Jury duty…bitter cold day. Assured by phone I must make a showing at Henrietta Town court today by 6pm. I show up thirty minutes early with paperwork, managing to almost trip over a police officer with a big gun and a girl in handcuffs.

Met at the door with a blank stare by a rather fierce looking court clerk who asks unwillingly if she can help me. Doubtful. I refrain from saying this thought out loud.

Was willing to go through the metal scanner but was informed I needed to go around it. Found a clerk in the back who told me nothing was happening today but if I filled out my paperwork I could leave it with her and I would get credit. I was hoping she meant a cash pay out and to be left alone.

Handed in the paperwork and left; back into the bitter wind.

Still not sure what happened to the girl in handcuffs and the officer with the big gun.

I stand up to leave the room and glance over at him; this scrawny scrap of a boy. Thinks he’s tough. I know where he is. I know what he is rolling with. He’s not tough, but the show is everything. It’s a hot mess. There was one day, a long time ago when he wandered into school in his pajamas because he was looking for breakfast, because he was looking for structure; because his family, completely ignorant of all things familial, allowed him to wander city streets in pajamas, lost and hungry.

As I look at him and walk by his table, he throws me the middle finger; that’s all he has to offer. Silly thing. If he thinks he can move me with that, he does not know what I’m rolling with.

I know where I am. I’m made of far sterner and gentler stuff. A character out of a lowly chapter in a Dickens novel; this poor boy.

I look at him and chuckle. ‘God bless you, T…’ I move out of the room while I feel him watching…

I stretch my right arm up, reaching to the back of the shelf and I grasp the soft edge of the hard bowl. I slide it to the edge and gently lower it to the counter. The slightest shower of old flour descends in a wispy veil and lands on my sleeve.

Countless times, gnarled and loving hands mixing delightful treats in that ancient pink bowl…through seasons of life, laughter, joy and bitter sorrow…folded into the batter…a pink and heavy bowl…a cup of sweet, a pinch of sorrow…some salty days and a change of direction.

Keep whisking, keep on stirring my dearest…for do we ever really love those with whom we never laugh?

Ancient pink bowl…filling up with pancake happiness on a frozen January morn…life’s recipe passed on to the next generation, the next plate, the next mouth…keep on folding into pink memory as the 13 degree winds whip over the blackened drive…

One of the finer points of balance in life is the ability to get many things done and done well, while at the same time having the energy and space to reflect deeply on what is being accomplished.

This leads one to a ‘theology of the kitchen’…the deeper meaning of laundry…the importance of placing carefully all the indoor plants in the right windows for maximum sunshine during the winter months…and the joy of listening to the last mowing sounds of the season…blessing the neighbor who keeps his lawn perfectly coiffed in a brilliant green checker board pattern.

These are small snippets of the world beyond this one. All are meaningful…

Ah, yes…plastic Wonder Bread bags stretched over socks, squeezed over and through snow pants foot straps and into cold red rubber boots which quickly became hopelessly entangled with the snow pants legs upon trying to remove everything at once in a panic.

Once, in first grade, I almost missed my bus home across the lonely stretch of Route 19. Once, I almost didn’t return home from school due to this claustrophobic entanglement…

The color white…our January month is the shade of cream, whole milk, vanilla and lace; bath salts, soft slippers and the shivering rabbit.

It is the slumber month…the time of putting away, pondering and reflecting, the month of white lights and leftover chocolate and the electric blanket and a stack of books…the month where I don’t let things get to me…

I dream a lot these days. It’s an attempt to keep sorting out where we are, I suppose. A most tiring aspect of Covid might be the slippery beginning to all of it. All grey and grasping and ‘what is happening?’ and no time. There was no time. Like a house on fire, we ran to get out, to re-group. We looked around and got to guessing, and we keep doing it. This is a long time for a house to be on fire.

I line things up. I build. I set my jaw, my mind. I plan. Then the bottom falls away and it gets slippery all over again. The restaurants are open, now closed again. I drive by a local favorite and see that they are once again, ‘take out only’. My Mother wants to go in the restaurant to sit and chat and eat.

