Day 313: On the Edge

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 30, 2021

We’ve had two inches of rain this week and yet the volume is still only 50% of what we need to have a normal summer. The window gets ever smaller for replenishing the city’s water supplies and damping down surrounding forests in time for summer’s usual drought and autumn’s fire season (in December the rain was sparse enough that we saw fire warnings in this neck of the woods, very rare this time of year). So, heavy rain is welcome, though it brings trouble of its own beyond the gloomy sky above our house and garden. Just south of us - where the fires bared the hills last summer, people are being evacuated in anticipation of sudden mudslides yet to come. And a little further down, a remote and winding portion of the highway opened up and washed right into the the ocean.

California, I am still learning, is not just a land of opportunity; it is a mountain of trouble and, it seems, we live continually on the edge.

Day 310: The Circle Game

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 27, 2021

We are getting to the full-circle point where nearly every day will remind us of something we were doing just before the pandemic landed in our laps - “normal life,” the eventful and uneventful things that happened before we knew that everything was about to change. I am reminded of this irony as I pick Meyer lemons this morning to make a cake. There were ripe ones (not quite so many) a year ago, hidden far beneath the branches and waiting for a chance to share a cake with friends.

A year ago today John and I got word that our China trip had been delayed, a full cross-country celebration of the TransAntarctica expedition’s 30th anniversary, postponed until September because there was a virus spreading in a place called Wuhan - not on our itinerary, but close enough to warrant caution and a pause in planning such a whirlwind of events (of course, September came and went without renewing all those plans).

This week is the anniversary, too, of my last trip to casually meet up with friends in Seattle where, unbeknownst to us, the virus had also just arrived. How little we suspected what was to come. How ‘normal’ it felt to be together for a weekend, laughing in the kitchen, toasting each other by firelight, and planning more visits in the year to come.

It’s hard to anticipate such freedom and adventure anymore and dangerous to hope too much that ‘normal’ will return anytime soon. Living in the moment is safer now. So as the calendar moves round full circle, we will celebrate the little things - like baking a lemon cake to cheer us on a cold, wet California morning, and remembering again how lucky we are to have each other and a place called home.

Day 304: Just Wear the Damn Mask

Shelter in Place, San Francisco, January 21, 2021

It felt a perfect day yesterday, full of promise, kindness, generosity and hope. Statesmen behaved like statesmen, Republicans and Democrats alike. There was poetry and people cried. I cried a lot. I could feel the relief in my chest last night when the new First Family made it safely onto White House grounds. “It’s like we have all been hostages,” somebody wrote, “and we didn’t even know it.”

Yet no one - certainly not our new president - minimized the challenges ahead. He exhorted us to join him: “Now we’re going to be tested,” he said. “Are we going to step up, all of us? It’s time for boldness for there is so much to do. And this is certain. I promise you we will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era.” Yes! My friends and I texted each other, we have to stay involved. How can we help? What can we do?

But then last night as the President signed his first executive order mandating masks on federal land, and the television cameras settled on the glowing pool-side lights that represent the COVID casualties so far, I received word that in the midst of all this rising hope and light, I lost a cousin to the disease. And suddenly, this morning, things look simpler. Whatever you think of our new president, whatever you hope to see (or not) in the next four years, I say this: Please stop this political theater and do the simplest thing to save yourself and me. Please. Just wear the damn mask!