I woke up today feeling ready for gratitude.
It’s been a while, with COVID-19.
The sensation of gratitude coming in is warm. I am also shy with it, like with a new friend. I am concerned that I owe someone or something fear, and I step gently, because I don’t want it to run away.
But here the gratitude is, low in my belly, rising up through my chest.
I look out my window, check myself for feeling something so affirming when others are feeling sadness, are living through back-to-back tornadoes. I see the glass of the window, and I see a bougainvillea beyond the glass, with shadows painted on its bright pink petals. Nothing yells at me that I am wrong for feeling grateful.
This story is going nowhere. This is the story of me sitting with it. Alone and nowhere to go.
Weeks ago, when the school district announced that schools were closing on Monday, I was subbing for a music program in an elementary school. The program manager handed us each a box of tissues and Clorox wipes.
“Does this mean she doesn’t like us?” asked one coach, examining the boxes like an unsavory gift at a white elephant party.
“It means she loves us,” I said.
At home, my violin students kept on showing up, virtually. Before the pandemic, I invited them into my home. Now I am invited into theirs.
One student talks to me very seriously about counting rock-n-roll. Behind him, his younger brother picks up his music stand and takes it off camera. My student doesn’t know why I am laughing until he turns around. He makes a dramatic chase after the music stand.
Half a mile away from me, the yoga studio finally closes its physical classes, but streams live immediately on IG, like that was the plan all along. I realize it must be difficult, but I’ve never loved instagram live more. I set up my phone against my desk, lay my mat on the floor, and push through the poses. I am healthy! I am healthy! I am healthy! That is who I am.
Neighbors come out. These are people who showed up last December with intricate vegan Christmas cookies in layers. They are so nice, but I never had time to talk with them before. Now we talk on the street, we talk across a driveway. We discuss whether we should be walking our dogs together or not.
A stranger walks through the neighborhood with her dog. Maybe she is not a stranger, really, maybe I have just never seen her before. We talk because we both have dogs, and she is hungry to talk, and I am hungry to talk. Her dog comes close. She is fluffy with eyes that are perfect circles. I pet her and look at her tag. It says: “Call ______.” The world does not send messages, except when it does. Later, I reach out to ______. And I wonder if I should have gotten so close to the dog.
I measure out six feet on the floor inside my home and learn that it is a large distance. It’s not the distance between my height and my tall uncle’s. It is the distance between an ant and my tall uncle’s head. I am grateful for the yardstick in my house, mostly unused until now.
My housemate begins to live with another family. But she checks in on me, brings beans, toilet paper, dishwashing soap. She leaves flour.
My neighbors post signs with children’s drawings of love. They leave groceries outside until they are ready to clean them. No one steals the brown Ralphs bags.
My neighbors share oranges from their trees. There are so many oranges. They are the best thing I have tasted in my life. I long for orange after orange.
Family calls. Texts. Wonders. Worries. Supports. Makes plans for a vacation we all want so, so badly.
Friends call. Text. Wonder. Worry. Support. Reminisce about that piece of brioche French toast dipped in crème brûlée batter covered in orange zest syrup and topped with oranges and bananas, which even before the virus seemed impossibly satisfying.
Teachers find time, somehow, to share practices for moving everything online. And I text with the ladies who were my online classmates in a teacher credentialing program last year. “How are you?” “Are you working?” “How is your family?” “Were you able to complete the course?” “What will happen?” “What will happen?” “What will happen?”
We ask each other this last, vulnerable question because we already broke down barriers of politeness while becoming elementary school teachers. Last year, we all showed each other our fear, and we all stepped up to push it away for each other. We do that again, during this virus-time.
I notice a few weeks into the stay-at-home that the program manager for the local youth orchestra has been incredibly patient with me and my desire to achieve, achieve, achieve as the conductor of a small string orchestra. I take a breath. The gratitude is so good, so warm. It’s reaching my head.
The LA Phil cancels programming in the hall, but keeps the education programs running, somehow. I am part of figuring out the nature of that idea: Somehow. One part of figuring it out involves conversations on the phone with an indefatigably cheerful child as she discovers that yes, she does have email on the computer she got for her birthday. She is so pleased with it, so pleased when I send an email and she receives it, so pleased with the book she is reading, and with her sister, home from college. Her pleasure is contagious. I think my heart might explode.