There was no time.

I, we, all of us stepped off into air on a Friday afternoon. I wish I had known it was the last day. I exited a building where I worked for almost 23 years; the sound over the public announcement…’be sure to take home your laptops’…ringing in my ears. I remember what jacket I wore.

I remember feeling in my gut that ‘the jig was up’. I just did not know what the ‘jig’ was. I wish I had looked around more carefully. Now I’m in another place, but only through the computer lens. I’m not really there. It’s slippery like that. I’ve had orange cloth masks and blue medical masks and now I am wearing black masks. Probably three or four times a week, my husband looks out the window at the neighborhood loop and says, ‘there isn’t a soul out there’.

Yesterday, I stepped out on the porch and walked to the edge and looked at the street. I finally saw a neighbor wrestling his garbage bins into the garage. I yelled loudly, startling myself with the sound up against the silence of the street. ‘Hey! Hey, Frank! Hey there!’ He looks over at our house. ‘Oh, there you are!’ he bellows. ‘I was wondering where the voice was coming from’. I wave and I turn around and go back into the house.

‘Why are you yelling?’ he asks me. ‘I’m talking to Frank. It’s too silent’. He returns to his phone where someone, desperate to change the trajectory of his life speaks rapidly in Spanish through the wires of the cell into my husband’s ear. There is addiction. Now there is Covid and isolation. It’s all just too slippery.

There was no beginning, no platform from which we jumped. We just jumped wildly into the air…and everything was changed by the time we landed.

I exited a local candy store this evening and noted the line of people waiting to be let in; only five at a time. Five people at a time. This store is small. ‘Could I please just step into the foyer and wait inside because it is so cold?’ asks an older woman who has been waiting outside for a while. The young woman answers, ‘I’m sorry, I am so sorry…it’s the social distancing requirements…’ Her voice fades as I head back across the street to the car.

It’s really slippery when an elderly customer can’t go inside and shelter from the cold…

6:44am. Driving. My phone dings. I have been awake since 5:25, waiting for the daily update of schedule and personnel changes; the chaotic shuffleboard game forced upon us every morning.

Most days, I see the first bit of motion around 5:55 or 6:00 at the latest. This morning as I drank strong coffee and read quietly to settle my mind, not a sound. Thursday, January silence. Prickling anxiety. It’s going to be a day.

6:44. On the road, this post is late. Experience tells me one person is out of the building, for certain because one administrator posts early and the other posts much later. There is a small nagging strand of anxiety stretching at the back of my neck. I shift in my car seat and watch the blackened bend in the road ahead of me veer slightly to the right, coaxing the car around the river’s curve, past the gorgeous butter cream yellow barn with the large bright red ‘Merry Christmas’ wreath with thick, heavily bright shiny bulbs and baubles wound around greenery and radiating out hope in the pitch black. It is the only light around, save for smallish hints in the sky; soon there will be a sleepy grey sun rising over the fields and river. To wander off the road into one of the tar black fields, would be to invite disorientation.

The phone glows. There are 19 people on the list. Astonishing. Teachers, administrators, assistants, a librarian, persons who will be pulled out of their schedule to provide breaks for people required to attend other meetings where people will be missing. I shift again in my seat.

6:45. Ding. The changes, adjustments and shifts begin. A therapist who handles angry, truculent, upset and disruptive kids…is on the list. No help there today.

Almost as if telepathically, I imagine, can feel the tension of the other staff members, even though we are separated by miles. We know what each other is thinking; can picture the shaking of heads and the wistful looks at watches as disorder is anticipated.

6:55. Ding. Another teacher is out. Three additional persons from the third floor have their days turned inside out. Whatever they planned for their students, for their mandated classes, the use of their skill sets and training…is now set aside before students arrive. The chaotic ripple effect in the pond widens.

