For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. —Kahil Gibran
Because my neighbor is still making pies for us and I am making cranberry chutney for her, although we will not sit down to eat together.
Because coming out to shovel after the snow, I found my walks already cleared.
November 2020
Because it’s hard to tell eyes are smiling above the mask, but—another benefit of aging—laugh lines help.
Because a black man stood on the sidewalk, hand to ear. A sight so common I gave it no thought as I veered around him although I feared he’d think what black men think when white women avoid them. “It’s the Covid,” I wanted to say. Then I realized the thing in his hand had an antenna, was bright blue plastic. “Where are you now?” And the child with the other walkie-talkie burst through the door, excited: “Here I am, Grandpa!” Grandpa smiled at me, said, “It’s fun being five again.”
Because my dear friend meets me in the park where we stay a few feet apart in our masks and catch up our lives, like in the before times, but without hugs. We miss hugs.
Because when I pick up my book outside the library we can no longer enter, the librarian comes out in his mask to hand me the book and chat about what I’m reading.
Because at the ATM, the scruffy guy I was nervous about, a bandana for mask, ran after me to return the credit card I dropped.
Because our only regular outing is the weekly grocery store run. We go early when it’s quiet, see Astra, who gives us a more generous piece of salmon than we asked for and Michelle who knows it is Wednesday because we’re there, and Terri who suffered through the election with us. Cheerful and steady, they keep us fed.
Because our decades-old Friday morning coffee date has moved from the coffee shop to video, where we continue to meet just the same, only now, I have the bonus background antics of two cats to watch.
A few days after the first snow
Because as the Navajo pandemic crisis worsened last spring—it’s spiking again now—we heard nothing from Trump, nothing from the federal government. A third of homes on the reservation have no running water. I despaired at the indifference to so many deaths: Native Americans, the poor, those who cannot do their jobs from home, those in nursing homes, prisons, detention facilities—as if they were not also ours, as if they were not worth wearing a mask for, as if their deaths did not matter.
Navajo is a name the Spanish gave them. They are Diné. Into that gorge of Diné need last summer, California and New York poured nurses and doctors. Doctors without Borders sent a team and ordinary Americans sent money. Young Diné people helped organize PPE drives and local towns responded with masks and hand sanitizer.
Because although it was missing at the national level, compassion and generosity yet live in the American people.
A Navajo leader observed that because of the virus, for the first time in years people were paying attention to the stories old people tell, the stories that say who they are. If we look for such silver linings, this grueling pandemic will also reveal the positives of who we all are.
Because during the excruciating end of the presidential election process, a former vocal major from the arts school where I taught asked on social media for that arrangement, does anyone remember it, that we sang after 9/11? He needed that choral arrangement now, nearly twenty years later.
Because half a dozen vocal majors from that time responded. Because sometimes no bond seems as enduring and yet as light as that formed by art. Because it was an arrangement of “We Shall Overcome.” And right now we all need such an anthem.
Ways to help the Diné:
https://www.ndoh.navajo-nsn.gov/COVID-19
Because of you, Pat, because of your writing.
Beautiful, Pat. Thank you. And Happy Thanksgiving!
Beautifully written! Thank you!
You said it, Jenny-Lynn, you said it.
Yes, because of you!!!!
Grateful for you, Pat! Sending love
Loved this, Pat. Thanksgiving to you!