Settling In Gently by R.A.Davis

Today I got my second dose of the vaccine! I'm feeling loopy and sore and shaky, but in two weeks, I'll be DTD! Down to...date! But how? It's been over a year of quarantine. My "people skills" are "rusty." But, full disclosure, I've been reading (and writing) a LOT of romantic fanfic and remembering that I want that. Romance, partnership. The fluttery adventure of getting to know someone with that question in mind-- is this us? Are we good together? Do you like me, do I like you? How much? What are we willing to give and receive, what are we willing to leave behind when we go into something new?  Oof, I have to stop there or I'll freak myself out. Okay, so I go sign in to the dating site. My details are 3 or 4 years out of date. The pictures are still clearly me, but... the last year has changed something in me. I feel haggard and sad in a Pacific Northwest way that these chipper photos in the Utah canyons or on Hawaiian beaches don't really ...

The tempation to reflect as the calendar year flips over is too great for me to resist. I've ordered my 2021 calendar ( a pinup calendar, yes. Of Norse goddesses. Yep. I'm an adult, I can do what I want.) So I think that means I can, gingerly, gently, with much deference and genuflection, put this cluster of a year to rest.  But it eludes examination. It slithers out of my awarenss. What was this year, even? I have to consult outside sources. My memory is just a gray haze of heat, cold, panic, and immobility.  So I go to instagram. This is why I have it, by the way. It is a net to catch memories that my sieve-brain just lets dissolve.  Last January 1st, 2020, we got up before dawn, parked at the closed gate of the parking lot on Spencer's Butte, and scrambled up the bitter cold stairs. I had just pulled the kids out of bed, as is, so they were draped in blankets instead of coats, with thick fuzzy socks stuffed into slippers (aka flipflops). We looked around for the rising...

My GOD, we will be in this quarantine for a year, won't we. Will we be the same people on the other side?  Last year, last Christmas, 2019, 1000 years ago, I was tired. The kids were tired. They had been running at full tilt in new schools, new middle school, new Japanese immersion school-- and the 2 hours of daily commute was killing us all. So when school got out for the winter break, I didn't plan a trip.  Usually, traveling is our family culture. Since Matt died, we've criss-crossed the country, gone up and down the West Coast, gone to Scotland, Denmark, Mexico, and to the Big Island.  But we were just tired. I had finished up my masters in instructional design, writing a hundred pages of curriculum and analysis. I was sick, but didn't know it yet. RJ was sick too, and I didn't know it yet, although I suspected. But I knew we needed a break. I figured we'd hole up for the holidays, gather our strength for the year to come. Who cares if it would be lazy, a co...

For the first week of schools closed and everyone staying home, it was the most beautiful spring weather imaginable. Every plum and cherry tree on the street was a sweet cloud, the sky was clear west coast blue. All the little plants in the yard grew fuzzy little buds, all at once. The kiwi vine and the apricot tree I was sure I had killed through last summer's negligence put out tiny leaves and buds! The daffodils and narcissuses nod their yellow manes on the back hill. I stomped around outside in my pink muck boots and pajama bottoms, listening to Hadestown and Post Modern Jukebox on my headphones, while Liko played with the gravel from the path. The other afternoon I stood outside watering the garden boxes where Maile had just put down the seed potatoes and where the pea shoots just starting to nudge their pale green bent necks out of the cold black dirt. I heard a chirp and a zoom-- and a hummingbird swooped nearby. It paused just a few feet away from me, and levitated in the...

I woke up this morning at 4:30. The cat was resettling herself on my hip, where she likes to sleep, balanced on four needly claws, rotating with me when I roll to my side. It was still dark, and I felt calm and rested. Just a quick peek. I turned on my phone-- facebook scrolled. My early morning/late night softness ground into the tinnitus of screen-light anxiety. No. Somebody dead from Covid19 at the hospital down the road, right here in Springfield. No tests available yet. How do I mitigate this, what's the lamb's blood I need to splash across the door? The facebook algorithm reads my mind: Buy this Jewish holiday box and learn to celebrate Jewish holidays at home. Oi Mama.... I suddenly remember my mom's sweet crooning in her Dutch-accented Yiddish and I am crying. How I wish she was here to joke, comfort, share vision, extend healing from the spiritual power of motherhood, of cronehood. Would we blend the sacred and the silly, light the candles and braid the c...