A Boundary

Before the pandemic and the necessity of so many boundaries, I traveled to New York, a precursor to Thanksgiving in Philadelphia with the rest of the family. I stayed in Harlem, close to another Airbnb we had inhabited the year before. This time on my own, a walk up to the second floor to one small room with the bed in a generous closet. I entered the space for the first time and felt immediately comfortable, The retired teacher downstairs who welcomed me, gentle and Jewish. So, no boundaries there.

 As Sunday approached, I knew I wanted to go to Church. To a Baptist church. To hear the singing and maybe some dancing. I didn't want to isolate myself from the life in this place so different from my past. I found the place…the Abyssinian Baptist Church. It was famous in Harlem and of course the tourists flocked so I was instructed, via some Yelp page, to arrive early. I trekked from my apartment to one of the "Best Coffee Shops" in the neighborhood. I had to Google that too. I suppose this internet search that I do every time I arrive somewhere - looking for morning coffee at someplace unique and local and un-Denny like -is another example of the boundary I live within. I don't mean to isolate myself, but I like good coffee.

 So, I found the tiny shop within sight of the church. I lined up with others, standing in the line for tourists while there was a second line for church members. We were told to go to the balcony. Me and a bunch of other white folks. The orchestra below was filled with hats and suits and people who I assumed lived nearby. They were black and, in this moment, the privileged, though I assumed they might not have felt so in other places. There were announcements and singing and then the blessings started. The "God" talk and the stuff that Jewish girls don't hear in modern synagogues surrounded by well dressed, if uptight, lawyers and doctors. Our reform temple was famous in Los Angeles for our pacifist rabbi who was also the father of my best friend. He marched with John Lewis and protested the Vietnam war. In Sunday school we were escorted to meetings of the John Birch society and listened to Erica Huggins of the Black Panthers. The idea was not to feel any boundaries, at least not intellectual ones, even as I returned home to the house with the pristine swimming pool.

 Here in Harlem, at the church with the balcony and the Sunday morning tourist attraction there was also a pool. This one was small and was wheeled onstage for the baptism of anyone so desiring to be blessed. But not anyone, not for the white tourists with balcony seats. There was a line of black women and children and young men. In turn each stepped into the pool. A second person who I imagined was a member of the congregation would step behind to gently lower the volunteer into the water, a head tipped back or dunked or both. It was the moment of blessing, of baptizing. A moment I had no corollary for…perhaps my own wedding or the Bris of my son? Even in the balcony, for that moment, the boundaries were removed as I found myself teary and moved. Why did I feel anything watching a black stranger submerging himself in a tiny pool that had been wheeled onstage as if a magician were about to pull some rabbit or saw some woman?

 The music was loud and two large screens magnified the stage as if we were at a rock concert. I only knew synagogues with quiet, restrained music. Yes, an organ and voices, but still bound by decorum. Certainly, without water splashing onto the stage.

 After the service and the singing and the splashing, we were ushered back downstairs as all concluded. The worn carpet and framed photographs of church members or the illustrious who had donated remind me now of the Winterland ballroom and those Grateful Dead concerts of the 70s. There were no boundaries then either. Hitchhiking to San Francisco from Santa Cruz for concerts and marches was safe, or so I thought.

 In Harlem I felt safe to go to the bodega down the street for a turkey sandwich or a bottle of water. To stand below a tall counter as the only white person, the only white woman. I didn't know of a boundary. I wish I could have stood in the pool line and been dunked onstage. I wonder what it would have felt like? Never needing to go the Mikveh as perhaps my sister-in-law did when she converted to the faith that my father could never understand someone choosing since after all, "why would someone want to be a member of a religion whose members have been persecuted throughout history?"

I am glad I found good coffee on a Sunday morning in Harlem and stood in line to sit in a balcony to feel blessed even if I was not eligible for the swimming pool.

