You should never let a beautiful day escape from you. Grab it, hold onto it, use it. Even if it's chilly. Sunshine and clear skies, calm breezes -- they're a gift.
(No more breakfasts on the porch though...)
But of course, sometimes it's beyond your control. Sunshine be damned, I have to fix my mom's accounts, which are wiggling around in crazy ways and thus far, no one can explain to me why. And so I call person number 1, number 2, number 3. I'm on hold with person number 4, number 5, number 6. I leave my number and ask for a call back with person number 7 and then number 7 once again.
By early afternoon, the problem is solved. Or at least the discrepancies are explained to me. I tell the gentleman who helped clarify something that stumped the best of them that I'll hold on to his name and number and keep it by my pillow forever more. He responds -- you're welcome, stay well.
I relay just a fraction of this to my mom. She doesn't need to know about each issue that arises. I do her paperwork for her. Still, the outcome is to her benefit, so I pass on that piece of news. She says, genuinely wondering -- what would I do without you?
I have to smile at that. Without me here, nothing would change. Bills would get paid automatically, social security would come in, all would roll forward, even if I vanished with a puff of smoke. Ed is the much more indispensable link. He is her computer right hand, adjusting glitches and snafus and mis-clicks and outages as they arise. Her computer is her connection to the outside world. Ed enables that for her. So I better make sure he stays safe from COVID!
Of course, "making sure that he stays safe" changes nothing for us. We are in a bubble now for 243 days (how did I know that?!). Isolated at the farmhouse. We didn't relax restrictions in the summer and so we don't have to tighten them now! We are where we were. Or, as they say -- it is what it was and what will be all winter long. You have to find ways to wrap yourself in pockets of joy even in your weird new existence or else you're going to shrivel to a mere fragment of who you once were. And of course, for us, the joy has been and continues to be found in the natural world that surrounds us. And in family, in whatever temporary substituted form they are offered to us. Ed would say -- don't forget the cats!
Well, popcorn too. We love our evening popcorn!
(We took a late afternoon walk in our favorite county park, with a beautiful view of sandhill cranes going there and another coming back.)
