Tonight, as I sit on my patio in near perfect Spring weather - a rare occurrence in Houston - I am struck by the irony of loving this moment, of finding perfection in today's weather, and today's classes, and in living today, and the fact that I'm stuck in the middle of some kind of nightmare. So, ok, my personal existence is not a nightmare. Let me qualify, I'm mostly healthy again and my kids are here, and they are healthy now, too. We have food and electricity, and entertainment, and I work from home and am not without income. My life is OK, but the world around me, less so.
And I am struck, not by the first time, by a reading from long ago by one of my favorite authors, when she literally broke down the word disaster. I am fluent in Latin and know some Greek, and yet this had never occurred to me until I read the words Madeleine L'Engle wrote in her book A Stone for A Pillow. The word, disaster, breaks down to mean, quite literally, a separation from the stars. A separation from the stars is a separation from the universe, from the earth, and connection to the natural world around us. It's a perfect description for where I am today.
At this particular moment, I am sitting under the fading sun, feeling a breeze blow, listening to more quiet than I usually hear in this neighborhood. A neighbor plays his trumpet - kind of badly, if I tell the truth. Another neighbor plays basketball, and the rhythmic thumping of the ball on concrete is a reminder that I'm not alone. Behind me there is a wall where I color in, every single day, a brick for each day we have been in isolation. Mine was broken by almost three days in ICU for a cardiac emergency caused by a virus. What virus? Who knows...my fever didn't get high enough to do more than eliminate flu and strep. I was told a COVID-19 test wasn't available for me and I'd be either critical or recovered before the results came back anyway...yea Texas. I'll never know what sent me to the ER in the middle of the night, scared I'd never see my kids again. Never know what damaged my heart and left me on four medications and a need for a cardiologist at 47 years old. Never know what made me cough until a rib popped out of place and made me faint in an ER before they even knew my name or why I was there, waking up with a mask on my face and asked to put nitro under my tongue. Because they wouldn't reach under my mask to put it there for me. I will not know, unless they retro test me for many things, why I was more sick than I have ever been in my life or why I turned somewhat for the better, despite seven more days of coughing and low grade fever once I got home. The heart issues are better, but not gone, and I take meds for someone's grandmother. Not for me, someone who works out 5-6 times a week and has the cholesterol count and resting heart rate of a prime marathon runner. This can't be my new reality, right?
But now, almost three weeks later, my life carries on. And not the same. It will never be the same. Those last words have been the hardest for me to absorb. That never part is difficult for the most pragmatic of us. Things will never be the same as before mid-March. In early March, I was looking forward to my kids coming home for Spring Break, for being off work for ten days, nurturing a somewhat new dating partner, and being thankful for my friends and all the events we had coming up this spring. In early March, I was figuring out how I'd manage the timeline of my daughter's college graduation, and figuring out days we could spend with my almost 89 year old father, and how to balance so many things. Time was always a problem.
Time is no longer the problem. I have so much time. Some days I think that I am drowning in time. I read, and I paint, talk to friends, and sleep in until I have an actual meeting or work obligation, because paperwork - I can do that any time. I laugh with my students and commiserate with colleagues and I attend happy hours and dance parties, and birthdays and weddings on Zoom. I long to hug someone, to have human touch. The person I had a fledgling dating scenario with before this all happened, he has vanished with the virus. Clearly, in retrospect, this would have ended in time anyway, but I miss that contact, too, for he was an artist like I aspire to one day be. But other people, the more steady in my life, they have upped their connection. We talk to one another daily, and we remember what is important and what is real. We find one another in low moments, and in the holy like on Easter or the moments like tonight when I feel the beauty of the universe around me.
So...disaster. Only if we choose to let it separate us from the heart of the world. The natural world. The human connection. Disaster only if we let it keep us from those we love. My job and income will survive and revive. My daughter's graduation will happen online. I'll do jiu jitsu again some day and I bought a dummy to train until that day. I have food to eat and children here to love and nurture. And I am outside. I am feeling the earth beneath my feet and I see the sky above. The stars are more clear than they normally are in my urban setting and I feel grounded. The earth will spin with or without me, but I hope that it's with me, so I can get more time to find my connections. Disaster. I felt it when the hurricanes raged and cut me off from my friends and I was afraid. Disaster when 911 came and I couldn't reach loved ones and felt the fury of the universe. Disaster, when the world stands still and we are separated from one another, and from the stars that guide us. There is no mistake that navigation is by the stars. Without them and their place in the universe, we are lost. But they are still there - I saw them last night. I'm not lost, and neither are you, just left in a place to listen to the silence and think about what the new normal might be.
We are not in a disaster, but in a rebirth of what we need to live our lives. We are not separate, but still and listening. I hear it all, and I'm waiting, to be enlightened and emboldened for a future. Not disaster, but recentering of myself. A new awareness I wait, separate, but not separated, and very connected to those I love. Very connected to the earth and a vast universe. This is not a disaster but a new beginning. Love to all those who have connected with me and made me feel grounded on a night without stars, without the breeze, and without the physical. It will come back around.
A virus has no heart, it has no soul, and it has no brain. It lives to replicate and consume. We are human and all too susceptible, and at the same time, our consciousness will allow us to rise. To sit, biding our time, staying steadily connected to the universe in a healthy and stealthy way. We will rise, as steadily as the bats I now watch soaring over the setting sun and skyline beyond my patio walls. I won't be here forever. Disasters end, and we go on. Hopefully different and wiser than before. But still we go on.