A Fatal Flaw

Her fatal flaw was that she wasn't immortal. Proof is the yahrzeit candle burning close by. The framed picture of her beautiful red face, the watercolor on the wall that Robert painted and the wooden box containing all that remains. But much more is with me. The photographs, the memories. I read today of a woman whose former boyfriend fell from a high tree and once he was put back together, he could not remember that the two had ended their relationship. Her job was to remember for him their time together so that eventually he could fill in that part of the puzzle. I remember Cinnamon, and I am sure that somewhere in her lemon sized brain, she knew how much we loved her.

I was in denial when she got so sick, over two years ago now. To find her unable to get off the floor one morning didn't sufficiently ignite the worry that would soon erupt daily in every corner. Over time, over weeks, not years, I had to modify my thinking. But I stayed in denial that mortality was any part of her DNA. There were the vet's visits by day and several trips late at night to the emergency room. Consultations with specialists and the finality of the diagnosis…cancer which had erupted in a tumor attached to her heart.

I finally had to compose myself enough to call a list of 3 vets who specialized in home visits to float our beloved off to wherever she might land. Tears and fear and worry and then, she was gone. I remember holding her tightly as the medicine to calm and then to end her life was propelled through her blood stream. Everyone assured me she didn't know what was happening. That dogs are blessed with living only for the moment, for the ball or a meal or a run in the surf. I do remember walking out to the vet's truck as the bag of her was so gently laid into the back of his van. Holding Luke and Robert and Nico and Nathaniel and Ellen, all those who loved her and anchored me in those moments of unbelievable sadness.

 Her fatal flaw is that she left without us, but she left behind the memories and the pictures and her red and green food bowls that Asher now uses. She is more than just the candle burning yearly so we can focus our memories as if composing another eulogy.

She is the top stair where Asher perches and rests in between ball throws in the backyard or a walk with Luke. She was too big to rest comfortably there. So, she perched on the landing just above. I believe Asher chose the top step so he can be as close as possible to the memories of our beloved red dog.

This morning I walked alone up the hill at a pace I can't sustain with Asher, the puppy who still needs lots of treats and coaxing. A group of younger people walked towards me escorting a bouncy, red, Golden puppy. Of course, you can pet her they said. Her name is Maple. She warmed to me, not needing to modify her enthusiasm as Asher still does, the Shepherd in him needing more time to neutralize his worry and watchfulness.

"Where is she from?" I asked.

"Portland, Oregon," they said.

Cinnamon was living with her mother at the SPCA. She was two months old when we brought her home. Asher the same, so many years later. But he was in the time of Covid and a much different world. This purebred Maple was irresistible, but our mixed mutts needed us perhaps in a different way.

The fatal flaw is always the end of life, of anything which creates smiles and joy and boundless love. But the memories that go on and on, in the flame of a Yahrzeit candle or a photo album or a dog choosing the step as close as possible to the one before are what keep the flaw of mortality much less fatal. In fact, the memories might neutralize it just a bit.

Anxiety/Snacking

I want to know what the difference is between anxiety and snacking? Aren't they one and the same? Especially this past year. As we traverse this strange Covid territory. Lives and worlds have been devastated. We have been frightened in ways not ever known or registered.

We have a snack shelf. It appeared long before Covid. My husband, Robert, has filled it, but I too participate. It is one of those shelves that glides in and out on expensive, stainless steel runners. Our architect said we must have some, and I am forever grateful each time one of them slides silently from within to reveal mason jars of rice or beans. Or on another, the baking shelf, there is cake flour and chocolate chips, cardamom pods and honey. But the most unexpected and elaborate is the snack shelf.

 A few years ago, I requested the Thanksgiving poster from Whole Foods, "Tis the season for snacking." I taped it on the wall behind the snack shelf. There has been no specific season for snacking since Covid arrived to keep us indoors, and snacking seemed to pick up in direct correlation to our anxiety.

Robert requested a case of six packages of seeded flatbread.  Made in Brooklyn.  We discovered them at our neighborhood cheese shop. He opens a package and keeps a certain number of crackers fresh in a smaller, plastic container. The rest stay in the original package, sealed in Ziploc until the first set has been consumed. Next came the chocolate bars. Also bought in bulk with a 10 percent discount. Then food bars and licorice. For me, it was a bin of larger than life Junior Mints from Trader Joes. Initially I allowed myself one, or at most two, a day. But this wasn't enough as my anxiety about if or when or how I would contract the virus grew in direct proportion to sleepless nights and spontaneous tears.

