Flypaper thoughts fallow year edition

• I am settling into the long termness of our situation
• I'm facing facts this week
• It could be a year until I see my son, my DIL, and grandchild in California
• A year is a long time in a child's life
• And I have always been able to get to one of my children if I have to
• This is the way it has to be
• My 92-year-old mother says she wonders if she will be in isolation the rest of her life
• Right now I would have to quarantine for two weeks if I flew to see her in Winnipeg
• And two weeks back
• I would do it but no one thinks I should fly
• My lovely mother-in-law has decided she won't see us
• "until all this is over"
• Despite next to no covid here
• But since my husband works and I see the kids
• She doesn't want to risk it
• She won't even go for outside visits with masks
• What can we do?
• My youngest son's girlfriend in Texas has broken it off
• She couldn't stand the waiting
• He is building a friend's house and surfing
• But not talking much
• He was counting on this
• My niece and her boyfriend (my SIL's nephew)
• Have moved into our basement while they are house hunting
• She is a nurse and if we have a second wave
• Plan is she will move into the RV to be safe
• So that's the situation
• I am sure you have yours
• But I have been thinking
• About fallow years
• When I was in middle school in the middle ages
• We used to sit at our desks and the teacher did a short bible reading after lunch
• How long ago was that?
• I am remembering the part about the fallow years
• To keep producing every seven years the land was not worked and people lived off the good years
• As I remember it was not a good idea to break this pattern
• Pretty much horrible things happened if you tried to opt out
• I have been thinking about rest too and how hard it is for us to just sit
• We got into this pattern
• So busy, more and more
• Don't stop
• I thought of this when I saw women risking their lives for manicures in those states that opened too early
• I talked this week to a young woman who as far as I could see
• Was in a frenzy fed by social media competition
• Thinking of my own life 
• Worked so hard at my job and then retired and went deep into a book
• Every day for the last eight months I worked on it
• Worried myself because it meant I was not posting here
• People contacted me and said get back to blogging
• I see favourite bloggers post garment after garment
• And me I make things and give them to people and forget to take the picture
• One more thing
• I drove yesterday past streets named for boys who didn't come home from the war
• I thought of those mothers who waited
• And at best only got letters
• Sometimes
• I want to ask them what did you do, how did you do it?
• Airmen from Australia farm boys from the Canadian prairies
• It makes me think how foolish we are
• And it has made me think of our exhausted selves and exhausted lives
• And all that documenting, busyness, continuous self improvement
• Like all those over 50 style posts
• Thin women with big bags and and white shirts
• None of them in an apron
• Made me wonder about the lesson of fallow years
• And letting things sit to revive
• Why is this the last option we want to consider?
• It seems to me that right now the bravest thing to do 
• Would be to just sit
• And have faith
• Today I am canning tomatoes
• To taste this summer during my quiet winter
• You?