sheltering in place

Raise your Glass to Mother Earth

Today is Earth Day, and it’s a beauty here in Georgia — one of those balmy days with scoops of melting clouds marbling their way into a lacy, eggshell sky. The tree tops ripple their applause, the birdsong sings its praise. Tomorrow the rains come, but today is fair and sweet.

Mother Nature is doing her best to distract us and honestly, she’s sometimes the only thing keeping me from wallowing in bitterness. The Earth is a faithful friend and a soothing constant in the midst of all the uncertainty right now. She can almost make you forget there’s a pandemic in our midst — at least for a little while.

I’ve been walking at dawn each day before anyone else is up, and those walks are just the dollop of sweet cream I need to jump start my sanguine soul.

There’s nothing quite like a wet, newborn morning to make you feel hopeful and focused again. Today as I ventured out, the sun was sliding into a crisp, 43-degree dawn. All the lawns were fresh dipped in soft light and glazed in celadon green. My breath fogged, in keeping with the river’s.

We’re kindred spirits, the River and I. Chilly, but moving. Searching.

A friend of ours has a saying, “If you’re not growing, you’re decaying,” and in these days of quarantine, it’s been easy to succumb to thoughts of decay and nothingness. Because it feels like there’s no forward progress. Like we’re all just treading water in a hovering state between drowning and life. An in-between state. A limbo.

I’m not used to limbo — although I did used to think it would be nice to get away from it all like a hermit on the hillside — just for a while. Well, that “while” has lost its luster.

But this Earth of ours, her luster is in full bloom. She’s been spiffing herself up — and I’m not talking simply iris and azalea blossoms here. She been doing a bit of spring cleaning while we’ve been sheltering in place: Blue skies are returning to L.A. and Tokyo, turtles are hatching on Daytona Beach; jellyfish are jellyfishing through the Grand Canal.

Progress through this pandemic pause…

A whole lot of revelations have been made during this stressful and polarizing time. Some good, some not so good. But today, on Earth Day, let’s focus on the positive revelations. How resilient and generous the Earth has been. How we can all learn from her example.

Get out and celebrate the Earth and enjoy her humblest of treasures today.

Find a field and wade through her clover, find a stream and watch it move; find some woods and pad through the pine straw, wander a gully or inspect a grove. Explore all the ragamuffin riches the unfettered world has to share.

Or, explore your own backyard…

Pack up a picnic dinner, park yourself on a quilt, and break bread with the ants and the bees. Weed your flowerbeds, mow your grass; toss a frisbee, ride your bike. Watch the world blur through a hummingbird’s wings; lap up the sunset from the slant of an Adirondack chair.

Whatever your potion, get outside and drink up a strong dose of Earth’s indomitable spirit. Swallow the lessons she’s teaching us all about resilience, generosity, grace and grit. And let them plant themselves in your soul.

Her spirit will surely help settle our own spirits in these most unsettling of times. And teach us a thing or two too…

April 22, 2020 0

What if it were your child in danger?

I keep reading posts from people demanding states and communities open up the gates and get back to business as normal. And I get so frustrated. Because things are nowhere near normal — and nowhere near ready to be.

This virus is deadly. Not because it’s necessarily more powerful than other viruses, but because we have no immunity to it. It’s brand new. And until we have the tools needed to fight this — antibodies and vaccinations and effective treatments — we need to stay put.

But then folks like Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil — all those first-name(ish) television demigods of medicine — recommend otherwise and folks are ready to live and die by their word. Literally.

And sometimes I just want to yell IN ALL CAPS through the screen “JUST GO OUT THEN… ALL OF YOU!” Go expose yourselves and let the wrath descend upon you like the plague that it is and then deal with it as you will.

But then, I know you won’t be the only ones to deal with it.

Nurses and doctors like my daughter will have to deal with it — and deal with you. Nurses and doctors who don’t have the option of staying in to protect themselves and their families from this deadly disease.

They’ve taken an oath to treat the sick to the best of their ability. But their ability is being compromised due to endless shift hours, crowded emergency rooms and sick wards, lack of PPE, lack of ventilators, and honestly, lack of common sense from so many members of the public riding the waves made by conspiracy theorists.

Every time someone defies the appeal to shelter in place, people are put at risk — your family members, essential workers, and ultimately medical personnel like my daughter are all put at risk.

