We were supposed to fly to New Orleans on Friday to meet our son Henry for his spring break. Instead, Henry was able to get a last-minute flight home to New Hampshire. He closed up his apartment in Tuscaloosa knowing he might not return till fall, shipped a box of books, filled two suitcases, and patiently listened to all my instructions about sanitizing his seat on the plane.
Henry’s senior musical theatre students were supposed to be in New York city this week, auditioning the numbers they’ve worked on all year before a roomful of agents and producers. Instead, they performed their pieces for their teachers and for each other on Thursday afternoon and sent a tape to New York. (The agents promised to watch, but that was then. Surely, by now, they are simply trying to survive.)
All semester, my son and and his cast for “Legally Blonde” have been rehearsing six nights a week for their April run. The spring musical in a musical theatre department is an enormous labor of love and dedication; for the seniors, it’s the culmination of four years of hope, effort, and intense study. The designers, the directors, the choreographer, the student actors – all had spent hours and hours getting this enormous show ready for opening night. There will be no opening night.
Instead, the cast gathered together one final time on Thursday evening and ran Act Two. They took to the stage and sang their hearts out, for the love of what they do and to honor the effort that’s gone into creating a show that will never be seen. And then they wept and hugged and said good-bye, knowing it was the last time they’d be together. Their four years of study and practice and late night rehearsals wouldn’t end with ovations and curtain calls, but suddenly, with tears and farewells and hastily made travel plans.
Meanwhile, I canceled the Airbnb place in New Orleans, the flights, the jazz brunch. Instead, I stocked up on pasta, rice, canned soup, and hand soap.
Saturday was unseasonably mild here, a breath of spring in the air, although I still went back inside for my hat and gloves. “We were supposed to be on the food tour right now,” Henry reminded me as we loaded fallen branches into the wheelbarrow. “Yes,” I said. “And instead we’re in Peterborough, picking up sticks and frozen dog poop.”
Given the pace of the virus spreading through our country, there is no place I’d rather be. To lace up work boots, head outside, grab a rake and begin the spring clean up here at home feels like a gift of normalcy in a world that’s suddenly become precarious, scary, and fraught with uncertainty.
Yesterday, we made waffles for breakfast and put on the Brandenburg concertos, the Sunday morning music of our kids’ childhood. Steve went to his office, to clean and go to the dump, and Henry and I hiked up Pack Monadnock. The parking lots in town were mostly empty, but not so the one at the base of the mountain. On our walk up, we ran into several friends and neighbors. People were eager to pause and chat, happy to connect from six feet away outside in the fresh air. We are all grasping at normalcy, it seems.
We stopped in to visit my parents on our way home, standing outside on the porch to talk through an open window rather than going inside. My mom passed her binoculars out through the door, so we could watch an otter hanging out on an ice floe on the pond, lazily snacking on a fish. If I could have held onto that moment, made it last, I would have. Instead, I simply tried to soak it up – the sun on our faces, my parents safely tucked inside their little house, my son at my side, the quiet half-frozen pond spread before us, a solitary otter enjoying its catch.
Back home, I set up a Zoom account on my iPad and texted Lauren in Atlanta to do the same. She and her room mate rolled out their mats and within a few minutes we had a cozy little yoga class going. It felt intimate and communal, as if we really were all together in the same room. The whole thing was unplanned, but as I asked them to lie down and close their eyes for shavasana, I wished I had something more to offer, a few words that might help us all calm down a little and remind us that even our “insteads” might have slender silver linings, if we’re open to seeing them.
I woke up early this morning, long before first light, wondering about what’s next. Just a week ago most of us were simply watching the news and living our lives, albeit with a slow-growing sense of anxiety. Now, seven short days later, we’re creating new lives in territory we barely recognize. The shift is invisible, profound, and utterly unsettling.
For me this last week has been mostly about upended plans and hasty homecomings, shopping lists and new hygiene habits, and making an abrupt adjustment from going and doing to staying and being. Meanwhile, everyone I know has been dealing with the confusion, disappointment, and the cost of canceled plans and trips, classes and work commitments. We all have family members displaced or in flux or wondering if a sore throat is something to worry about. We have loved ones in nursing homes who are suddenly inaccessible and friends in quarantine. Our routines are upended and our worries mount as we confront new bills, shrinking bank accounts, encroaching illness, and countless what-nows and what-ifs. And yet, so far, we are the lucky ones.
A vivid, intimately detailed story in the New York Times last week about two young health care workers in China brought home the devastating reality of the coronavirus for me in a way no chart or graph or headline possibly could. Both were twenty-nine years old, both were devoted young mothers with small children at home, both took every precaution against the virus as they showed up for work to care for the ill. Both became gravely sick themselves. Only one survived.
