Coronavirus: Not over yet?

I really hit a wall this month, as the curve of infection inched up in the third wave and the weather turned cold. My summer adventures in the out-of-doors had been delightful and the idea of shelter-in-place-by-myself AGAIN was painful. I complained bitterly to everyone, and listened as they complained bitterly back to me. I've stopped thinking of Trump as idiocy and started thinking of it as domestic violence against all of us, trapping us in a very bad experience of the pandemic. When conservative organizations like the New England Journal of Medicine denounce the handing of the situation, you know we're in deep trouble. And of course climate change is hovering over us, Thomas Friedman says we can expect big changes in how we work -- which likely means lower salaries -- and surely there's more. In the midst of all this angst, I backslid on my daily self-improvement routines of exercise, cello practice, homemade bread and green leafy vegetables.  I wanted cake and TV period. End of discussion. The fears of the spring were no longer motivators. I was in a slump.

This is the point at which my beloved friend Pam Shaw, were she with us, would say, "Time to put on your big girl pants." She might say it sweetly, as in "You are so loved!" (from some encouraging message site) or superhero-style, as in "You are a bodacious woman warrior and you can do this!" but she would surely draw a line on my self-pity. She was a stern but wonderful cheer-er-upper and I miss her terribly.

Left to my own devices, I reorganized my house and took my friends/family's suggestion to get an outdoor grill and fire pit to extend the outside season into the cold days. I am going to get a new sofa and a new very warm coat for these forays to the outside. I also got poles for pole walking, per the advice of the Washington Post, and recruited a friend to try it with me. This is all good.

In light of those accomplishments, I said to myself, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" OK, great metaphor, and I know what the lemons are but what is "lemonade"? Thinking about Pam, "lemonade" might be just the willingness to say, "This is a shitty day (shitty period), but 'I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.'" 

I threw in the Frost because it seemed to fit. I could have quoted Emerson -- 'when duty whispers low, "Thou must," the youth replies "I can" or Thomas Paine --

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

These great writers urge fortitude in the trying times, self-sacrifice for the larger good. While it seems as if my huddling in my house is nothing like the suffering of George Washington's battered army in 1776 as they fled across New Jersey, their ill-shod feet bleeding into the snow, I am supposed to do this thing, this shelter-in-place, it is my contribution to the cause, not to get sick myself. I can be cheerful so that I don't burden others. In fact, I can invite them over and feed them from my outdoor grill, cooking in my incredibly warm new coat (which I didn't actually get yet, but you follow the storyline here). I can use my time to learn from this "apocalypse," understood to mean "pulling back the veil" between reality and me.

And what I glimpse behind the veil is that a shift as large as the American Revolution or the Civil War is ahead -- as we make a necessary transformation from our rape-and-pillage-the-earth economy to a just-and-sustainable one. It doesn't have a name yet, this new system, but I think one will emerge soon. And we will see that that transition will demand all the fortitude and winter solidering we can muster. In the future, when we look back, we might think of this as the "Summer" of the Revolution. We are all Sarah Connor at the end of Terminator, knowing that hard times are coming, and this is the moment to prepare.  

I think that is the bittersweet lemonade we are called to make in this moment.