6:57. Ding. An academic coach is on the list; called up to provide coverage for four teachers (one of whom is absent) with mandated annual reviews. Required meetings grind on, despite the shortage.

7:10. Ding. I enter the parking lot. What now? Am I on the list? My wonderful first graders expect to see me every day. The exceptional teachers with whom I work, may be forced to scramble and reinvent their morning if I am snatched up. They’re very good. They handle it masterfully and the teaching continues. But people burn out and our lives are written on our faces. The collective face of our building is worn, tired and discouraged. It is January 4.

7:14. Ding. This is new. One of the administrators has to move up to the third floor and teach a class. Every day is a new adventure, it seems. I swipe my badge against the box on the wall and enter the heated building. Instead of walking directly up the stairs to the right, I decide that if I am going to be called, I will take my time getting there. I walk all the way around the first floor and enter the elevator on the other side. Desperate times…I sense the exhaustion on the first floor.

7:51. Ding. There’s another switch in the annual meeting schedule. Nothing shifts too much in the widening pond but it’s another change to note. Someone has to pay attention, because someone, somewhere is moving to another spot.

7:54. Ding. All grade level meetings scheduled for the day are officially cancelled. There is no one left to run the meetings. No one has any energy to attend anyway, I think to myself. Or maybe I say it out loud. I proceed to my first class.

8:32. Ding. There’s another switch and more movement on the third floor. I have been on the third floor 3 times this year. Up there is a world not to my liking and the energy shifts palpably between floors. I joke with my little ones that when I leave them, I am going off to hide. They think it is funny. There is raw truth in humor and I am glad they do not feel my anxiousness; do not absorb the rising frustration from confused staff.

8:45. Ding. Thus far, I have been spared. Another shift on the third floor. The dust settles and whatever can be taught within the chaos continues quietly until 11:04.

11:04. The final ding. An ESOL teacher is pulled to run a classroom in the pre-k unit; a unit which sometimes requires diapering and childcare for three year old students. The teacher struggles between rage, laughter and concern. ‘Connect with the other assistants and teachers in that wing of the building’, I suggest. I understand the concern about protocol, angry parents, litigation, preparedness…the list extends. ‘There has to be another paraprofessional who can assist you,’ I offer. ‘Both were absent before’ the teacher responds. I sit back and think about a room of three year old students with two substitutes.

It’s been a very long day.

Days end tally: twenty one people out. Countless staff members moved around. Eight or more updates throughout the day. Anxiety level: high. Anger level: high. Sarcastic commentary: rampant. Education accomplished: unknown.

There were piles of woolen coats and silk scarves draped lazily over the rocking chair and the ottoman. It was a gentle afternoon with cups of tea and a huge kettle of Cuban rice simmering on the stove and a freshly baked apple cake waiting on the counter.

It might snow buckets for all she knew about her town of Rochester; the city by the lake. A huge flock of black crows flew clustered yet separate in a cold cloud rapidly passing the window; headed off to find shelter from the rain.

They wondered about the ever variegated skies and the lake’s mood as they flapped vigorously against the wind…

Somewhere later in the evening and earlier in the chilled morning hours…the old year fades away like burnt paper. Flaking up the bricked chimney…drifting, sooty and spent…floating out into a freshly blackened sky…gone.

Farewell to the old and welcome to the new…eating, drinking and wiping the slate clean. Those future waters…be they choppy or smooth, they are ours and we row together. My hand rests over yours, fingers cupped around your face’s edge, the toast made…smiling eyes meet mine for we know tomorrow remains as yet, unknown.

We step over the threshold together, away from the old rooms of our lives…forever changed, laughing. Last year is lived…whatever needed patching is done. The past months…a blithering whirlwind…unexpected twists and turns, giant leaps of faith and suddenly living on thin but blessed air. Golden threads pulled me forward and silver strands tug me over the edge into the now; into the what may be.

The drive home is late, late…and the sleep will be sweet, sweet…for the year has rolled over wearily into a new day and I join hands with two I trust the most…you and the Father above…