the gift of an ordinary day — Katrina Kenison

We were supposed to fly to New Orleans on Friday to meet our son Henry for his spring break. Instead, Henry was able to get a last-minute flight home to New Hampshire. He closed up his apartment in Tuscaloosa knowing he might not return till fall, shipped a box of books, filled two suitcases, and patiently listened to all my instructions about sanitizing his seat on the plane.

Henry’s senior musical theatre students were supposed to be in New York city this week, auditioning the numbers they’ve worked on all year before a roomful of agents and producers. Instead, they performed their pieces for their teachers and for each other on Thursday afternoon and sent a tape to New York. (The agents promised to watch, but that was then. Surely, by now, they are simply trying to survive.)

All semester, my son and and his cast for “Legally Blonde” have been rehearsing six nights a week for their April run. The spring musical in a musical theatre department is an enormous labor of love and dedication; for the seniors, it’s the culmination of four years of hope, effort, and intense study. The designers, the directors, the choreographer, the student actors — all had spent hours and hours getting this enormous show ready for opening night. There will be no opening night.

Instead, the cast gathered together one final time on Thursday evening and ran Act Two. They took to the stage and sang their hearts out, for the love of what they do and to honor the effort that’s gone into creating a show that will never be seen. And then they wept and hugged and said good-bye, knowing it was the last time they’d be together. Their four years of study and practice and late night rehearsals wouldn’t end with ovations and curtain calls, but suddenly, with tears and farewells and hastily made travel plans.

Meanwhile, I canceled the Airbnb place in New Orleans, the flights, the jazz brunch. Instead, I stocked up on pasta, rice, canned soup, and hand soap.

Saturday was unseasonably mild here, a breath of spring in the air, although I still went back inside for my hat and gloves. “We were supposed to be on the food tour right now,” Henry reminded me as we loaded fallen branches into the wheelbarrow. “Yes,” I said. “And instead we’re in Peterborough, picking up sticks and frozen dog poop.”

Given the pace of the virus spreading through our country, there is no place I’d rather be. To lace up work boots, head outside, grab a rake and begin the spring clean up here at home feels like a gift of normalcy in a world that’s suddenly become precarious, scary, and fraught with uncertainty.

Yesterday, we made waffles for breakfast and put on the Brandenburg concertos, the Sunday morning music of our kids’ childhood. Steve went to his office, to clean and go to the dump, and Henry and I hiked up Pack Monadnock. The parking lots in town were mostly empty, but not so the one at the base of the mountain. On our walk up, we ran into several friends and neighbors. People were eager to pause and chat, happy to connect from six feet away outside in the fresh air. We are all grasping at normalcy, it seems.

We stopped in to visit my parents on our way home, standing outside on the porch to talk through an open window rather than going inside. My mom passed her binoculars out through the door, so we could watch an otter hanging out on an ice floe on the pond, lazily snacking on a fish. If I could have held onto that moment, made it last, I would have. Instead, I simply tried to soak it up — the sun on our faces, my parents safely tucked inside their little house, my son at my side, the quiet half-frozen pond spread before us, a solitary otter enjoying its catch.

Back home, I set up a Zoom account on my iPad and texted Lauren in Atlanta to do the same. She and her room mate rolled out their mats and within a few minutes we had a cozy little yoga class going. It felt intimate and communal, as if we really were all together in the same room. The whole thing was unplanned, but as I asked them to lie down and close their eyes for shavasana, I wished I had something more to offer, a few words that might help us all calm down a little and remind us that even our “insteads” might have slender silver linings, if we’re open to seeing them.

I woke up early this morning, long before first light, wondering about what’s next. Just a week ago most of us were simply watching the news and living our lives, albeit with a slow-growing sense of anxiety. Now, seven short days later, we’re creating new lives in territory we barely recognize. The shift is invisible, profound, and utterly unsettling.

