Risking Delight

It’s a moody morning. The weather is changing, all the leaves and grasses are trembling in the wind. I woke up feeling the cool air on my face, then I lay there contemplating the prospects of the day. It’s good sometimes just to float along out of context. Don’t immediately pivot to the dire, which is all too available these days.

Yesterday Monte helped me get restarted on my project, which is to write a book about this ranch, a much-needed update to the first volume, which my mother-in-law Nancy completed twenty years ago. I also had a telephone conversation with my eight-year-old buddy Virginia, who is brewing new ideas for a book, a board game, and other miscellaneous endeavors. The protagonist of her latest story will be a girl named Rocky who lives in a hollow tree and forages for food and seems quite content and self-sufficient, which is why it took me by surprise that a prince comes on the scene and marries her. I suppose those tired old tropes inevitably kick in. In real life, there’s been a little brush with Covid in her classroom, and I am erring on the side of extreme caution, steering clear of Virginia for a couple of days until all is unequivocally okay. I overthought it, of course, and was very worried that she would be disappointed and bewildered, but it’s a mistake to underestimate a child. This Covid thing has hung over her for much of her conscious life, and she navigates it with the coolness and clarity of an old pro, a reflection on her parents, of course, who keep things in perspective.

I keep making macadamia nut cookies studded with cranberries and chocolate chips, in a rich batter of butter, eggs, and sugar, and I’ve been nibbling on them a little too much. Today I’ll head west for my walk and bring a few to my old friend Aristotle, a mission that enables me to feel purposeful while my mind is pleasantly blank. I’m striving for a kind of static hum. I love the way the road opens to yellow fields stretching to the sea, how friendly horses appear at the fences, how now and then the trees are gathered together like grandparents whispering. I keep thinking of Jack Gilbert’s Brief for the Defense:

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.

Nancy’s roses have been blooming, and they’re in a vase on the table, festive and fragrant. I had coffee in a backyard in town last week with a former student from decades ago, and it was so nice to see her grown up and thriving––the special gift of having been a teacher. And I hiked with two smart, funny, kindhearted women who seem to have a flair for risking delight.

I don’t know the answers to any of what ails us as a nation or a world. It all feels very big right now, and disillusionment is squeezing out my natural optimism. My “little” brother (a psychologist in his fifties, not so little anymore) admitted to me in an email that he is struggling lately with a kind of dysphoria, and I almost think that dysphoria is becoming its own pandemic––all sentient beings are susceptible, and the vaccine is complicated and not readily available. We know what is right and good, but transactional thinking and both-sides-ism and facts-optional click bait have displaced morality lately. Sometimes we seem un-shockable. Even at the highest levels of our government, the unacceptable occurs with impunity. I realize that history is not a linear progression ascending steadily to enlightenment, and perhaps we are just sliding backward on a slippery slope and will manage to right ourselves before it’s too late. I realize this and remain if not hopeful, at least not bereft of all hope.

Anyway, I warned you that I have no answers. I’m just an old lady signing off now to go for a walk and deliver cookies and notice delights along the way.