Silver Linings

This has been such a strange time.  Every person has been affected in various ways.  I still wake up feeling like I am in some sort of apocalyptic movie, but I am surprised at how normal it is beginning to feel.

Sometime I am nostalgic for the other way of living.  “BC” or “Before Covid”, if you will.  Gatherings like concerts and sporting events and conferences all seem like dim memories of a distant past.  I feel dread about the upcoming election, and shame and horror about so much of what is in the news.

But.  But I am beginning to see some glimmers.  Perhaps a wisp of a silver lining.  There are always two sides to the coin. This in no way mitigates all the various ways of suffering.  I am looking, eagerly, for a bit of silver.

I planted a garden early in the spring.  Gardening is perhaps my most optimistic activity.  I have had my share of fatalities, of course, but the new potatoes and ripe tomatoes have been sublime. I never felt such encouragement from my flowers and vegetables, before.

The mundane task of grocery shopping has yielded unexpected joy- flour! I can now buy flour! There is toilet paper again!  Hurrah for lemons and limes!  I never appreciated those things, before.

I am a member of a book club.  It has been meeting monthly for almost thirty years.  We had a couple of months of  Zoom book clubs, but recently we met again, in person, six feet apart, masked.  To just be together with dear, old friends, was marvelous.  We were so very happy to see one another.  Book club never quite felt like that, before.

So I haven’t learned another language, or how to keep a sourdough starter alive (I am still traumatized by that Amish Friendship Bread that made the relief society rounds years ago), or written my personal history, or read Moby Dick.  Some days just getting up and doing the daily things feels like an accomplishment. The great dark clouds are real.  Worldwide there are 612,000 dead. That is a stunning number, especially given the bungled opportunities and appalling lack of leadership. I am seeing a few faint twinkles of  silver lining though.  Are you?