In Pursuit of Comfort

Today I stood on my porch and looked westward. The sky was a gray watercolor, with such a summer feel. The gray grew dark on the edge of the horizon, and I remembered. I remembered what it is like to watch a storm advance. I remembered what my skin feels like when the air is warm against it, and what my sense of smell tells me about that scent of wet earth off in the distance, ushering in the rolling, roiling clouds that my dad would often point out and say, “Look at that thunderhead. Just look at the size of it.” I remembered the pleasant expectation of a coming rain, knowing the ground is calling out for it, knowing I will soon see a show. A bolt of lightning surprised me a little, far off, and I immediately started counting, slowly, “1…2…3….4…5…” and then the thunder growled. A mile or so away. That was our game when I was little. When the lightning flashed, we counted, slowly… that would tell us how far away it was, since sound travels at 1,125 feet per second. There are 5,280 feet in a mile, so if you get to five seconds, you know that thunderhead and its storm are a bit more than a mile away. When I was small and scared of the disruption and wildness of a storm, my brother Don would say, “Let’s sit on the porch and watch!” And we would, with me afraid but fascinated that we were watching it like it was a performance. And we would count. And after the most stomach-vibrating rumbles and brightest flashes, the count would get longer and longer, and the drips would get lazier, and the sky would brighten. And we’d be through. Today I remembered all of that, standing on my porch, gazing at the heavens.

Today I also dug out some record albums I had not listened to in years. I usually just click on Pandora and choose one of the many libraries I have collected, or I listen to my iTunes. But for us youngest Baby Boomers, the record player remains our first audio love. And today I wanted to play records. I gathered up Billy Joel and Toto and America and Electric Light Orchestra. I chose “Glass Houses” by Billy Joel to play first. When it came out, I was a junior in high school and I had claimed Billy as my absolute favorite. I remember the album was not getting the best of reviews, but I clung to it fiercely and was determined to like it. And actually, I did. It’s a pretty cool album. It just isn’t a lot like his previous ones, which I guess was the main complaint. But I was loyal to Billy, and I learned every word. I still know a lot of them, too, as I discovered today. When the needle touched down on that first groove and there were a few of those random buzzes and pops, I remembered. I remembered how I would sit on my bedroom floor by my own turntable, reading the cover notes and lyrics while listening to an album over and over again. Then stacking several on top of each other so they would drop down one after the other, giving me a good hour of continuous music. Then I’d flip the whole stack over to hear the B sides. The music experience was so different then. We all listened to a lot of the same stuff, usually on the radio, and then in our rooms on our turntables. Before Walkmans and way before CDs and a lifetime before iPods, we bought up those plates of vinyl and cherished our collections. I wanted to remember that today, to listen to those Billy songs like “All for Leyna” and “Don’t Ask Me Why” and the pretty “C’etait toi (You Were the One).” To remember those tunes, and the order they are in, and the little fuzzes and static of the album all gave me comfort today.

I realized then that I was seeking and finding comfort in things that once were familiar and that were from a time when the days seem much less complicated and weighty. I suppose that is what nostalgia is. Our brains travel to those places that seem somehow warm and settling, familiar and safe. These last three months have been anything but. This has been the strangest time I have ever experienced, even compared to Sept. 11. I know most people feel similarly. When the virus first took hold and our lives changed, I floundered. I tried to figure out how to best protect my family. I read and watched too much TV. I woke at 3 in the morning and felt panic about my sons, two of whom are still far from us. I fell into a few abysses of terror, imagining that Rob or Alex might get sick, off in Wheeling and Milwaukee, and that I would not be able to go to them. That still makes me queasy, but I have become less afraid and more complacent as this strange saga drags on. And I have become more sad, I’m afraid. I miss the boys. I don’t know when I will see them again, and that is strange and distressing. I’m so very grateful that Michael is here in town. Just seeing his lanky frame bounding up the porch steps gives me such comfort. My boy is here. He is safe and sound. And I talk to the other two very regularly, and they are healthy and cheery. That helps.