I then discovered bags of "snacking chocolate" as I waited in an early morning line of masked seniors the first time I ventured out to Rainbow Grocery.I had decided that trips to the corner store needed to be augmented by more than enough almonds for one batch of my homemade granola. I saw many flavors of snacking chocolate. Dark chocolate with almonds and coconut, and other combinations hardly noted since anything reminiscent of a Mounds bar is definitely worth a snack. I added my snacking chocolates to the snack shelf with its giant mints, seeded flatbread and mango licorice.

Meals were barely finished before we would slide the custom-made pantry doors aside and silently roll out the snack shelf. I condoned the added sugar and calories as necessary to veer me ever so slightly from the anxiety always just out of reach. I don't think my husband would have labeled his procurement of flatbread as indicative of pandemic panic.

As the world has begun reopening and my vaccination status is complete, I wonder about the snacking. I still open the plastic tub of mints at least once a day. Robert has cut back on the flatbread, though just today he happily returned with a case of dark chocolate, toffee bars.

Now there is anxiety about variants and wondering what extra precautions we might take for two summer wedding trips, one to Chicago and one to Hawaii. Perhaps I will pack a tub of mints, and for Robert at least one package of flatbread.

June, 2021

 Wrong turn? Right Turn? Maybe a left turn? The value of turning in some direction even if the destination is still unknown. The need to make a decision, but not to know its value. Better than standing still for too long. "Just do it." Sprint to the finish line without a goal in sight. Or walk slowly, carefully… watching for a familiar tree or rock or a bend in the trail.

We had gone backpacking. The four of us and Cinnamon. Before masks and distance. Before teenagers and the need to adapt to their struggles and the challenges. We climbed and moved forward, with the reassurance of a map. What happened was, we got lost. Or so we thought. We came to a standstill as Robert, whose confidence in the wilderness rarely shrank, wondered which way to turn. The afternoon was still, sunny and sensuous. There in Desolation Wilderness. Nico and Nathaniel carried their backpacks with confidence. Cinnamon's booties meant she could sprint from boulder to boulder, puppy pads protected from slippery rock and bumpy trail.

"Are we lost?" someone said, with barely a hint of rage or alarm.

We stood in a circle, as if hoping to raise the spirit of the topo map master.

Robert held the map and we discussed.

"Maybe we should turn back the way we came?"

"Maybe we missed a turn back there?"

"It will get dark and then it will be harder to figure out which way to go!"

"Dark…it is only 2!"

I imagined the lake. I didn't want our plans to erode for lack of the right turn. I pictured the swim, the dinner, the starry night. Robert was worried, rarely had I seen him so when trekking. Worried often in the city, but rarely when calm and quiet emanated from towering, green trees and a swath of blue, clear sky.

Nico offered something more definitive. "I think we should keep going. Maybe we haven't come to the right turn yet!" What happened was we followed the voice of youth and adapted. Robert relaxed a bit, feeling somewhat less responsible for exactly which turn we would take. I focused on watching Cinnamon sprint ahead, and then stopping to look back to insure that we were all accounted for.

 Sometime soon thereafter Nico suggested a "U" turn which resembled a curve on the map. We circled again and agreed. This turn had more value than all the turns we could have taken. We were on the right path even if the destination was ahead and out of sight. We came to the lake. Pitched our tents and swam and ate and hibernated for the night. In warm sleeping bags with stars monitoring our breath. Cinnamon came inside with Robert and me. She curled into us and what happened was we slept.

I wonder years later, here, writing, about all the turns I have made or thought I should make. The wrong ones and the right ones and the ones still ahead and out of sight. A wise friend said that everything we do, all the turns, are right because each movement we make leads us to the next. And we wouldn't be where we are if not for all the turns and cumulative experience which is necessary to bring us to the lake where we can glide through still, cold, mountain water and eat pasta with pesto and curl into downy warmth with a red dog while our two sons sleep blissfully nearby.