At this moment, no one in my own close circle is sick. But it doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination to understand that I, too, may lose people. Things are going to get harder. And sadder. In the meantime, like everyone else, I do my best to prepare. Buying some extra canned goods and soap is the easy part. New habits require diligence and practice, but I can do that, too. And there are plenty of ways to be productive at home. The closets, the basement, the garden – everywhere I look, a task awaits. On a practical level, I’m as ready as I can be.
The hard part, perhaps for all of us who are quietly turning inward at home this week, is figuring out how to ready ourselves for losses we can barely bear to think about. When we have no idea what’s next, or exactly how or when our own challenges will arise, the only sane choice is to practice staying present with life as it is right now. And the only thing we can know for certain is that life as it is will continue to be transformed, perhaps dramatically and tragically, in the weeks ahead.
I’m sitting in my kitchen as I type these words, watching a familiar flicker come and go from the feeder just outside. The window is cracked open, and every now and then a solitary, unknown bird lets loose with a yearning call. Outside, the first daffodils are pushing through earth that was still frozen solid a week ago. The forsythia branches I cut on the last day of February and stuck in a vase are budding into yellow blossom, promising the arrival of spring. There’s food in the refrigerator and my family is safe. Looking around, everything appears completely the same as it’s always been. And yet, nothing is.
All over town, shops, restaurants, schools, and theatres are shuttered, empty, and still. Who knows when, or if, they’ll open again. My husband, owner of a small business, is at work today, meeting with his staff, confronting the stress of decisions that impact not only the lives of his employees, but their entire families and livelihoods, as well as ours. In Asheville, our younger son Jack is doing a double shift at the sober-living program where he works, with little choice but to show up and be useful during a time of high stress and increased vulnerability. Part of his job is to accompany clients to daily twelve-step meetings, but this week all those public gatherings have been canceled. Instead, they are holding their own meetings at the Next Step house, offering each other support even as newly established recovery routines are upended by closings and shut-downs.
There are no easy answers, no clear path through any of this, other than caution, kindness, and care for ourselves and others.
And so I remind myself: my real challenge right now is a spiritual one. In the midst of an evolving, unprecedented crisis, can I truly practice living moment to moment? Can I take on this strange new life day by day, from a place of tender awareness rather than fear? Can I let go of the ways I thought life would unfold and save my strength to swim with the tide? Can I stay focused on what’s good, right now?
I’m trying. We all are. And just as the virus that’s occupying our collective consciousness is invisible, so too is the love we put forth with every gentle word spoken, every note written, every phone call to a friend, every random kindness offered and received. I believe that in a time like this, once all possible precautions have been taken, love remains our most powerful antidote to fear and despair. We’re in this together, dear ones. Let’s stay home, even as we keep looking for ways to reach out and support each other. Let’s sanitize what we can and then seize every opportunity to notice beauty, to manifest joy, to create connection, and to keep and share the faith that, together, we will come through.
Fourteen years ago, as a cherished friend confronted the too-soon end of her life, I began writing notes for a book called The Gift of an Ordinary Day. I wanted to remind myself, as much as anyone else, just how precious an ordinary day can be. My guess is that none of us will ever again forget.
Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love—
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
~ Lynn Ungar
(As I was writing this afternoon, this poem arrived in my in-box, the daily offering from my friend Claudia Cummins’s much loved blog A First Sip. It speaks so exquisitely to the moment that I wanted to share it with you.)
Thank you❤💗❤
Today was a good day, because you always appear when we need your words and your guidance. I saw my hyacinths and my forsythia open their first blossoms. Today there are 77cases of Coronavirus in Montgomery County,
Pa. Non-essential businesses are closed. Schools are closed. My husband’s medical practice is still busy. Even with the virus, people still get other sicknesses. The hospitals have cancelled all non-essential medical procedures. We
have no medical tests available yet. Our adult children are not close in proximity and we parents worry. My elderly
in-laws are home and infirmed.. Our retirement savings are evaporating day by day. We need to be thankful for the
time we have each day. We need to appreciate and reach out by text or email to our friends and relatives. Thank you for your beautiful essay at this SCAREY time. I wish you and your family good health and sanity in this time of uncertainty.
How I wish I were up RT. 31 in Washington today instead of Texas.Thanks for a glimpse of Peterborough to lift my spirits. My mind is in a whirlwind, wondering how we got to this abysmal state so fast. Like so many of us I wake up in the morning not believing it’s not a dream. Good healh to you and your family…may the summer bring us to NH…I cannot bear it otherwise. I read Toadstool is mailing books free of charge…next on my list….