But we are untethered. Our once driving, looming deadlines are fading or gone. Our trips and camps and events are disappearing like in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon when the artist’s hand enters, erasing Daffy Duck’s surroundings, much to his spitting protest. The future is an opaque screen, with nothing definite or decided or known at all. One would think that an artist would dream of a time like this. “Oh, you can write or paint or sculpt! You can read masterpieces! You can use this time to improve your life!” But…. for many of us, things have not gone so well in the creating department. My inspiration is flat-lined much of the time. I spend an inordinate number of hours being still, thinking, searching, and sometimes just dreading. I have talked to other artists and I am not alone. Creativity seems to be lying low along with us. Not everyone is stymied by artistic blocks, of course. But I know many who are in a deep funk, and the best we can do is get through the days with as much progress as we can make, which sometimes is just getting a shower, tending to our jobs virtually for a bit, doing a little laundry, and having a game of chase with our cat or dog. We must try to be kind to ourselves in the end, because life is off-kilter right now, and we are processing an ongoing trauma. This is the first blog post I’ve written in three months. Every now and then I am inspired, and I think, “Ohh, I should write about that!” But then the idea of actually sitting down to try to find the words to describe this uncomfortable state of perpetual anticipation — this deep, in-limbo weariness — is always too hard. Today marks the first time I have been able to do it, and I am grasping with everything inside me to corral the words and force them into sentences. And I’ll tell you what, they are wily.

The virus was enough. More than enough. But then there was Mr. Floyd. And in eight and a half minutes, the anguish of a nation, quickly to become the anguish of humankind, filled our chests with an ache we could not push away. A happenstance video showed the people of this planet a brutal, savage, heartless taking of a man’s life. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all imagined it and sat with it and been sickened by it. And the world, so tired and worn with fear and grief, lurched downward yet again in such despair. The simmering stress of the virus, of the battle over how to manage it, what to believe, how to behave, how to implore others to behave, how to mourn its dead — all of that — fused with our anguish over a man calling to his mother before the life was pressed out of him. The sea changed. Fury and rage burst forth. Exasperation and incredulous, angry grief filled so many of us. So many. Living a life is hard enough. How is it that some must be forced to endure even more, simply because their souls are wrapped up in a dark skin? It cannot be the way humans continue anymore. Not anymore. This conflagration of pain and fear and anguish and despair must lead to an upheaval and complete change in the way we live our lives out on this planet. We cannot, cannot, cannot allow this baseless, unjust, blind bigotry to be part of us anymore. We must awake to it and move, make noise, use our wisdom and our empathy, and make something meaningful rise from the snuffing out of Mr. Floyd’s life, and all the others who have been so fatally violated. We must be finished with it.

We are in a time of transition. In childbirth, that is the worst of times and the best of times. When a woman moves into transition, her body shifts into overdrive. All the muscles needed to bring the baby out to daylight must move and alter and stretch. This is not a gradual thing. Transition is shockingly strong and wrenching. One’s body is awash in pain, head to toe it seems. Those attending can see it happening, and they rush to the mother’s side to help her try to focus. It’s so hard to focus. It’s a wall of pain, and she is unable to move away from it. She is trapped by it, and can be lost without a kind voice telling her to breathe, to focus, to hang on. Then it ebbs. And she finds that she is much closer to her most precious goal, having allowed her body to do its thing. When transition is past, significant progress is made.

So here we are. In transition, trying to focus. In the storm, counting down the seconds between the lightning and thunder. Past days seem surprisingly easier, and sometimes I go there for a break. There is calm to be found in singing Billy’s lyrics with the turntable adding an occasional needle pop, or just standing out in the air listening to the robins chirping their twilight “tuk tuk” as the sun drops away. I hope I can help through this transition, offering support and encouraging others to focus and to breathe. We’ll keep counting, and the time between the bolt and the thunder will lengthen. The rain will ease, and the bent grasses will flick back upright. The air will be clean, with brand new ozone scented with the fragrance of soaked dirt. It always has done so. I have to believe it will again.