Pandemic? Life Has Not Changed All That Much

Greetings from the couch

in the parlor

in the house 

on the mountain.

It’s spring here

just like it was last year 

and the year before,

bringing migrating birds 

and blossoms that may freeze 

or may not. 

It doesn’t matter all that much,

the deer eat the flowers anyway.

Two anomalies:

we have migrating Baltimore Orioles this year

and the oak leaves 

are over two weeks late.

But the frogs still peep.

The turkeys still gobble.

I still procrastinate.

Upon waking, 

I still pray the Lord’s Prayer.

For years we have joked 

that our home is the perfect place 

to hide out from the world.

It’s surreal to think that 

that’s actually what we are doing

because not all that much is different.

Our shelves have always been stocked.

We have extra staples

so we don’t need a trip to town:

flour,
sugar,
eggs,
milk, 

and dark chocolate almonds.

Eleven miles both ways saves a gallon of gas.

We already were hand washers 

and sometimes washed to the songs 

playing in our heads. 

For Denny it usually is Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

For me, today it was Bob Dylan’s
“The Times, They Are A’Changin’” 

but I don’t really like Dylan

so I switched to Michael Card’s 

“I Will Bring You Home.”

We were already unemployed 

and by that I mean retired.

The days of the week 

were already mostly meaningless.

Weather is more important in how we spend our days—

if it’s raining, 

we work inside.

Dry? 

Outside.

We already had relatively low standards of dress,

comfy and practical,

that prompt us to 

start pajama time in the late afternoon.

Masks do not bother us— 

masks are actually a relief 

because you aren’t expected 

to recognize people in masks,

a plus for people with prosopagnosia 

or “face blindness.” 

That would be Sue and Brad Pitt.

We are not dependent on beauticians.

Sue has cut her own hair for decades*

and often trims Denny’s hair 

and his eyebrows.

Denny would not need sunscreen 

if his eyebrows were allowed to run wild.

We were already receiving virtual hugs 

and video visits.

We can have LEGO adventures

with the grandgirls in Taiwan

without even bending over.

We still see a lot of friends on Sunday mornings, 

though now they sit in Zoom boxes 

instead of pews.

Gary Magee still makes us laugh.

We hear of people using pandemic time to clean closets;

Denny already cleaned his closet regularly

to make room for the wild comfy shirts

that Sue used to bring him on Mondays 

upon return from Goodwill.

Only 79c!

He is a zealous cleaner.

He even threw out Sue’s chicken suit.

“It was an accident.”

We rarely attended sporting events or concerts.

We already were spending too much time online.

We already distrusted governmental decision-making.

I had hoped that the current situation 

would help to develop a daily habit of flossing
since our dentist office has been closed 

but, alas, tooth maintenance hasn’t changed.

I do drive more slowly, though.

When you don’t get off the mountain often,

there is so much to see!

Every trip becomes a field trip, 

with detours for swamps 

and eagle nests 

and trilliums

and heron rookeries.

I also drive more slowly 

because of that whole “avoid the hospital” thing. 

(That was good advice 

even before 2020.)

I also keep hand sanitizer in the Jeep,

something I have never done before.

I am still theoretically against hand sanitizer, 

but it seems prudent currently.

Here on the mountain, 

we are hardly aware of inaudible crashings 

and foundational changes 

in the world as we knew it.

But we sometimes step in mudholes of grief,

stumble into ditches of fear,

take deep breaths that turn into sobs,

and get homesick for a lap to climb into.

Then we remember Michael Card

singing the words of God:

“In this fearful fallen place

I will be your home.”

We recommend finding a comfy couch,

settling in,

and listening to Michael’s comforting voice--

or you could go to a sink 

and scrub your hands.
When the music fades,
you will be clean enough for a snack.
We recommend dark chocolate almonds.

“I Will Bring You Home”

by Michael Card

 https://youtu.be/ZhWd2421Fpg

*Sue's haircut video may be seen on FaceBook, April 3, 2020

Palms and Prayers and Prickly Pears

My palms are almost back to normal.
A few days ago, celebrating the return of spring to the Mountain,
I neglected to put on gardening gloves
before cleaning the leaves surrounding
the prickly pear cactus.
Poor decision.
I tried to fix the painful situation.
I used a scrubbie on my palms,
tried to pull the spines out with tape,
then taped over my hands
to lessen the chances of moving the spines.
Later, while on Zoom for my Wildlife lab,
I set it to audio only
and, unseen by the prof,
multitasked by pulling at the spines with tweezers.
Yesterday we planted one hundred White Spruce seedlings
and most of the remaining spines came off
inside my leather gloves.



It was a beautiful day for planting.
Sunny sky.
Slight breeze.
Upper forties.
I carried a bucket of three-year-old seedlings
about twelve to fifteen inches high,
their hearty root systems soaking in several inches of water.
Denny would poke a hole into the ground with the spud bar
and I would untangle a seedling
and hand it to him.
He would kneel,
tenderly tucked the roots into the hole,
then use the flat end of the spud
to force the soil around the roots.
On to the next!
After watching Denny kneel with the first trees,
I decided his kneeling shouldn't go to waste.
"I am going to pray for people every time you kneel," I announced.
He chuckled. "You always need a system."
"Nevertheless!"
I started with immediate family members,
then extended family.
We worked our way through church pews,
the County Historical Society,
Denny's old teaching colleagues,
then mine.
After one hundred trees, we still had people left to pray for.
Luckily, there are more trees to plant tomorrow.



I have been thinking about prayer more recently.
(Pandemics are like that.)
For years, I have wanted to know how prayer works.
and hope "Physics of Prayer 101" is offered in heaven.
But recently I've wondered
what is the most effective way to pray regarding COVID-19?
Do we pray that the power of the blood of Jesus
will overwhelm the virus?
Do we ask for protection? Healing?
(For whom?
Ourselves?
Our family?
Our friends and neighbors?
Our nation?
Beyond?
I pray a five-year-old's prayer:
"God bless everybody in the whole wide world!")
Do we pray "Thy will be done"?
Do we ask the Holy Spirit to intercede for us when we can only groan?
Do we figuratively rest on Jesus
like a newborn sleeps on daddy's chest?
I have prayed all of these ways this week,
prayers that rise like incense to heaven.

If I am remembering Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles correctly,
(and I may not. It's been forty years.)
Taran, the protagonist,
meets creatures who are weaving his life story
into a tapestry.
He is unimpressed.
There are knots
and frayed yarn ends
and no design is evident.
He is disgusted
and wants to give up on his life
and on the creatures,
but then they tell him that
he is only seeing the back of the tapestry,
that the front is an exquisite work of art.
His hope returns.
I need to reread those books
and Psalm 23.
I will hold them with my mostly spine-free palms
and fall asleep on my Father's chest
knowing that I am only seeing the back of the tapestry.

"I have not forgotten you!
See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands."
Isaiah 49:15-16



Rest well, friends.