Covid Time

Our youngest granddaughter was born on February 19.  She came into the world looking quite surprised.  What am I doing here, she seemed to ask. After all, she was a week or so early.  Why is it so bright in here, her eyes in wee slits wondered.  Of course, how could she anticipate that there would even be a new world, never mind what it might look like.  She came on her own terms and in her own time, when grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends could still hold her, when visits were still possible, when everything on the outside was not a threat.  

She is five weeks old now.  Five weeks ago—a forgotten time, an epoch ago, a bygone era that may look very different from a new reality whenever we release the pause button on society. Paul Krugman, the economist and Nobel laureate  who writes for the New York Times,  has referred to our new reality as Covid Time.   What CovidTime looks like here in Canada and in various parts of the world fills our screens 24/7.

From my tiny sphere, it means:

o   a recognition more than ever that all we have is today, the moment, the choice for that moment;

o   an awakening of what we know deep down, and what our ancestors who lived on this land before us, knew: that success and failure, life and death, depend on community, and that in times of crisis, community coming together in solidarity is the linchpin;

o   awareness that my husband and I belong to the high risk group of +65, and that we stand to benefit from the risk that others take every day,  just going to work, a risk we can avoid;

o   deep gratitude and admiration for anyone on the frontlines of this pandemic—medical professionals, elected representatives at all levels of government, civil servants, people in retail and maintenance, truckers, anyone whose job definition means carrying the yoke of this pandemic or who can’t work from home, or can’t work, period;

o   an effort to do what we can to help the cause, even if that’s just to stay home, only take what we need, follow the protocols, hang on to our joy with both hands and try to pass some on, take care of those in need around us;

o   months ahead without visits to our children or cuddles from our grandchildren, all of whom live in neighboring provinces;

o   retooling myself to provide some distance ed opportunities for the students in my care this year, beginning Monday;

o   disbelief that somehow we threaded the needle of reasonable safety in a trip to Australia and New Zealand, from January 14 to February 8.   In unimaginable good fortune, the fires in Australia did not impact us, and, although we spent the last twelve days on a cruise ship, we escaped the coronavirus (or it bypassed us, not sure which).

CovidTime may also mean more time for sharing experiences and stories, an attempt to do my part to record history as it unfolds and to help myself and others manage the effects of that history.  To leave a record for my granddaughter of the first months of her life.

Stay well, everyone.

Solidarity

My classroom on Thursday,
prepped for social distancing Monday,
and now empty.

On Thursday, the last day of classes before the province-wide school shut-down in efforts to help plank the Covid19 pandemic, I’m in the school chapel at 2:00 p.m.  Alone.   I have my phone, and my rosary.  I’m wondering why I’m here.  Yes, an email I noticed by chance  a few minutes before reminding people to pray the rosary with Pope Francis at 2:00 did prod me.   And yes, my inner voice said, Why not go?  No excuses—I had just enough time before two pm; I had finished my work; the chapel was close by.  I even had the  rosary I had brought for  the prayer table.

Since September, I’ve been in a high school, drafted by the school division to help out in a pinch in the French Immersion department.  Life since then has been streamlined, to put it mildly, narrowed, to be realistic, the multiple driving lanes of my world reduced to one—school work.  This blog has been only one of the casualties. 

That’s why I was in a high school on Thursday. What took me to the chapel, rosary in hand, is more complicated to explain.  I’m not devoted to the rosary.  In fact, I wonder if I’ve ever said the rosary by myself in my life ever before.  I’ve prayed the rosary in church during various rites, and at home, with my parents off and on while they lived with us in their last years.  But alone?  No.  To me, the rosary has always been a communal devotion, something you do with others as a ritual.

So why, then, am I here, in a chapel, alone, with a rosary?  To pray for healing? For protection?  I’d have to say no, although the spirits of my children and grandchildren surround me in that space.    If not to pray for, then surely to pray alongside people all over the world.   To feel connected in my solitude to millions of others all over the world joined with Pope Francis to find strength in prayer and in each other in their own solitude.  

A need for solidarity took me to the chapel that Thursday.  The same sense of solidarity that moves me to distance myself from others, to wash my hands until the knuckles bleed, to stay home to protect those I love, as well as well as the medical professionals, the retailers, the maintenance people,  who keep society going.   Add to the list those who, like me, do their best to stay calm and carry on, one hour at a time, to get through this pandemic.

In that stillness and solidarity, as the Hail Marys slip by, a centering mantra, I think of a suggestion I’ve posted online for my history class.  Students are living history that they will share with their children and grandchildren.  They will read accounts of this period throughout their lives.  Why not, then, add their voice to the record? Journal, take photographs, talk to people, during the months to come, as their recorded experience of the pandemic will be primary source historical documents in the future. I do really need to walk the talk, to chronicle my own experience,  as well, in this space.   

After the last Glory be to the Father, I feel calm, settled, with a sense of purpose and an ironic gratitude that such a tragic event has opened up space in my recent life to reflect.  Here goes.