Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, July 28 2020

The news is relentlessly bad and the virus still looms, invisible but threatening. This is a moment when worry and depression become rational ways to respond, no matter who and where we are. And yet, and yet…

My younger grandson called me yesterday completely out of the blue because he was thinking about the quilt I made for him a while back. He’s never done that before. We had a delightful chat. Peaches are in season, and the ones that arrived on our doorstep yesterday looked so perfect I made a tart with layers and layers of filo dough and tablespoons of butter. My husband looked up from his reading about places we might go someday and told me that he loved me - still. A book about women and their gardens arrived in the mail, a birthday gift from one of my oldest friends. I practiced my favorite Mozart sonata until there was nothing but music in my head. And then I went into the garden.