Coming to terms

What on earth is going on?

I don't believe that any of us have grasped the grit of COVID until recently.  The acceptance of this reality is a methodical and measured process - measured in the sense that  you can only absorb so much on a daily basis before you shut it down.  That is my reality and I suspect it is yours too.  Increments.   Soon the list of  cancellations and restrictions will bottom out and there won't be anything else taken from us and in a way, that will be a relief.  Define this new reality so we can start to learn to cope within the boundaries we have been allotted.

I am a solstice girl, and today was the first day of spring.  Inspired by Lisa, we drove to Parksville and enjoyed a few blissful hours at Rathtrevor Beach.  We took two cars because we felt it would be prudent to limit our time in an enclosed vehicle.   I am symptom-free and so are Lisa and Ben; we have been self-isolating for more than a week.  But my husband's job means he is in every pharmacy, care home and home-bound patient needing medication, and because of that, we take the extra precautions.  The beach was full, and we practiced social distancing.  The snippets of conversation that we heard in passing were all virus-connected.  We are all in the same boat.  But families were there, and their kids were riding bikes and running on the sand and the Brant geese appeared in all their honking splendor.  Time spent in nature is the antithesis of our predicament.  Nothing gives more respite than that, so please, get outside.   We are blessed on the Island with an early spring and the warmth has charmed the birds into symphony and the bulbs to pop up almost overnight.   Life goes on - take that in and understand it is a huge constant in an inconsistent world.

One hundred years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his wife from Spain, while under quarantine for the Spanish flu.  He said, "At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public space.  Even bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands.    He hadn't.  He went on to assure, Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin and Lord, if we need it, brandy.   Please pray for us."

Fitzgerald finishes with these prophetic words:   "In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while.  And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening's cast,  I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow." 

So don't be a Hemingway, right?  Watch for that glimmer.  It's there for us all.  Eyes firmly forward.