April

Now April has begun. It is yellow and blue at the ranch, and breezy. When I stop and listen, there is so much to hear. The eucalyptus trees are creaking like old doors opening. The air hums through the spokes of my bicycle wheels. I hear the brushing of wind as it pushes through the grass, and the understated whirring that the house makes when it waits, and beneath it all, a hush of distance and restraint, like a long breath drawn.

There is something not so much beginning now, as pending, and we don’t know what it will mean. Everything came so suddenly undone, it’s hard to get one’s bearings. And right now we're all experiencing a collective kind of anxiety and grief. One of the hard things about this is feeling so useless. We wish there were more tangible ways to help, but the best thing most of us can do, it seems, is step out of the way and ride this out. We must think on a huge scale, but at the same time, we focus on our own immediate families and communities. We protect ourselves in order not to compound the problem, and we retreat to minimize the risks to those more vulnerable. It’s hard to imagine that anything will ever be normal again.

I talked to my brother recently. He's a psychologist, but he works for the CDC and is an expert in disaster preparedness and response. He even co-wrote a few articles several years ago warning of lack of surge capacity and other serious gaps in pandemic preparedness, but he says things went downhill quickly when the new regime was installed and they promptly began to discredit science and dismantle crucial groups. But on the semi-bright side, he did write the following in an email to me, which I found vaguely comforting:

“One note, though about the predictions of dire long-term consequences and the notion that things will never be the same - it's interesting to study the history of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. At the time, the 'Spanish flu' pandemic seemed pretty apocalyptic - and with good reason. The US alone had 675,000 deaths. Given that the US population wasn't much over 100,000,000 at that time, that's analogous to a 2020 pandemic killing 2,300,000 Americans. One in every three people worldwide got infected at some point. But, despite these huge casualties and effects on the domestic and global economy, normality eventually returned. In fact, the Roaring Twenties were only a few years down the road. So, as the saying goes, 'This too shall pass.' "

I realize it was a different world then. And as my son-in-law pointed out, the Roaring Twenties weren’t so great for anyone but the 1%, and were followed by the decade of Depression. And even if we manage within a year or two to get regular testing and a vaccine, eliminate explosive outbreaks, and somewhat get back on our feet, the ramifications are monumental––economic, emotional, and in every way. So I’m not sure why this buoyed me, maybe because I needed a different framework, or some historical reminder that things cycle through, even the worst of things, and some kind of stability eventually returns.

And if we ever doubted that we are globally interconnected, surely we are seeing it now, and maybe, just maybe, we will in time learn to work together more effectively for our mutual welfare, and to protect the precious planet that we share. (I know. I sound like a middle school teacher. But after all, I was a middle school teacher. Can't help myself.)

So who knows? Maybe we’ll be shortening our skirts and dancing the Charleston before long. In any case, it already seems we’re being forced to develop new habits and make changes that were long needed, and to reevaluate what is important. I wish there were an easier way to do this, but we should acknowledge whatever good side effects might come about.

Also, I keep thinking about this social distancing phenomenon, this strange prudence and reserve, the quiet streets and ripples of stillness, as a vast exercise in love. It's partly fear, but there's also so much caring in it. I can hear it in the silence, composing itself.