And that is not okay with me. Yes, she took an oath to treat her patients, but she did not take an oath to put her own life on the line. She is not a soldier. But she’s doing it — and she will continue to do it. Because she has a soldier’s heart. And she has a caring heart.

But quit endangering her life by being stupid.

And it’s not just nurses and doctors. There are hundreds of people behind the scenes at hospitals who are growing sick and dying, too. People who never took a Hypocratic oath. People admitting patients, people cleaning patient rooms; people cooking patient meals. The unrecognized people of this pandemic — they’re catching it too.

When we thank the essential workers, we need to be thanking these folks, as well. We need to remember ALL hospital personnel — on the front lines and behind-the-scenes. And you need to remember ALL THE PEOPLE you are hurting if you ignore the advice of experts. The legitimate ones.

The Dr. Drews and Ozes of this world should be ashamed for revving the engines of the masses (literally) who are ready to reopen schools, reopen businesses, reopen beaches… and ready to spread this virus to monumental proportions.

And if you are one of those members of the masses, just stop and consider: what if it were your sibling, your mother, your father, your best friend inside the COVID19 ward — caring for… or being cared for?

And if that doesn’t make you stop and think… what if it were your child?

Think about it. And just stop. Stop the madness.

Shelter in place and listen to the voices of reason. The voices of science. The QUALIFIED ones in the research labs and on the front lines. The ones who know.

And stay the F at home.

April 18, 2020 1

Whether being driven to the Jitney Jungle with Mom or into the presence of God with Dad, I learned from a young age what words could do. My mother was a music major, and when she sang “Ave Maria” in the car, she opened up their magic. My father was a self-made preacher man and when he prophesied in our living room, he unhinged their power.

And while some people prefer the power, I prefer the magic of words. And believe me, there’s a world of difference.

Magic is revealed. Power is wielded. One shows itself to you. The other strips you bare — or does its best. Enlighten. Or ensnare. That’s what words can do.

And lately, against my better health and judgement, I’ve been caught up in the contagious power of words. In the feverish state of negativity running rampant right now. I’ve grown flush with fear and anxiety. Words have wielded their weight on me, and I’ve wielded out weighty ones of my own. And my recent blogs have been a result of that fever. And I’m sorry about that.

That’s not usually who I am. I’m generally an eternal optimist — an alchemist who tries to turn iron into gold. To dig around in the dark till I find the dawn. But social and news media’s words of contagious power got me.

Thank heavens a good friend recognized my symptoms, cautioned me against getting caught up, and prescribed the appropriate cure: Books.

In my cul-de-sac cult days, when things went all catawampus, I read books to escape. Words with magic to counteract the words of power being catapulted at me. Books sheltered and shielded me. They took me away from my reality.

Emily Dickinson, who self-cloistered for nearly her entire adult life, still enjoyed getting away from the four walls that both protected and penned her in. By reading.

She claimed “there is no frigate like a book/ to take us lands away,” and I agree. And what better thing to do while we’re self-cloistering (so much more poetic than “social distancing”) inside walls that protect and pen us in, than set sail on the pages of a book?

Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, has been my cure. It’s helped me rediscover the sweet magic of words again, which is what I desperately needed. But it’s also helped me remember the sweet magic of this universe and my part in it.

Gilbert’s words are positive and playful and they encourage us all to find the “strange jewels” planted in our souls by the universe. Some of us will rise to the challenge of unearthing those gems, she says, and some of us are content to sit back and let them simmer unseen.

These last few weeks, sitting at home on my couch, its been easy to turn slack and cynical and to leave the magic simmering somewhere. But her words are nudging me back toward action and light.

Big Magic’s subtitle is Creative Living Beyond Fear — and that’s exactly what I need right now — a way to move beyond fear and into a positive creative state. To go on my spiritual scavenger hunt to find the words truest to me. Words of love and inspiration and persistence.

Because words are my hidden jewels. My magic. I love to twirl them like pinwheels till they flicker and flash. To sharpen and shape them into glittering strings of paper dolls prose. To fling them like stardust into the nebula of my brain and see what riches take flight.

I need to remember to play with them again. Not wallow in them. To relish in their magic, not fall beneath their power.

And if you feel the same way, I highly recommend you giving Gilbert’s Big Magic a read.

She’ll help you find and reclaim your birthright.

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