For me this last week has been mostly about upended plans and hasty homecomings, shopping lists and new hygiene habits, and making an abrupt adjustment from going and doing to staying and being. Meanwhile, everyone I know has been dealing with the confusion, disappointment, and the cost of canceled plans and trips, classes and work commitments. We all have family members displaced or in flux or wondering if a sore throat is something to worry about. We have loved ones in nursing homes who are suddenly inaccessible and friends in quarantine. Our routines are upended and our worries mount as we confront new bills, shrinking bank accounts, encroaching illness, and countless what-nows and what-ifs. And yet, so far, we are the lucky ones.

A vivid, intimately detailed story in the New York Times last week about two young health care workers in China brought home the devastating reality of the coronavirus for me in a way no chart or graph or headline possibly could. Both were twenty-nine years old, both were devoted young mothers with small children at home, both took every precaution against the virus as they showed up for work to care for the ill. Both became gravely sick themselves. Only one survived.

At this moment, no one in my own close circle is sick. But it doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination to understand that I, too, may lose people. Things are going to get harder. And sadder. In the meantime, like everyone else, I do my best to prepare. Buying some extra canned goods and soap is the easy part. New habits require diligence and practice, but I can do that, too. And there are plenty of ways to be productive at home. The closets, the basement, the garden — everywhere I look, a task awaits. On a practical level, I’m as ready as I can be.

The hard part, perhaps for all of us who are quietly turning inward at home this week, is figuring out how to ready ourselves for losses we can barely bear to think about. When we have no idea what’s next, or exactly how or when our own challenges will arise, the only sane choice is to practice staying present with life as it is right now. And the only thing we can know for certain is that life as it is will continue to be transformed, perhaps dramatically and tragically, in the weeks ahead.

I’m sitting in my kitchen as I type these words, watching a familiar flicker come and go from the feeder just outside. The window is cracked open, and every now and then a solitary, unknown bird lets loose with a yearning call. Outside, the first daffodils are pushing through earth that was still frozen solid a week ago. The forsythia branches I cut on the last day of February and stuck in a vase are budding into yellow blossom, promising the arrival of spring. There’s food in the refrigerator and my family is safe. Looking around, everything appears completely the same as it’s always been. And yet, nothing is.

All over town, shops, restaurants, schools, and theatres are shuttered, empty, and still. Who knows when, or if, they’ll open again. My husband, owner of a small business, is at work today, meeting with his staff, confronting the stress of decisions that impact not only the lives of his employees, but their entire families and livelihoods, as well as ours. In Asheville, our younger son Jack is doing a double shift at the sober-living program where he works, with little choice but to show up and be useful during a time of high stress and increased vulnerability. Part of his job is to accompany clients to daily twelve-step meetings, but this week all those public gatherings have been canceled. Instead, they are holding their own meetings at the Next Step house, offering each other support even as newly established recovery routines are upended by closings and shut-downs.

There are no easy answers, no clear path through any of this, other than caution, kindness, and care for ourselves and others.

And so I remind myself: my real challenge right now is a spiritual one. In the midst of an evolving, unprecedented crisis, can I truly practice living moment to moment? Can I take on this strange new life day by day, from a place of tender awareness rather than fear? Can I let go of the ways I thought life would unfold and save my strength to swim with the tide? Can I stay focused on what’s good, right now?

I’m trying. We all are. And just as the virus that’s occupying our collective consciousness is invisible, so too is the love we put forth with every gentle word spoken, every note written, every phone call to a friend, every random kindness offered and received. I believe that in a time like this, once all possible precautions have been taken, love remains our most powerful antidote to fear and despair. We’re in this together, dear ones. Let’s stay home, even as we keep looking for ways to reach out and support each other. Let’s sanitize what we can and then seize every opportunity to notice beauty, to manifest joy, to create connection, and to keep and share the faith that, together, we will come through.

Fourteen years ago, as a cherished friend confronted the too-soon end of her life, I began writing notes for a book called The Gift of an Ordinary Day. I wanted to remind myself, as much as anyone else, just how precious an ordinary day can be. My guess is that none of us will ever again forget.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath-
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love-
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

~ Lynn Ungar

(As I was writing this afternoon, this poem arrived in my in-box, the daily offering from my friend Claudia Cummins’s much loved blog A First Sip. It speaks so exquisitely to the moment that I wanted to share it with you.)

Originally published at https://www.katrinakenison.com on March 16, 2020.