Recurrent theme in my life: Just. Pick. Up. The. Phone.
I had brought my sons to baseball practice tonight and happened to be alone for an hour and a half. I’m not alone much these days. Four kids in remote schooling plus a recovering-for-two-weeks husband, and there’s just… well, there’s not much quiet to be found. Somehow, almost miraculously, I still manage to feel isolated and miss my people endlessly…but…you know, so much with the noise…
So at 5:38pm, I took off for the nearby Cooper River to walk around. I wondered if it might be possible to connect with a friend….? Ehhh, the chances of that were absolutely laughable. Is this a good time? Is this the time of day parents are looking for something to do? Nope. Meh, whatever, I thought. I’ll try anyway. So I dialed. And on the very last ring…my dear friend from college picked up the phone. (Cue: all the choirs of angels. All of them, every single one… the Easter ones, the Christmas ones, the backup angels….every single one was hollering hallelujah.) “I just have a few minutes before field hockey,” she said. Well, an hour and 8 minutes later, we both felt a collective exhale from our hearts, and we communicated our goodbyes. We haven’t spoken in a few weeks, sometimes we go months or days between chats, but recently no matter how long it’s been, the landscape of our lives seems to change rather dramatically from one connection to the next.
As we both shared the terrain we were each attempting to navigate with selves and spouses in edited and relentlessly challenging work environments, schooling situations that could change on a dime, family obligations and needs and dreams and goals and hopes, all being skewered like a chicken, mushroom, pepper, onion summer medley, every morsel dangling upon the spear of COVID. So many things are hanging in the balance. Some ideas or questions are pushed ahead into the foreground, while others are set aside to deal with on a rainy day. This world is such a strange place for literally everyone in it. Everyone. Every single one.
Something I did appreciate though, as I walked and walked, was the orange sun, peeking through the trees. There were some clearings I had passed that would have been such a pretty picture, with the delicately setting sun…. but much as I chased and sought, that moment never came. Instead, it played peekaboo with me, as it sometimes does, glinting from behind leaves, sneaking out from behind trees. It made me think about the reality that the promise of brighter days is there for all of us….but right now, as we cruise towards 7 months of this hashtag pandemic life, some days? It. Is. Really. Effing. Hard. To. See. Lovely as the cooler temperatures are, and glorious as the whispers of autumn that show themselves each day…. that feeling of safety, peace, predictability… is just continually out of reach.
One day, friends. One day. At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Stay strong. Keep playing peekaboo with the sun. One day it will shine so bright it will warm us all.
Care to share your thoughts?