April, 2021

Years ago, I flew to Rome to meet Nico. He was on a Gap year after high school and had been farming in Italy. Living with two different families to pick olives, share bountiful meals and challenge himself before returning to academia. I boarded a flight bound for Frankfurt and what was supposed to be a few hours of layover before heading to Rome. I was looking forward to being transported. Some short time before landing, the pilot interfered with my book or movie or whatever source of entertainment I was lounging in.

"It is snowing in Frankfurt. We can land, but all flights will be delayed. The airport is closing."

Promising to arrive in Italy in time for dinner with Nico. Now a promise I could not keep. The plane landed and we lined up to disembark. I had never been to Frankfurt, and my desire to be in Germany had always been minimal. The being Jewish part and the Holocaust part interfered with my desire to travel there. Stepping aside now, I would like very much to go someday.

The stairway moved close to transport us from the plane to the pavement, sprinkled with snowflakes as the hush of a light snow astonished my memory of boarding the flight on a sunny, if rare, San Francisco morning. My turn came to disembark. I looked out as I steadied myself to grasp the cold, metal banister. The softness and hush of whiteness felt like a promise. I finished my descent and turned to look up at the plane. Its size was only partly obvious until I touched the pavement. I turned to look up and up. I was spellbound, amazed, overwhelmed and almost breathless. The plane was the biggest piece of anything I had ever been so close to. Different from the Empire State Building or the Statue of liberty. These edifices were expected. But the plane was something I never expected to see. To be so close to. The feelings of so long ago return now. Fear, anxiety shifting into awe and amazement. How could something so big be transported into the sky? How did it not fall down, how did it stay afloat? How had I been lounging inside only moments before?

I went into the foreign terminal and was astonished to find hordes of people, all stranded in the snow in this place I never expected to be for more than time for coffee and some sweet thing I was sure I deserved. The message boards listed all the canceled flights. I tried to call Nico. I could only leave a message at the hotel where he was staying, waiting for me. He slept until noon in those days when not harvesting or eating plates of pasta.

Lines later, I waited for information on next flights and when I would be able to leave Frankfurt. No, it would not be possible until tomorrow. Coupons for food and a hotel room were passed out to the masses waiting for information about when they could leave. What had happened to the plane? The hugeness of it added to my feeling of being dwarfed and out of control. I couldn’t make the snow stop or get to Italy anytime soon. The airport was covered in tall, glass windows. I wandered through, amazed at being in a place I never planned to be. I found my hotel room and tried to contact Nico. There were pay phones and it was also challenging to change currency. No cell phones then? Amazed now that I managed all of this. Amazed by what we can do when we are sure it will not be possible. Must I come back to this pandemic, 10 years or so from now.  Amazed that I did not get irretrievably stuck in Frankfurt before I could choose to visit Germany. Amazed that I did not end up in the hospital on a ventilator, my recurring nightmare of less than a year ago.

The plane was so big, but it alighted on the snowy pavement without hesitation. The pandemic was so big and unexpected. I couldn't disembark however. No alternative form of transportation was available. I had a layover in Frankfurt and then went on to Rome. This last year has been a layover from much that I had come to assume. I wonder what will transport me now, and where will I go?

March 2021

Asher was careening down the breezeway just outside our kitchen. Back and forth he went. He chased his favorite yellow tennis ball and then with barely a whisper dropped it…just outside the back door or on the deck. Returning to his post, he waited. Much more patiently than I wait to get a second vaccine or hug my son or return to the studio.

I do a few dishes or begin yet another meal or reward myself with yet another piece of chocolate. I go back outside to find the ball and to praise Asher. "Good boy. Okay, mama is going to throw the ball." The back door remains open and as I go back inside to start this dance again, two tiny hummingbirds fly inside. They soar to the ceiling. Their wings are in constant motion, so tiny as they fly with a whispered flutter of wings I can barely see. They have no trouble negotiating our 11-foot ceilings. I photograph them and capture a shaky video. Asher is oblivious. Waiting outside for me to begin again…the throwing and the hiding and the return. What if the birds can't find their way out?  If only I had a map to give them. A map of our ceilings and the wren of rooms they might find themselves in.

