I hit a dark spot yesterday after three hours looking at the blacked out squares of people listening to our presentations for new student orientation…people who could see me but whom I could not see. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been on the screen. We have been in remote, social distance mode for ten weeks. Five and a half million people worldwide have caught the virus, 1.7 million of those are in just the US. Nearly one hundred thousand people have died in this country, and we will reach that number this week. Vermont has the second lowest rate of infection in the nation right now. We still have had less than one thousand cases total, and less than fifty have died. And yet within just a few hours drive of where we are, in neighboring Montreal, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, things are much worse. In New Hampshire forty people died of Covid just last week.
Driving home after being on the screen all morning, the sun was out. We’ve had summer weather all week. It is Memorial Day weekend. In a typical year, we would be spread thin with school. Sam would be working on the farm with the seniors. Quinn would be outsourced to my dad’s. I would be at school all day, both days, coming home to an empty house. This version is better in this way—what would have taken all weekend took only three hours. I was driving home to my family. I would have time to rest. So much to be grateful for. And yet when I drove by the village green and saw the first farmers’ market of the summer, with stalls spaced at a distance and yellow police tape strung everywhere, presumably to keep people spaced apart, even though it seemed no people were there, I started to feel overcome by sadness. My soul sucked out by that screen and now this, a market with no people. It got worse as I continued through town. I saw two people sitting together at a picnic table, both wearing masks.
By the time I got home I was in tears. Almost daily Quinn tells me she wants “everything to go back,” and I manage to stay upbeat, I try to express comfort and hope, even some joy. Sitting on the deck last week, Sam reviewed his students’ video diaries. Quinn lay on a deck cushion in a t-shirt and underwear reading a book. I previewed a book for our all-school summer read. The dogs lounged nearby. The sun was hot. It was the middle of a school and work day, but we were home, together. Most days I focus on these positives, but yesterday the wave crested. I want everything to go back too, I admitted to myself. Not the frantic pace of life, but the intimacy of hugging friends, and smiling at people in the store, of lingering in the close company of others.
Cedar and her family were home for the weekend from their school, and I arrived at home in time to catch Quinn before she headed out to meet Cedar at the brook. They would be there for hours working on their fairy village. They have houses, stores, a museum, a historical society, even a motel built so far. Sam and I walked her to the corner with the dogs. She held my hand as we walked down the road. Sam walked ahead of us, as he always does, lost in his own thoughts and momentum. It was a beautiful afternoon. She said goodbye, hugged me, and then headed down the hill—a hint of hesitation in her step, and excitement too. She started to jog. I started to cry watching her go. I looked over at Sam; he was crying too. “That’s so great,” he said. “So great and so awful,” I thought.
Last week Quinn agreed to join me on a long walk. We brought the dogs, and our Camelbacks, and some snacks. She was into it for the first two miles, mostly uphill, chatting away. When we reached the first turn to head home, on the Upper Loop, it took some convincing to get her to keep going. She was tired. She’d never walked beyond that point. But it was a perfect day. Bluebird, bright sun. We had nothing else we had to do. Eventually she gave in, and then, when we hit another intersection, she was the one to say let’s keep going. When she was a baby, I carried her in a pack on my chest. The yellow dog was a different one; the black one was the same. This was her first hike around the Vigilante Loop. We stopped for some pictures. Startled two big white-tailed deer. Spotted trillium in the woods. We explored a confluence of two streams. She climbed a giant boulder and was shocked and then thrilled when her puppy, panicking about losing her, managed to run up the vertical side of the boulder as well, propelling himself up from root to root until he reached her and could breathe again. I knew how he felt but I stayed composed, forcing myself to let her climb.
The whole loop was a joy, and Quinn felt energized by it too—proud of her six miles, happy for the accomplishment. Most days she is frustrated by a lack of it. School is not school—it is assignments on a computer, alone. She is outraged by the assignments that bore her (which are many), outraged that they take so much time and teach so little. Most days she just reads. All day. She got five new books last week, ordered from the bookstore we love but are not allowed into. I picked them up at the door and talked to the owner through the window. Quinn, as is now always true, waited in the car. She no longer even asks to come in. Her five books were read in three days. She rides a rage rollercoaster through each week.
When it was time for bed on the night of our hike, she suggested we sleep in the cabin. I resisted for a minute, imagining a good night’s sleep, since my day had begun at 4:30 am walking the dogs in the still-dark woods. But Quinn had a point and she knew it: what better way would there be to end such an awesome day, than sleeping in the woods, looking up at the stars, with the sleeping puppy nestled between us? She was right.
These are the aspects of this that I guiltily cherish. I am not alone. So many people talk about the unexpected gift of having their kids at home—mainly the parents of college kids. It is time that people have gotten back, as if the movie rolls in reverse, kids running backwards up the hill, hands coming together, walking back toward home.
As Sam and I turned to walk home without her, I found myself sobbing and struggling to breathe. I missed my dad, and felt the obvious worry: what if I don’t ever see him again? It is easy in our lovely spring woods, in our relatively healthy state, to feel as if this pandemic is all a distant and unreal story. We can dwell in this magical thinking, and that’s what I try to do. And yet, I know I can’t risk going to see my dad…not if I want to hug him, and I don’t think I can see him without doing that. January and February are busy months for us. “We’ll see you in April,” I told them, thinking it would suffice, and of course had I known this would happen, I would have made the time.
And that’s the thing, right? You never know. So you should go; you should make the time.
Last night I dreamt of my mother. Something that hasn’t happened in a long time. Not even recently when Quinn lay in my bed with me and brought her up, out of the blue. “I wish I had known your mom,” she said. “What was she like? What did she like to do? Do you think she would have liked me?” It is one of the few times Quinn has brought up her missing grandmother. It was just before Mother’s Day. “I wish I had something of hers,” she told me, a bit cautiously, “so I could feel close to her.” She’s been wearing my mother’s silver chain with the black onyx pendant ever since. I’ve had it for years, sitting in a drawer. I polished the silver until its sparkle came back. It hangs long, and lovely, on Quinn’s neck every day.
In my dream there were all these people around. It felt like a house, but not really, or a restaurant, but not really that either. I was walking through this crowd of people and my Uncle Dean approached me with a look of urgency. He too has been dead for years. “Your mother is here,” he told me, and I rushed off to find her. She was sitting on a bench by a fire, my Aunt Marion was next to her. I think I saw my sister and some cousins in the room. I approached her from behind and put my hand gently on her back. I rubbed her to warm her up. She seemed fragile. She turned and looked at me. She coughed but didn’t have any strength; the cough looked painful. Her eyes looked scared. She tried to smile, but just kept trying to cough. It was all painfully familiar.
I woke up then and in my half sleep I was torn between wanting to go back into the dream and not wanting to. I brought her back to life, I thought, only to have her get sick again. Usually when she shows up in my dreams, maybe even always, she is healthy, and happy, and smiling. I haven’t dreamt of her in a long time. I haven’t missed her even in a long time—not in that painful way, not in the “I want her back” way.
Walking the Upper Loop this morning with just the dogs, I could feel myself trying to put distance between myself and the darkness of the past twenty-four hours. It is another gorgeous day. The new-green leaves against the blue sky are invigorating. A rusty red fox hopped out of the woods just ahead of us on the trail. And the puppy stayed when I told him to, even though the old dog took off on the chase.
Hope is like a muscle. It needs exercise to stay strong. It takes work. Holding onto hope, I’m realizing, takes conscious effort. Just like letting go of a hand. Or watching someone climb. It is mind over matter. It is a leap of faith.
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