This is a wonderful reminder of what’s important during this troubling time. Thank you,
Karen
As always Katrina, you found the words we needed to hear. I am the front lines for an immunosuppressed cancer patient, so I make the grocery runs & pick up the prescriptions when I’d rather stay home. I will have to steel myself for the trips into the city ~ where the # of confirmed cases grows daily ~ for his treatments in a clinical trial. And every time I set foot out of my house, my safe space (which has been sanitized & which no one but us enters), I am aware that if I catch this virus, chances are he will, too (since we cannot get tests to find out when we need to quarantine separately from one another). Which would then mean he’d get dropped from the clinical trial… You can imagine the mental spiral.
So yes. Staying in the moment, focusing on the unexpected positives, & noticing the beauty that persists despite the virus. That is what we need to do right now. Thanks for the reminder.
Thank you.
Today has been full of anxiety. And you summed it up perfectly and put your finger exactly where my fears are, even when I haven’t been so sure. “The hard part, perhaps for all of us who are quietly turning inward at home this week, is figuring out how to ready ourselves for losses we can barely bear to think about.” This. Thank you for sharing your gift with us. I hope you’ll share again soon. Your words are a comfort.
There’s always something beautiful to take away from your writing – a line for my quote book, a tear that falls and lightens my heart, a thought to carry me through the day. For that, I’m ever thankful for you!💛
Thank you for this. You’re writing is always balm for my soul.
Yesterday I was hoping you would send a message, a word of encouragement, a message of hope, a picture of spring. And there it was this morning, your gift, that always helps me through my days. Thank you.
Your emails always arrive when I need them the most. Because of my terminal condition [not disease or cancer] suddenly I too am in the high risk category. While I’ve known for a while my very rare diagnosis, it hasn’t fully settled in my mind as I’ve yet to inform the extended family. With the required separation, I yearn for my knitting buddies but stay at home, only leaving for needed shopping trips or medical appointments. The last seem to be multiplying exponentially.
Your calm words are soothing, as I need to believe that I will survive both outside threats to my life and the one my body has created for me. Am on the transplant list for which I must stay healthy. Life currently brings me to focus on the minutia of life. Your words help support my spirit. For that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
We are of like mind !
Here was my post !
Looking In…
It’s a Sunday afternoon on what will be remembered as the first real week of “social distancing” here in Atlantic Canada.
Amid the shakes of the head at the toilet paper hording, the fear of lost business, the worry of loved ones trying to return to Canada and the angst over older family members who cannot receive visitors there is the desire to do the right thing by staying home and doing our absolute best to contain this virus that is wreaking havoc on our already burdened medical system and our ailing planet in our usually overstuffed, rich homes.
Oh so humbling to us First World Countries who are not accustomed to not having what we want when we want it. In particular, we are not in the habit of not being able to go where we want to go no matter how big the crowd without worrying about stepping in harm’s way.
Let’s reflect on that for a moment.
I will wait.
I think maybe Mother Nature has decided to put her spoiled children in a “time-out” for a yet to be determined amount of time. She is putting us in the corner on our knees to think about the damage we have been doing to the earth. She is making us write “I will not continue to waste and over-purchase” a thousand times on the black-board and is forcing us to use a little less fuel by grounding us. Good Mother Earth has essentially banished us to our rooms and will not allow us to come out until we have thought about our greedy selves. Until we realize how precious our health is and until we promise to eat healthy, exercise and be kind to one another we will not get our dinner.
Let us use this time of self isolation to reflect inward. Let us become smarter and kinder …
I will wait.
Thank you Katrina for your observations and words of wisdom. I am so sad for Henry and his students. But, he has already given them such a gift. His students’ tears show just how important his work was to them. My senior son is on his way home – graduation was canceled yesterday. The suddenness of all of this is what is so hard from him to deal with. As he told us, “I just thought that we had more time.” Very difficult for students and parents to process all of this. I am sad for him and also sad that we won’t be able to celebrate his graduation in St Louis, as planned, with extended family.
Thank you for calmness in the storm………..
My neighbor across the street has laid out a small string of twinkle lights, at one end of her porch. They seem random, in the dark, like music notes I can’t hear. They cheer me. In return I have turned on my single electric candlestick in my front window. And, left my carport ceiling light on. Up and down our street, since this weekend, more lights are on. There is an old gospel song, “Let the lower lights be burning” about what it is to live down lower than the cliff, on which the lighthouse stands. Below, along the dark edge of earthlife, every light matters, cheers, guides, not warning ships away from danger, but guiding the shorebound safely home. I hope the twinkle lights and porch lights go on, around this whole planet, until random acts become a trend, and a reminder to others in the dark that we are sequestered, but not a!one.
