- 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?
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