia and try to keep the sulfurous stink of the enemies of democracy at bay.
While I am ignoring the regular texts that ask if I approve of Dr. Fauci and choking, gasping on the millenarian fumes, I introduce myself to the in-between. It's an unfamiliar territory that I've been exploring with all of my senses on high alert. I tell myself to pay attention lest this is my last apple. You girl, listen to the chanting of the Plum Village monastics over the ringing of bells. Roll the lemony linguine around in your mouth while you still can. Connect to the people you love every day to remind yourself that you have lived and nestled down into a family...and a good one at that. Learn to play chess, a contest where there is an opening and an endgame, a winner and a loser.
My niece Betsy, one of the people I turn to for clarification, tells me this period has a postpartum quality for her. Something has been born, but we're not yet sure if it has all ten of its toes. The long anticipation is now accompanied by an aftertaste of dread. It looks like the stunt of getting Republican state legislatures to appoint alternative trumpy electors won't fly, but who knows what other chicanery he has up his sleeve. We have jumped out of the plane, but the parachute has not yet opened. It's a tough place to be. Or no place at all. A time of suspended animation, outside of conventional physics.
All I can do is play small ball, commit to the daily exercise of the mindfulness muscle. I'm really on my own now that the leaves have fallen and all the cherry tomatoes have been harvested. The white butterflies that danced over the grass low to the ground are gone. The maples, red as barns, are bare. Most days, the sky withdraws into November gray. I wonder if it knows that only a few days ago it was blindingly blue or whether it just moves from one dispensation to another without judgment, without looking back. We humans are burdened with a surfeit of memory. I remember Thanksgivings weighed down by an embarrassment of food. But how much stuffing can two people eat? I remember chanukahs where the aroma of the frying oil lingered long past the eight days. Ditto how many latkes.
Now, memory has been concentrated on the present. I'm called to acknowledge this late fall morning that I'm actually alive. That may seem obvious, but it's easy to forget when your awareness is both overrun with anxiety and empty of distraction. It remains a miracle, this living and breathing. Over the last four years, our awareness of wonder has been bludgeoned by indifference, cruelty, and greed. We will have to learn to walk again and talk again like recovering stroke victims, or at any rate to walk without fear and talk without rage. It will not happen overnight. It will unfold in small ways. I'd like to go back to Rome, but I'll settle for sitting down with family and blowing out the candles on a birthday cake with carefree abandon. I'd like to wave a wand and make all the distrust disappear, but I'll settle for starting to talk to people I haven't really taken the trouble to get to know. But, first things first. While I wait for the parachute to open and solid ground to appear beneath my feet, I plan to order stamps and send postcards to Atlanta.
Please share your thoughts regarding this post and my 2019 book Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement by writing to me at seventysomething9@gmail.com. I will also reply to comments posted on this blog, so check back if you choose to carry on the conversation here.