"Come on little birdies, look here is the door," I offer. But unlike Asher they don't pretend to even understand what I am asking. Asher doesn't bark at them. He stares and then goes back outside to wait for his yellow tennis ball to return.

One bird leaves, but the other flies relentlessly, perching to rest on a high shelf, and then returning to the whisper of fluttering such tiny wings which I could only see if somehow the ceiling became a magnifying glass. I google "trapped hummingbirds." I open all the windows and wait…

An hour goes by and the hummingbird seems only moderately tired. I wonder if it was his mother or father or sibling or just a friend who escaped and has left him, or her, without a map to find his way out.

The bird negotiates down the hall to our office. It is at the front of the house with large bay windows, and more high ceilings. I open the windows and close the door. Hoping even without a map, he or she will find the exit. I am sure hummingbirds mean good luck and I remember being in Costa Rico with friends and Nico many years ago. We went to a hummingbird preserve of sorts. We were escorted into a small courtyard with trees holding pans of nectar for the birds. They moved among these liquid meals and alighted on our outstretched arms. We could hold a tray to attract a bird. We were told to be quiet and still.

I took Asher for a walk, and when I returned to check on the bird, he was still there. He couldn't seem to find the window, but seemed content to rest on the top of a bookshelf holding red boxes of photographs. They like red, Robert said. He instructed me, having checked on our progress from his office up the street, to make sugar water and to put it on the open window sill.

"Find the red food coloring. And that will attract the bird," he instructed.

Robert came home and we called Animal Care and Control. She said they would send someone as soon as possible. They were very busy, she said. I imagined wild animals roaming the streets of San Francisco, needing to be corralled. To be cared for or controlled.

The bird was tired and hardly moving while perched on the shelf with the red boxes. We decided we must try to pick him up and do what we could to encourage the drinking of red, sugar juice. He seemed to be destabilizing. Robert climbed the ladder, his hands shaking as he was so afraid he would hurt the tiny bird. So light and airy. I started crying, "is he dead? I don't want him to die!" The bird had become like another child. Or a dog. I must save him. I felt helpless and responsible. Robert instructed again and I was grateful to have a task.

"Get the plastic ladle and I will scoop him into that."

The tired bird, now dozing perhaps, allowed Robert to place him in the ladle. My job was to take the ladle with its delicate passenger and bring him out the back door and put him on the table. I covered him slightly with my hands as I maneuvered through the house. I could just barely feel him. Almost invisible, but so present. We had put some of the magic red juice into a bottle cap and before beginning his journey from the top shelf, Robert had placed it under the bird's beak, hoping he would nourish himself. Instead the bird sat in the juice. We wondered if he was ingesting it from behind.

Outside on the table, the bird continued to bathe in the sugar water. We brought more out hoping we could see him drink. We called Animal Care and Control to share the rescue. We were all relieved. And then…the bird was gone. He flew away when we weren't looking. We were so focused on this tiny stranger. Hoping for his survival, shaking as we began the rescue process. And then, he gratefully moved on.

February 2021

We have the same birthday. I wanted to take it as a sign that the bump on my neck was not a tumor or cancer. But I had inherited the ability to worry myself into a corner. It was hard to discharge the anxiety that had been festering since I discovered the mass while stroking my neck one sleepless night just after Christmas. I called it my "Trump Bump." The pathologist loved that. I told her I might write about it. But that was a week before the birthday coincidence. I believe. I had certainly lost the ability to navigate time since the Trump Bump appeared. 

About the birthday… The young woman devoid of any bumps, but definitely wearing a mask, stood in front of me as I waited on a meticulously clean chair in the cavernous blue room. I had glimpsed a giant set of figures, an impressive sculpture, as I was escorted to my chair having waited in line to answer the all too familiar litany of questions about coughing and chills as the young man, also masked, discharged his list rapidly, without hesitation.

The questions from the young woman's laptop included confirming my name and birthdate. And then the coincidence, "We have the same birthday, " she said, still focused on her screen.

"Have you ever met anyone with your birthday?" I queried, wanting to offer something just a bit more personal as I imagined her job was long and repetitive.

