Shelter

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to shelter in place. 

The world seems off-balance this year, but the deep part of me has found the old tracks through the forest, hidden due to years of absence, but still there.

During the work week I can muffle the echoes of the past, stay busy in my virtual office, stay connected with the present. 

But on my days off, I’m reliving something I haven’t experienced in the seven years since I left my life as a stay-at-home daughter. 

As a child, I was homeschooled, and we were social distancing long before we could imagine a global pandemic. Living in the Rockies, you don’t have much choice because of all the space. It’s difficult to get close to anyone. People move there on purpose just to be alone. We practically sheltered in place most of the week, except for Sundays when we drove almost two hours to go to church and times when we had to buy groceries. 

I’m remembering the good things about those days: the time alone, the slowness of thought, the satisfaction of un-busyness. (I’m an introvert, if you couldn’t tell.) The pleasure of heating up soup on the stove for lunch, tea in the afternoons. All the books.

But I’m remembering the bad too. The creeping up of loneliness. The way isolation twists your mind. The disconnection. Stagnation.

With these memories come the tools I have developed to cut through the solitude: long walks to keep moving, long books to keep reading, living-room exercises, short spurts of writing time, weekend baking and cooking.

But now that I have learned from both isolation during my childhood and the busyness of my adulthood, I have new tools to use: connecting with friends virtually, therapy, the ability to work. And all these tools help me manage my days and weeks, help me find a kind of balance, at least some of the time.

Nothing will be the same after this pandemic, this is true. But we keep learning, even in the darkness. We keep adapting, even when we are pulled backward. We keep everything we have experienced and pack it along with us.

It could be a long, quiet winter. It will not be easy. Our time will be mixed up with good things and hard things and frustration and maybe sparks of joy. But if going through the crisis of starting over has shown me anything, it’s that things can change for the better, that hope isn’t a waste of time. Hope simply gives us the imagination to create a more thriving world for ourselves and others.