Thank you SO much Katrina. I desperately need your lovely and wise words as I struggle with anxiety and fear. I keep journaling trying to manage and I wonder what the virus is trying to teach us. My latest thought is the virus is telling humans we need to stop, we are spinning out of control and causing irreparable damage to ourselves and Mother Earth.
I look forward to more if your writings Katrina as we try to manage such severe unknowns.
Thank you for your beautifully written and thoughtful post, Katrina, and for including the Lynn Ungar poem. I happen to be reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day now, and am so comforted by your words as I navigate life with teenagers myself. Thank you!
Thanks for your hand (in words). I reach out to yours and squeeze gently. We will get through this- day-by-day.
I have always been inspired by The Gift on an Ordinary Day. I still take note of my own “Ordinary gift days”- even now when the world outside my door is anything but ordinary.
Well said. So beautifully stated. (But then, you always do.) It is a time to stay safe, to ponder what matter, to do what we can, however we can. And to hope.
Thank you for writing this blog and for being my steady presence in such uncertain times. And while we’re being advised not to connect physically or hold hands, I can’t help but feel that your words will surely align hearts. I’m confident that we’ll emerge from this dark time a bit stronger and more aware of what really matters. Always grateful for your written word, but now more than ever. xoxo
Your words always seem to come at just the right time. Like a beacon of light in the fog. Oh what I would give for an “ordinary” day…not only during these uncertain times, but in my own life of suffering with MS, ordinary would be a blessing that I would welcome with open arms. Thank you and my heart breaks for Henry…it’s not fair to the seniors who are having this year taken from them through no fault of their own.
That is lovely. Lynn Ungar is a friend of mine. Her poem has gone viral which she is finding slightly amusing since it is called Pandemic.
Your blog is beautiful. I’ve really enjoyed your books, also. Thanks!
Much love to us all!
My hubby have been in training for social distance since we both were sick (Not COVID) the last five weeks.
On my solitary walk yesterday this came to me.
16 March 2020
By Elizabeth Sadhu
What if this is an opportunity to have more quiet?
What if this is an opportunity to write that blog, write a book?
What if this is an opportunity to learn an instrument, practice an instrument?
What if this is an opportunity to sing?
What if this is an opportunity to dig in the dirt?
What if this is an opportunity to just breathe?
What if this is an opportunity to tell people that you love them?
What if this is an opportunity to read in the bathtub?
What if this is an opportunity to share your gifts?
What if this is an opportunity to cook at home?
What if this is an opportunity to write that poem?
What if this is an opportunity to fill up with just BEING?
What if this is an opportunity to take little walks? Or big walks?
What if this is an opportunity to wave to your neighbors?
What if this is an opportunity do something kind?
What if this is an opportunity to dance naked in the kitchen?
What if this is an opportunity to listen to your inner self, your highest self?
What if this is an opportunity to see more connection?
What if this is an opportunity to read a million books?
What if this is an opportunity to be silly?
What if this is an opportunity to be tranquil, to find tranquility?
What if this is an opportunity to find the peace within?
What if this is an opportunity to do a little yoga or stretching?
What if this is an opportunity to do anything you want?
What if this is an opportunity to watch a silly video?
What if this is an opportunity to be at peace?
What if this is an opportunity to see the humor?
What if this is an opportunity to be safe and have fun?
What if this is an opportunity to see the beauty in all?
What if this is an opportunity to do what you have always wanted to do?
What if this is an opportunity to find the connection in all humans?
What if this is an opportunity to dolphin dance?
What if this is an opportunity to spin and spin and spin?
It’s so much more calming to think of this pandemic as an opportunity than the crisis it is! Thank you for your lovely thoughts.
Thanks for responding, Carole.
Much love to us all!
True and gentle words, Katrina. Thank you for lifting my spirits as only you can.
Thank you Katrina for bringing calm in this storm. I can feel hundreds of hands reaching out and touching each of our hearts and that is a wonderful gift we have been given with your writing here. I agree with Lauren that we will emerge stronger and know what really matters and then the Gift of an Ordinary Day might not feel as bad as it does today. But it’s also a reminder to me that so many suffer from illnesses and diseases all the time and perhaps we can reach out with a bit more love and care for those who are already suffering, not just emotionally but physically. It is a time to join hands and come together and connect our hearts in ways we might not have done before. Now we are forced to be inward and quiet and maybe we can find some gifts in this dark time. “Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed” – Corita Kent
Katrina, you always manage to let my tears be freed with your words.