"No, " she said, as her eyes found mine. I flattered myself that she was smiling behind her mask.

Not much time for lounging as I was soon directed into the next cavernous space. It looked something like a school cafeteria. Long tables, chairs and bright lights. The lunch monitors were nurses and at least one doctor. He was an anesthesiologist who had volunteered to inject doses of Moderna into our arms. I wondered if he would be assigned to me if it turned out to be cancer or some kind of tumor. If I would need surgery to dissolve the Trump Bump and restore me to sanity. I almost told him, showed him, but quickly realized he was here for a different purpose.

As I waited, almost lounging, for the requisite 15 minutes to make sure nothing blocked the Moderna's path into my immune system, I looked around at the other kids. It was quiet for a school cafeteria as bits of conversation among the staff dissolved around me. A huge screen advertised that one could schedule a second vaccine by logging into “My Chart.” I had been logging in constantly since discovering the Trump Bump. Now waiting anxiously, at best, for the results of the biopsy.

This was only Monday. I believed that sharing a birthday with a total stranger who happened to be standing in front of me to take vital statistics in a cavernous, blue room before getting a vaccine that no one had heard of less than a year ago was the coincidence that would dissolve my anxiety and restore my sanity.

Days later there was another coincidence. The kind and smart doctor who was at first a stranger was the same tall, masked man who still cared for a close friend. The day before he reported that there was no cancer and no tumor, my friend shared the coincidence of our having the same incarnation of the higher power to offer me the good news that immediately blocked any more worry that the Trump Bump would kill me.

I was restored to sanity.  I sometimes wonder if the young, masked woman will meet anyone else who shares our birthday. Will she remember me among all the strangers who will enter the blue space to join the lunch line and wait patiently for their dose of hope?

January, 2021

The middle of the night silence. It is different. I want to use it to massage the worries that plead for my attention. I am too tired to listen as they whisper. Will my son get the virus? Will I get it? Will Robert? I move from questions of health to the ones about my future. Will I live into my ninties like Irma who calls every day without fail from her tidy house on Long Island? She reads constantly, keeps up with the news and repeats that Trump belongs in a place where they put the criminally insane. I couldn’t agree more.

I begin my journey in the kitchen, coming upstairs after no more than 20 minutes of ruminating while lying in bed. I remember that my father used to advise not spending more than 20 minutes pleading with oneself to ignore the noise in one's head and just sleep.

There is more silence upstairs. The Christmas tree lights are off, as the glare is too much for sleepy eyes. I pour a tiny glass of milk and break off a piece of banana. One of the two I buy regularly because to buy more means overly soft and brown before they can be consumed. One of the pet peeves I can afford as a privileged white girl.

I sit on the couch and focus on what I can without turning on a light. No curtains on the windows so moonlight or light from another living room offers me shadows. I inhale, exhale, inhale…There is no guarantee that when I go back to bed, sleep will follow. Sometimes I must repeat. Maybe I will sit at my desk to pay a bill or look at the Garnet Hill catalogue. Or sit at the top of the stairs where Cinnamon used to perch.   Now Asher, the puppy, careens up and down the stairs. When I pretend to be Cinnamon, as she aged so gracefully, I remember to love who I am even in the silence. To forgive the various transgressions of just being human. The silence becomes more peaceful and settled, and I can listen to different voices. Home as sanctuary, the order soothes and the decision to move a piece of furniture is comforting. I think of my father again.

A few days before he died, he told my mother how beautiful their home was. His fastidiousness and her willingness to do his bidding so he could exult in the space they inhabited soothed him in the silence. He said he would be sad to leave. He didn't know he would have a heart attack in the silence a few nights later. As he stood eating olives from the jar in their mid-century kitchen. He was only 4 years older than I will become in April.

My mother found him in the silence hours later. She called me crying. I was 40, and just beginning to fill my life. He never knew I became a mother or that I married Robert. He didn't know how many times I would wake into silence, and come upstairs and eat a bit of granola, carefully measured. But I think his presence is part of my nightly silence. He used to worry a lot too.  Perhaps I spent too much of my time caretaking and tiptoeing around his insecurities and sadness. Maybe not the job of a dutiful daughter. He died before we had reconciled a bit as he worried about me and my future. I wish he had lived long enough to know Nico and Robert, to know of my successes and to see my beautiful home which I tend to with the same fastidiousness.