People organize to support musicians. Local 47 does. So do friends whose organization has just gotten non-profit status. They want to help. We can all see how much they care. We can all see how much we all care.
An opera company organizes a virtual performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Lunar Opera. They call it Full Pink Moon. It happens globally. There are t-shirts.
The church I play violin for asks me to play again for Palm Sunday. Virtually. This time, on Zoom, I can see everyone’s faces, so close, as they listen. I see the children, unbelievably still on their parents’ laps. I see the adult faces. I am terrified and awed to see people seeing me, so near. When we use the chat function, I write thank you, and want to write it ten thousand times more. I also want to not take over the chat function, so I only write it once. I feel that once is not enough.
I remember things in my life that have happened only once.
I will myself to know: once is plenty. I’m grateful to have once.
My ex is in this non-story, too. He crafts luscious meals in his kitchen in Silver Lake, plates them on blue and white dishes, and lays them on his farmhouse-style table, with our cats nearby. I know this because he shares photos.
I am the ex who, on the day that would later be known as the first day of quarantine, borrowed his car. That’s right. There was a pandemic. And I took his car. That’s me.
But I am also the ex who made him an emergency kit when he moved out of our home months ago. It included a radio that probably doesn’t work, and first aid supplies, including some masks. So that’s me, too. I’m the ex who made sure he had masks in the pandemic.
And he’s the ex who made sure that I was in therapy during the pandemic. I feel grateful for that. I feel grateful for the loneliness, too. Being alone was the thing that frightened me the most when the stay-at-home began. But now, I think of what I most want to tell myself, and then, aloud, I say it. There is no one else to say these things, and I am surprised to realize that there never has been – there is no one else to fill the space of being me, talking to myself. I feel grateful for my own mind.
And then, I pray for my brother.
I design a Canva poster of a superhero nurse and send it to him. I write him a theme song. I send him a picture of people cheering for health care professionals at 7pm. He says he hasn’t heard the cheering yet because he’s wiped out, sleeping, at that hour.
There is absolutely nothing I can do to protect him. But I sew him masks and send them anyway. Then I sew masks for other people.
It’s been a while, with COVID-19.
The sensation of gratitude coming in is warm. I am also shy with it, like with a new friend. I am concerned that I owe someone or something fear, and I step gently, because I don’t want it to run away.
But here the gratitude is, low in my belly, rising up through my chest.
I look out my window, check myself for feeling something so affirming when others are feeling sadness, are living through back-to-back tornadoes. I see the glass of the window, and I see a bougainvillea beyond the glass, with shadows painted on its bright pink petals. Nothing yells at me that I am wrong for feeling grateful.
This story is going nowhere. This is the story of me sitting with it. Alone and nowhere to go.
Weeks ago, when the school district announced that schools were closing on Monday, I was subbing for a music program in an elementary school. The program manager handed us each a box of tissues and Clorox wipes.
“Does this mean she doesn’t like us?” asked one coach, examining the boxes like an unsavory gift at a white elephant party.
“It means she loves us,” I said.
At home, my violin students kept on showing up, virtually. Before the pandemic, I invited them into my home. Now I am invited into theirs.
One student talks to me very seriously about counting rock-n-roll. Behind him, his younger brother picks up his music stand and takes it off camera. My student doesn’t know why I am laughing until he turns around. He makes a dramatic chase after the music stand.
Half a mile away from me, the yoga studio finally closes its physical classes, but streams live immediately on IG, like that was the plan all along. I realize it must be difficult, but I’ve never loved instagram live more. I set up my phone against my desk, lay my mat on the floor, and push through the poses. I am healthy! I am healthy! I am healthy! That is who I am.
Neighbors come out. These are people who showed up last December with intricate vegan Christmas cookies in layers. They are so nice, but I never had time to talk with them before. Now we talk on the street, we talk across a driveway. We discuss whether we should be walking our dogs together or not.
A stranger walks through the neighborhood with her dog. Maybe she is not a stranger, really, maybe I have just never seen her before. We talk because we both have dogs, and she is hungry to talk, and I am hungry to talk. Her dog comes close. She is fluffy with eyes that are perfect circles. I pet her and look at her tag. It says: “Call ______.” The world does not send messages, except when it does. Later, I reach out to ______. And I wonder if I should have gotten so close to the dog.