It feels the entire Earth has become a massive Snow Globe…everything turned upside down .at such speed…and how the pieces will eventually settle is very uncertain.
Here is Australia we have literally barely caught our breaths from the devastating bushfires …….and now the increasing Coronavirus numbers both here and watching countries around the world where most Aussies have relatives and friends in lockdown, illness and buckling health services.
Collective struggle and suffering on a global scale.
Everyone with a story; cancelled weddings, a 60th Birthday party in a weeks time cancelled. My neighbour, who struggled to get pregnant, finally after arduous IVF is 34 weeks pregnant…I stood 2m from her at the park while she threw the ball for her dog ..such terror in her eyes it took my breath away . All I wanted to do was hug her and tell her it was all going to be okay….and I couldn’t do either.
Small cafes and businesses recently opened with such hope, suddenly devastated.
Trying to make my elderly parents understand that all the activities that give their life structure and meaning are now literally life threatening…. and reassuring them we will work tech solutions so they can still play Bridge with their friends and “meet” for coffee and a chat… but virtually.
Fear for 2 of my own sons..one a Hospital Pharmacist and the other who has a casual job while completing his University Course ( now cancelled) stacking the rapidly depleting supermarket shelves…both now classed as “essential” staff.
My other son in another State 8 hours drive away….I am grateful he is able to work from home now and live with my sister but I wish he were nearer.
My work as a Physiotherapist immediately impacted …..and trying to upskill at breakneck speed to be able to provide a Telehealth online service ….which will be hard to get any income from , but at least maintains a sense of connection and care, especially for the frail, the isolated, the already chronically ill.
And for myself, a 55 year old Cancer Survivor with an auto immune disease. And for my husband who I keep making wipe and wash and shower and do it all again.
So today, as I woke up and felt overwhelmed by the news yet again, I went to the place that helped me through my own personal battle with cancer…rolled out my mat, rang my singing bowl, then practiced yoga for an hour, quietly, gently and sent as much loving kindness to the Global Community as I could muster.
We certainly are all in this together.
May we be well, may we be kinder than necessary, and may we never lose hope.
Thank you again Katrina. Namaste
Thank you, Katrina. Your words always inspire, connect and uplift.
Thank you Katrina. This is actually a thank you for ALL of your blog posts. I usually read them in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, and they are so comforting that I end up falling back to sleep before I write to thank you. LOTS of sleepless nights last week, and then I wondered if one of the gifts was being at this place was that there is really nothing left to worry about? It’s either happened or we’re just going to get gobsmacked by something new.
I have a kumquat tree in my yard and I used to think I didn’t like them. Yesterday, doing “home schooling” with the kids (which is in quotes because they were doing it on their own as I worked) I noticed that the kumquats were back. It was raining but I went out to pick one – and I actually thought it was delicious. I guess it turned out that I just never noticed the kumquats until they were over-ripe.
This is a longwinded way of saying that your blog always reminds me to try to live more simply and quietly. But I rarely accomplish that – I suppose it takes a shelter in place to really heed that direction. But I am inspired and comforted every time I read your words. Please keep sending them out – they are so necessary right now. Hugs to your beautiful boys and to you and your dog. xoxoxo
Katrina,
Your voice is always a favorite. You move us into the margins of thought and into the heart of the matter. Thank you for capturing the gift of an ordinary day. I love that you are still guiding and mothering your children, which is something you articulate very well, both the simple and the complex. Be well. Please keep writing during this time. Your words make life work.
I felt comforted and connected as I read your blog. Thank you. So often in these dark days I think about the messages in your Ordinary Day book. I have it in on the little shelf behind my reading and cherish it.
If I wasn’t so tech illiterate, I could figure out how to insert a “throbbing heart” emoji right here. Thank you.
It’s good to be trying with you, and good to be writing with you again. Something seems to have broken loose from the same old, same old.
Maybe the day you wrote this I happened to pick up Gift of an Ordinary Day for a reread. It had been years since I first opened it and as much as I loved it the first time around, you cannot believe how it unfolded to reveal messages and notions that were absolutely in tune with this unfolding pandemic. I also now have sons who are at the same stage as your boys were then, doubling the relevance, echoing my experiences. But the idea that has stayed with me still is In order to live we must die to what we thought would be. None of this was part of the plan and so I have to shed it, like a skin, so I can get on with whatever is waiting for me. I am so appreciative of your perspectives, Katrina, especially right now.
Thank you, Katrina. Just what I needed this morning. Grateful for the beauty outside my door ❤️
Great post. gave me the perspective to write something I’ve been wanting to write. came here via Live and Learn.
I’ve been going to my 12 Step Zoom meetings. Tell your husband “Hey!”