Tutto Andrà Bene
It’s a matter of recalibration. We must hold tightly to the nonnegotiable values and truths, but within that framework, we adjust the sequence and the schedule and the spaces in between. Survive, and the thing you most wanted may yet happen, but it won’t unfold in the way that you imagined, or happen as soon as you'd hoped.
That’s okay. First, survive. And the strange beauty in this is that the more we decrease our own risks by distancing ourselves from others, the more we are helping the others. Although it is also, as my cousin Luisa says, a paradox, because just when our hearts yearn to comfort and embrace and be physically present, we must stand apart and stay away. But there’s so much love in all that restraint.
Luisa sends me regular dispatches from Italy. She is heartbroken and anxious, and keeps warning me to take this seriously and stay at home. (She needn’t worry; I do and I am.) But she ends with the hopeful words: Tutto Andrà Bene. By which she means that everything will work out for the best. I don’t know if she believes it, but she proclaims it like a mantra and wears it like a shawl.
Luisa and I have known each other for thirty-five years despite the barriers of language and geography. Our grandfathers were brothers, and our fathers had the very same names, and she still lives in the village near Mt. Vesuvius where my grandfather spent the first part of his life, before he emigrated to New York in 1905. And so, Luisa and I have long shared a special bond, but I can honestly say I have never felt closer to her than I do right now, in our parallel journeys through Covid-land.
And that’s how it has been. So many connections have been sparked and renewed and finally given the importance they were due all along. So many I-love-you’s have been spoken out loud, so many stories shared. Yesterday my old friend Cyd and I reminisced via text about Chicago, where, in 1971, we first became friends while working in an office downtown. And I had a video-chat with the Bicycle Girls––Donna, Teresa, and Chris. Suddenly everyone is baking bread, and there’s no more flour on the shelves, but Teresa has a mill and twenty-five pounds of wheat berries. Of course she does! Monte and I have started a weekly custom of drinks with our friends in Hermosa Beach, and the Bestie line is always open for check-in over coffee, though that was already happening.
Yes, this is a person of privilege speaking. I am fully and sheepishly aware that being forced to stay at home in the manner to which I have grown accustomed is not a terrible experience. My heart aches for the many who are not so lucky, and for those who are already feeling the lack of pay checks and food. And then there are the health care workers on the front lines, where, in our part of California, things are just beginning to heat up and certain to intensify.
But in the meantime, here I am, at the ranch. We were already socially distanced, and I always liked to go outside and stomp around in the hills, so there isn’t much sacrifice involved. We plan meals more carefully, and use things more sparingly and consciously, but those are actually positive changes.
I’ve been listening to opera. It started as a way to remember my father on his birthday yesterday, but it has proven to be a glorious soundtrack as I busy myself with what my friend Kappy calls "life fillers". And isn’t that our task? Fill this cup of life, and try to make it good.
The hard part for me has to do with missing our daughter, but in truth, we see her several times a week on the screen of the computer where I now sit. We have wonderful visits with her and her husband, and there is a palpable sense of mutual appreciation, and we laugh and rant and show each other what we are cooking and projects we’re working on. But it’s weird not knowing when we can visit again, and this is where recalibrating comes in. I now give higher marks to the marvel of the technology that enables us to stay in touch like this. And I recalibrate to estimate when a trip to England might be possible, sliding that event further along on the timeline. It’s a minor hardship, a disappointment more than counterbalanced by joys along the way, as long as my loved ones stay healthy.
Around here, we are fond of poetry. Today I sent a friend this excerpt of Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
“Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
My friend wasn’t feeling it. He expressed concern about what we might be left with, and at what cost. “Is it all worthwhile?” he asked. A rhetorical question, but he is so discouraged.
And of course I said yes! It’s worth it! Though much is taken, much abides.
Music tells us this, and art, and the noble trees and the arc of sky, and all the love we have known, and the still-shining dreams of the young.
Teresa calls it a reset. That’s a good way to look at it. We are all going to discover what we’re made of, and become more fully whatever we were. We’ll learn some lost arts, appreciate things we took for granted, and love each other more than ever. Yes, I realize I’m putting a very optimistic spin on this. Tutto Andrà Bene. But these are valid possibilities, especially with a little recalibration.
Remember the last thing Pandora found in that box? Hold onto it.