Protectress

I started yesterday with an early morning walk. I wore a red dress and walked briskly. The hills cast great triangles of shade along the way, and the birds of morning chittered, and I told myself, unconvincingly, that this would be a day of accomplishment. I would make myself a little stronger, take control of my moods and meanderings, clear a space. Now, a day later, I can barely recall what I did.

The image above is a photo I took years ago of a painting by Joseph Stella (1877-1946), in the Brooklyn Museum. Stella emigrated to New York from Italy in 1896, a few years before my own grandfather, and although much of his work focused on his new city, he later returned to the themes and images of his homeland. This beautiful Madonna, painted in 1926, is surrounded by Mediterranean fruits, and behind her is the Bay of Naples. Her peaceful countenance filled me with a sense of calm the moment I saw it, and I selected her as a personal totem and protectress. She seems unflappable. And I hope that’s not sacrilegious, but maybe it’s exactly what religion is.

These are the qualities I seek that she seems to possess in abundance: quiet strength, equanimity, peace. We are all feeling vulnerable, fragile, unmoored. (I even see it in my husband.) How could it be otherwise in the face of so much loss? Not just of people we have loved, but of passages, simple pleasures, the consolations of gathering and touching and sharing. And as if the pandemic weren’t enough, there is the outrage of a wanna-be tinpot dictator, brazenly complicit Republicans, and a cult of ignorance, lies, and racism that has erupted into violence and desecration, mutating triumph and hope into unease and shadow.

Dr. King said it best: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I don’t think we can underestimate the depravity and malice of the white supremacists (or whatever they think they are) but I do believe justice will prevail…albeit in a slow, circuitous, arduous manner.

I cannot help but think about the Women’s March in Washington. four years ago. Nearly half a million of us marched peacefully in our nation’s capital, making our voices heard without violence or destruction. It was inspiring. (My Protectress was with me then, and an image of my sister Marlene.) Today, I am told we wouldn’t recognize D.C. for the unprecedented fortifications, armed guards, and bleak dystopian climate so eerily like the scene the orange sociopath spoke of in his bizarre inaugural address.

I resolve to stay strong. Sometimes it just means tending to the mundane, trying to have an ordinary life. Often it means reaching out to the friends who make you feel better (as opposed to the people who deplete us). I spoke to my old buddy Mort today, and we reminisced about New York, among other things, and I could almost smell the knishes and Sabrett’s hot dogs. Diane and I compared notes about what we did to stay strong, and she listed laughing at something her son said, feeling the breeze and sunlight on her cheek, reading. My Besties check in daily, and simply acknowledging our vulnerabilities, venting a bit, and laughing at our own folly makes everything more bearable. And I found a new poem I love, by Lisel Mueller:

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles
and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs  standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever. 

Yes, something secret is going on, and when the light strikes at just the right angles, you sense it. Yes, there is the wonder you knew in childhood, still waiting behind a mossy stone wall or amongst the leaves of the grandfather trees, and yes, it is always there, waiting.

“Stop taking on the world as a burden,” said David Whyte, “as something that has to be done.”

There is no path without heartbreak, but clear a space. Bring your protectress. Be your protectress.