As I navigate the silence and the stairs and the jar of granola, I think of him. I am grateful for his 20-minute rule and for the years we had. The middle of the night silence is for Dad and me.

October, 2020

An array of bleached sand dollars was scattered over the early morning.  Asher starting digging and I wasn't sure he would stop. His first hole was in the soft, dry sand. I looked out to the horizon and the tightness in my chest made way for breath and air.

A dear friend died in March. Her breast cancer appeared and then went underground for 12 years. It announced itself over a year ago, returning to inflame every part of her. She didn't tell me or anyone else for months. We traveled to Mexico City over a year ago for the first time to vacation with her and her husband.

It was magical. Robert was not sure he would like what he imagined could be a dirty, poor, city…not Paris or Rome. We both loved it, every inch. The anthropology museum and Frida Kahlo and the ballet and the synagogue which first opened its doors as the Nazis were squelching the life out of Europe. We stayed in a piece of architectural history with their dog, Malu, and two others…Pita, a puppy and a larger lab  whose name I have forgotten. I have not forgotten cooking dinner together in the small kitchen and eating outside every night, long before Covid and the necessity of distance. We drank wine and shared the conversation of two couples who relish each other's company.

The husbands have so much in common. Loners with brains and good hearts whose natural shyness keeps their feelings hidden. They had been married 5 years when she died this March. I miss her, but as much I miss this couple time. The territory that our friendship covered.

The territory of a friendship. I miss my friends now. Today I met someone who had Covid and is now fine. What does it mean to lose someone as so many others I don't even know are dying? It is the particular, and the universal all at once.

Asher found a piece of the sea. He started digging as if he was looking for the source of the water. He circled around this oceanic puddle, splashing and dancing towards and away from the water. I breathed into the horizon and thought about the day my friend died.

I was walking with Asher in Pacifica. I looked out to the sea and prayed that her passing would be peaceful. We had hoped to see her the day before. Her husband talked with us from behind his mask. Hospice was coming soon. Apparently she died at almost the moment I prayed. She is gone now, somewhere I cannot picture.

 Our friendship, however, is alive for me. I hear her voice. I can hear my father too, and my mother. Perhaps it is the territory of love which inflames the heart, like the eternal flame which I picture as the oil burning for the eight nights. We think it will go out, or subside but it keeps going. These friendships.

Asher keeps digging. "Do you think he will get there?" The puddle of ocean and the warm, morning sand is his territory. The horizon opens for me and for a moment I don't feel confined.

July, 2020

The reality of Covid-19 necessitates a Plan B. Plan A was my life before. I was looking forward to my nieces' weddings, one in Massachusetts and one in Chicago. I would of course continue dancing at ODC ,3 times a week. I would celebrate my son's acceptance to UCLA and another year of his sobriety…in person, in LA with him and a long, tearful, joyful hug.

 I am not sure how to redeem the pieces of Plan A which continue to dissolve on a daily basis. Who knew that there would be a pandemic which would still be proliferating months after we were told, "it's basically like the flu." I wanted to equate this part of my life with serenity and peace. With relief that I could finally exhale into myself.

I strain on a daily basis to orient myself to a very different reality than the one I imagined.

I am struggling to write. I wonder if it is a result of the idea that I need a Plan B, but I have not let go of Plan A. I don't want to disembark from my dreams. I am angry.

On the other hand, I want to start a new file. I sorted through folders of writing yesterday. Pieces I shared in my writing group years ago. Reflections on the years of strain when there was no clear path forward. It has taken time to refrain from the ever present anxiety that my son, who I love more than anyone, could perish and I would not be able to save him. Even as I write this today in the midst of his almost 5 years of sobriety, I can still feel some kind of fear which I must treat with the decongestant of faith and the reality that he is well and remarkable.

