Yesterday, I made split-pea soup, meatballs, and two different kinds of quiche. Today, it is not quite 4:30, and I have already cleaned the barn twice, excavated and inventoried several Kodak carousels of slides from my childhood, taken the dogs to the dog park, practiced piano, did Duolingo Spanish, began to read from a very bleak novel about the young women who were abducted by Boko Haram, began to watch Narcos (Mexico) with Spanish subtitles, began to watch the fifth installment of a 12-part lecture series about the bubonic plague; and then, well, I found myself at a loss for how to occupy my time.
Eating mixed nuts all afternoon didn't seem like a very good idea.
It wasn't quite raining out, but I told myself that the ground was too muddy and soft to train Tanner, my Quarter Horse in spring training. But then I thought of the EMTs in NYC, what they're going through, and felt ashamed that I allowed my goal of training Tanner to be obstructed by a little rain and mud. I entertained the thought of pushing through, pushing myself harder, to honor a moment in history that called for endurance, perseverance, and self-sacrifice.
I would go out into the drab, blustery, blech weather and carry on, make progress, and do what I set out to do. This would be my way of embracing a little discomfort, making a little effort, etc, etc, etc,.
None of this spiel motivated me toward action, alas.
I decided that the ground conditions and weather were not the sort of thing worth pushing hard against.
My poor 17-year-old horse would slip and go lame. Then the vet would have to come out on a Sunday, and I wouldn't be allowed to assist her (because of COVID-19). I'd have to leave Tanner out in the pasture for the vet to catch (in the mud) with her own sanitized horse halter. (That would suck for her.)
I was looking forward to sunny weather tomorrow with greater than normal anticipation.
I would like to have watched something on TV. The Irishman, perhaps, for three hours.
But I didn't. I watched the news, instead. I watched the latest YouTube videos on COVID-19. I read the latest in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the BBC--all, apps on my phone. I stood motionless, staring at my phone until every muscle in my body had petrified.
I didn't think about COVID-19 this morning, while fishing among the Kodak carousels (that I had brought up from the basement for the first time since we'd moved) for any old slides of interest.
I didn't think about COVID-19 when I discovered photos of my childhood dog, at 10 weeks old, an imperious and adorable Saint Bernard, with great big paws undifferentiated beneath legs as solid and imposing as Greek columns.
I did not think about COVID-19 when I found the best picture I ever saw in my life of Susie, the proud rescue dog, with me, ersatz Heidi of the Alps, nestled in the opulent fur of Susie's majestic chest.
I did not think of COVID-19 when I found a rare photo of Dad, Mom, and me, vertically assembled like a short stack of dominoes. I put that one on the short stack of slides for my husband to make prints of later.
While walking the dogs, I wondered if displaying that particular photograph of my pre-divorce family was such a good idea. It was a rare and lovely photograph. It was also a painful photograph to see.
It's like this: If you had read my blog posts from 2017 to now, you'd know how trying the last few years have been--both for me, and for the country at large. But if you look at my photographs on Instagram of the past few years--at the hundreds and hundreds of photographs I took--you'd think I lived a charmed life (and take way too many photographs).
Both these things are true. The last few years have been horrendous, and I do live a charmed life.
That is how it is, in good and terrible times.
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