It’s a golden dappled sunny cold afternoon and I watch early evening shadows bend, dip and slowly broaden along the length of the white walled patio. I heard the mourning dove today as I strolled through our silent neighborhood. A number of birds chirp wildly still, dipping crazily up and close to the edge of the living room windows, swooping back out again into the yard; streaking shadows. They are unaware of what they observe.
We’ve wound painfully around to the end of a difficult week…the second full week of this pandemic, a time of forced isolation, a shredding of the rug underneath our feet. It’s been torn away and we stand unevenly. I phone my Mother. She’s doing well and remarks on the isolating silence of her neighborhood. It is so startlingly quiet that the deer entering her backyard to munch on spring grass, linger longer than usual and then gather quietly together to lie down in the grass. There is no sound to disturb them.
‘I’ve lived here more than fifty-five years and I have never, ever seen this happen’ she exclaims. ‘They are truly resting in the meadow’. I picture this in my mind while listening on the phone. I read earlier today about a fox attack somewhere. Nature seems nervous, like the rest of us.
I open the patio window for a few minutes of fresh air before it gets too chilly. There are bits and pieces of a conversation drifting up on the wind over the sidewalk…’Yes, it came on so quickly’…’You’re doing well?’ There is a muffled response and then a quick farewell. A front door slams shut. People want to talk to each other but no one wants to be the one who is a carrier, who violates ‘social distancing’, who harms anyone. I have said, ‘Be well’ more times than I remember. Be well, my country. Be well.
690 Saint Paul 