Plan A was full of uncertainly about his future, although it did not include Covid.  Maybe Plan B will be more about me taking care of me. The problem is that I cannot travel or dance in the studio or leave spontaneously. I am magnetized here, in my lovely home with a couple of orange walls and my sunny backyard and my puppy and my husband.

I would so much like to disembark from this Covid ship on which I feel trapped. I strain to create a Plan B which can decongest my fear and anger and fatigue. I strain to write and to find words to orient myself to the present as I sit in front of the orange wall, looking out to the sunny backyard.

May 2020

I like to imagine that in these days of sheltering with only those I know - a puppy and a husband - there are multitudes of strangers doing really nice things for those they don't know. I imagine the world is not now full of strangers, but rather of acquaintances who wave to each other every night when it is 7 pm somewhere in the world.  We all suddenly have something in common. There are no more strangers because we are all vulnerable to the same, horrible disease. Of course some are more vulnerable…the older ones, the poorer ones, the ones with pre-existing conditions, the black or brown ones,  maybe even the male ones.  Random acts of kindness may indeed be undulating throughout the emotional chaos that dips in and out like ocean waves that are ceaseless and unending.

Today I wanted birthday cards to send to friends.  My mother wrote me letters for all the years of her life, and I routinely send written notes to express thanks or congratulations. Today, however, I was out of cards.

Our small, independent bookstore just up the street was closed, of course. Books could be ordered on line, but what about cards? I emailed my query and got a quick response from someone named Paul. Now suddenly not quite a stranger. He said he would be in the shop the following day and I could call and he would describe what was available. I have always liked perusing the rotating card holder with the “printed on recycle paper” ones or the elegant letter pressed ones. It turned out Walgreen's was open, but I didn’t want to go there. I didn't want a Peanuts themed one or an oversized, multicolored one with an extensive greeting and too little white space for me to include my feelings.

I called Paul the next day and he described the cards he held in his hand.  “There are three with watercolor scenes.  This one has a pun: ‘You’re still sharp,’ and a line drawing of cacti. Here is one for a belated birthday.”

I needed at least five. Lots of Taurus birthdays, like me. Paul and I talked for another 10 minutes and then I made my choices. I paid with my credit card, happy not to worry about donning gloves or standing 6 feet from the cash register, and making sure my feet were placed precisely on a strip of duct tape denoting safety.

Paul took my address and a few hours later a small, brown bag of cards was delivered to my mailbox.

June, 2020

It feels like being in a vast, green meadow. Lavender fields? Or maybe strawberry fields? But hopefully not forever. There isn't freedom to roam. There are fences, but also the illusion that one can escape. But I can't. I crawl to the base of the fence and insist that I need to leave. But I can't. So I rage, but then I am quieted by the vastness, though this too is an illusion.

 The lavender or the strawberries quiet me for a time. I depend upon the serenity prayer to keep me in the moment, to keep me okay with the fence and the illusion of control. The prayer suggests that I accept and change only what I can. But what can I change?  The wounds are deep, and they fester at times.

 I want to be in the studio dancing, I want to hold my son and hug my friends. I want my husband not to be the only person I can sit close to and reach towards. But the fence continually cautions me to stay inside the field. To smell the lavender and eat the strawberries and to be grateful.

I want to subtract the worry I feel when I am restless in the middle of the night and when I awake each morning.   I want to omit the sadness and rage and disappointment at only having so much room. I am tired of the sacrifices, and then in a moment I am embarrassed that my white privilege embodies so many options that others don't have.

I want to crawl less and insist more and rage less and depend more on the optimism which my mother embodied. I want the wounds to keep receding so they are hardly noticeable any more.

I am weary of the sacrifices and want to be able to dance through the meadow. To leap over the fences and run and run. To enlarge the field so the boundary disappears and time becomes endless and the future never ends.

I would prefer to feel safe and contained in the meadow, rather than trapped. So I go inside my heart, or is it my head, and repeat the serenity prayer over and over until I feel quiet and the rage stops. I breathe and the boundary no longer feels like a sacrifice, but becomes a gift. A chance to go deeper, to stop running, to stop wanting, to just be in the moment. And to simply smell the lavender and eat the strawberries. If only it were so easy.