“There are things we took for granted, and I reach for them still. How I always hated running into that one guy at the food co-op and having to field his odd, creepily prying questions. But if I had it to do again, I would look for him. I remember once he opened up to me, about his story, and his personal tragedy. Suddenly, there was a door, and a heart, and a connection that I would never have sought out, left to my own devices. Now, I see almost no one that’s not connected to work. The streets of my town are strained, & the farmers come to town unsteady on their feet, not knowing how to act anymore, or do the right thing. I hide my shock at seeing masked people, trying to talk in normal ways, and move as if freedom of movement was the norm. It is not. There are no children playing games on the green. I miss my children’s childhood. Their children will never have the same. The ice rink on the basketball court, being picked up at the library, where two computers were the latest innovation. The lazy days I volunteered to renovate the school gardens, while my tribe of little ones ran free. I was a goddess then and I didn’t even know it. Even my dog came down, to sit in the shade of the enormous maple, and watch me dig. Other parents came and went, nothing was sanitized. Some left off raw milk; others cleaned as a barter for tuition, rinsing dish towels, cleaning toilets, making beautiful improvements to a busy train station where imagination left on the hour, for nature. Tiny rooms, chaotic closeness, pandemics of lice and the latest throwing up diseases, all part of the fabric. We are, after all, human. This is not a condition to be nailed down. In fact, the messier it is, the more things get sorted out. We were never scared of each other, only scared to be hated, or judged, or deemed ugly. I had my share of wishing other parents would just go away. Now they are gone. Some died heroic deaths of cancer, some turned to face new challenges of mental illness, developed either in themselves, or in their children. A favored few seemed to forever float in a privileged sky above poverty or mishap. But what do we know about anything. The game is constantly changing. The goodness you put in, is not always reflected in any tangible outcome. And so, as I crouch against a hillside embankment, pulling tenacious grass with my arms, tucking wishes of peace and non-violence into every action and plant, there is no obvious reward to doing so. Falling back on the “architecture of prayer” that I have built, a very small humble structure that is still standing, I stride forward.”