I measure out six feet on the floor inside my home and learn that it is a large distance. It’s not the distance between my height and my tall uncle’s. It is the distance between an ant and my tall uncle’s head. I am grateful for the yardstick in my house, mostly unused until now.
My housemate begins to live with another family. But she checks in on me, brings beans, toilet paper, dishwashing soap. She leaves flour.
My neighbors post signs with children’s drawings of love. They leave groceries outside until they are ready to clean them. No one steals the brown Ralphs bags.
My neighbors share oranges from their trees. There are so many oranges. They are the best thing I have tasted in my life. I long for orange after orange.
Family calls. Texts. Wonders. Worries. Supports. Makes plans for a vacation we all want so, so badly.
Friends call. Text. Wonder. Worry. Support. Reminisce about that piece of brioche French toast dipped in crème brûlée batter covered in orange zest syrup and topped with oranges and bananas, which even before the virus seemed impossibly satisfying.
Teachers find time, somehow, to share practices for moving everything online. And I text with the ladies who were my online classmates in a teacher credentialing program last year. “How are you?” “Are you working?” “How is your family?” “Were you able to complete the course?” “What will happen?” “What will happen?” “What will happen?”
We ask each other this last, vulnerable question because we already broke down barriers of politeness while becoming elementary school teachers. Last year, we all showed each other our fear, and we all stepped up to push it away for each other. We do that again, during this virus-time.
I notice a few weeks into the stay-at-home that the program manager for the local youth orchestra has been incredibly patient with me and my desire to achieve, achieve, achieve as the conductor of a small string orchestra. I take a breath. The gratitude is so good, so warm. It’s reaching my head.
The LA Phil cancels programming in the hall, but keeps the education programs running, somehow. I am part of figuring out the nature of that idea: Somehow. One part of figuring it out involves conversations on the phone with an indefatigably cheerful child as she discovers that yes, she does have email on the computer she got for her birthday. She is so pleased with it, so pleased when I send an email and she receives it, so pleased with the book she is reading, and with her sister, home from college. Her pleasure is contagious. I think my heart might explode.
People organize to support musicians. Local 47 does. So do friends whose organization has just gotten non-profit status. They want to help. We can all see how much they care. We can all see how much we all care.
An opera company organizes a virtual performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Lunar Opera. They call it Full Pink Moon. It happens globally. There are t-shirts.
The church I play violin for asks me to play again for Palm Sunday. Virtually. This time, on Zoom, I can see everyone’s faces, so close, as they listen. I see the children, unbelievably still on their parents’ laps. I see the adult faces. I am terrified and awed to see people seeing me, so near. When we use the chat function, I write thank you, and want to write it ten thousand times more. I also want to not take over the chat function, so I only write it once. I feel that once is not enough.
I remember things in my life that have happened only once.
I will myself to know: once is plenty. I’m grateful to have once.
My ex is in this non-story, too. He crafts luscious meals in his kitchen in Silver Lake, plates them on blue and white dishes, and lays them on his farmhouse-style table, with our cats nearby. I know this because he shares photos.
I am the ex who, on the day that would later be known as the first day of quarantine, borrowed his car. That’s right. There was a pandemic. And I took his car. That’s me.
But I am also the ex who made him an emergency kit when he moved out of our home months ago. It included a radio that probably doesn’t work, and first aid supplies, including some masks. So that’s me, too. I’m the ex who made sure he had masks in the pandemic.
And he’s the ex who made sure that I was in therapy during the pandemic. I feel grateful for that. I feel grateful for the loneliness, too. Being alone was the thing that frightened me the most when the stay-at-home began. But now, I think of what I most want to tell myself, and then, aloud, I say it. There is no one else to say these things, and I am surprised to realize that there never has been – there is no one else to fill the space of being me, talking to myself. I feel grateful for my own mind.
And then, I pray for my brother.
I design a Canva poster of a superhero nurse and send it to him. I write him a theme song. I send him a picture of people cheering for health care professionals at 7pm. He says he hasn’t heard the cheering yet because he’s wiped out, sleeping, at that hour.
There is absolutely nothing I can do to protect him. But I sew him masks and send them anyway. Then I sew masks for other people.
RSS Feed