Thirty more days. Blink and a month went by. It got hot here, ushering in the time of year when I always start losing days to the fog of achy joints, migraines, and a generally sluggish pace of life. We’re still here, it’s just summer.
As the country goes off the rails, we have small bits of light. Our garden is home to young birds of many varieties: cardinals, robins, song sparrows, catbirds, wrens, woodpeckers, grackles, starlings, crows, a towhee. We watch them flop their way around the shrubbery as they grow wings; they catch moths and beetles in the grass and then, startled by their success, fly back to their parents to learn what to do next. Young rabbits slide under the gate and lounge in the clover, munching on flowers and then wriggling in the dust patch. A chipmunk appears inconsistently, darting so many places that it’s impossible to tell where it lives. There is so little to do, so we watch nature in real time, calling each other to the window to see the unremarkable yet always exciting appearance of one small creature or another.
My partner is still working from home, keeping us all in shelter, food, and books. The child and I fill our days with summer things, reading and watching cartoons, rousing ourselves reluctantly to cook dinner. (About which I regularly think, Every day? Really? Still?) Even before the pandemic arrived, we had decided to try a camp-free summer, after a school year that included, for the first time, evening swimming and after-school chorus. Then, after a spring of online meetings and homework submissions, the idea of online camp didn’t appeal at all. Instead, we lounge.
In the spring, we worked hard week after week to weed, edge, and prune the yard into something resembling a purposeful garden. We left a bit of wildness in the country style, plants spilling into each other whenever the crowding doesn’t create issues with mildew and rot. (It is, after all, a southern swamp here, no matter how much I’m striving to create a bucolic northern copse.) Now, we have only one patch of garden that didn’t get attended to before the temperatures rose above 90F and therefore won’t until they drop again. Now, we water the shrubs from the rain barrels and keep the birdbath filled with fresh cool water. We venture out as little as possible.
It seems irresponsible that a month has passed in this way, but what else could we do? We have also cautiously participated in swim team four mornings a week. I have gone to the store twice. We acquired frozen lemonade from the local coffee shop once, yesterday. I have attended online book talks, taken a writing course, participated in a scholarship committee. All of that is only as much as I would do in a typical month of summer, so I suppose it is enough. Throughout, we give to bail funds. We give to protest groups. We give to immigrant advocates. We give to support neighbors who have lost houses, jobs, family members.
We carry on.
*
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
–Lucille Clifton