LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING THIS IS MY COUNTRY

The 4th of July.  We watched it on television this year.  The United States Navy Band virtual choir sang "This is My Country."  The United States Marine Band played Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" remotely during the fireworks over the capital, canons thundering.  Cece Winans reached toward the sky with her version of "Lift Every Voice and Sing."  The New York Philharmonic played "America the Beautiful" from as many different locations as instruments.  The Harlem Gospel Singers sang remotely.  Split-screen to the Empire State all in red, white and blue.  All the pageantry that we love on the Fourth.  Maybe you were watching.

It was a welcome break all of this, against the backdrop of protests and a pandemic.  Most experts think our country has mismanaged the coronavirus, which is increasing in almost every state.   Earlier in the day we had watched the news.  The virus is on a frightening rampage in Florida where my brother lives.  Over 11,000 new cases per day!  Beaches, restaurants and bars are re-closing but not fast enough.  Hospitals are full. When have we had to worry about that before? 

In South Dakota Trump held another rally.  People mingled freely without face masks.  Such a cheap and easy preventative measure.  One doctor compared the lack of care for self and others to a kind of Jonestown mentality. Remember Jonestown? I do.  On November 18, 1978, more than 900 members of an American cult died in a mass suicide-murder under the direction of their leader Jim Jones. They drank kool-aid laced with cyanide because he told them to, and watched each other drop. Children too.  Such is the power of demagoguery.    

The coronavirus task force says we will be living in this pandemic for the foreseeable future.  We did so well shutting down.  But our gains may have been cancelled by now.  Too many reopened too early and too aggressively.  Too much mistaken feeling of invincibility.  Going mask-less as a symbol.  I could go on. . . we all could.

I do believe in America the Beautiful.  I've been in too many national parks to doubt that. It is my country.  And yours.  All of ours. 

I don't want to be a citizen anywhere else.  But on this July 4th there is both pride and some shame.  Perhaps every year should have been like that, and has been for many. But this year everything is heightened.  Pride in the peaceful protesters, with Black Lives Matter already determined to be the largest movement in U.S. history.  Some shame in perhaps having wasted the sacrifices of so many by allowing, and even encouraging, the resurgence of coronavirus cases.  So, as we learned in law school but didn't need law school to know:  everything cuts both ways.  Love, pride, fear, concern. . . .

We go forward. 

WHAT CONSOLES US?

2020 "Anything but Ordinary"

I've been tracking the coronavirus in my collage art.  It's a way of coping.  Everyone I hear from seems to share a way of coping or two.  Most include a little binge watching of something.  Baking, which I'm not good at, could win a contest.  My family plans to social distance with two other families, three cars and several canoes today.  But for me, collage art helps me both be creative and mourn.  

We're at such poles, aren't we?  Yesterday in a message thread I responded that the peace we're sharing would be so lovely if it weren't for the threat of a deadly virus.  We're, most of us, working hard at our resilience.  Maybe, like I wrote in "Life at a Deeper Level," 11/22/19, rather than return to where we were, post-traumatic growth will take hold.  Do you see some of that?  Changed priorities, a greater sense of personal strength, spiritual growth.

"Still Home but OK"

Most days I feel like this:  Still home but OK.  But sometimes I wonder why we have no national mourning.  Finally the New York Times, as we approach a death-toll of 100,000 in the US, listed their names.  Finally--but only because it's Memorial Day weekend--the flags are at half-staff.  As we cheer the hospital workers, I wish we would also collectively honor the dead.   

On those days when maybe we don't feel so much like we're OK, it may be because we identify with those who have lost someone. It isn't you; it isn't me; but it is someone.  Someone who couldn't take one more breath. That makes us the lucky ones.  I do feel that every day I'm not sick, don't you?  Lucky.

May 1 "Mapping Your World" 63,535 confirmed dead

In May I started to incorporate the number who have died in the US into my collage art.  Sort of to allow pause to pay my respects.  
 

May 14 "Light the Candles" 86,599 confirmed dead

May 23  98,182 confirmed dead

We go on.  I'm (thankfully) not in charge of anything. My neighbor is an internationally known leader in vaccine development.  God bless his team.  Other people are planning for safe schooling in the fall.  Many are trying to make ends meet at half-capacity . . . .  The people I know aren't the ones mingling in crowded pools with no thought for tomorrow. 

My job is among the easiest.  Stay home or wear a mask when out, safe-distance, wash my hands and take every precaution I can not to catch or spread this disease.  Be kind and show love at every opportunity. In that way can I respect and honor the dead and the living.  This consoles me.  I hope your role consoles you too.  Peace, Nina Naomi

THE TEMPO IS DIFFERENT AND THAT'S OK

Working From Home

We didn't intend it, but it seems like our life is on hold.  We've had unintentional holds before.  When we're sick; or a child, parent, partner or good friend is.  When we're job hunting or don't know what's next.  When someone we love is absent, or we wish we had someone to love but don't.  My clients often felt like their lives were on hold until their legal problems resolved.  And it's like that now, isn't it?  There's a lot of uncertainty. Not only "Will I catch (and survive) the coronavirus?" But when will we next see (and touch) our family and friends, not to mention a steady paycheck?  And it's just beginning.


One help is to remember that being in a difficult situation is real life too.  Waiting for the coronavirus to end does not have to put us on standby.  It changes our life, it doesn't stop it.  So we do things differently.  Unless we are on the front line, we do things now more slowly, more intently.  Auto-pilot no longer applies.  We're settling in.  

What does this mean?  For one thing, we don't have to be productive at pre-virus stress levels.  To continue that way doesn't make sense, does it?  We owe it to ourselves and others to confine stress to those direct coronavirus consequences that are unavoidable.  That's enough.  

We also don't have to follow every on-line time-filler.  I thought I would watch an opera replay from the Met every night, but I haven't.  I thought I would de-clutter more but there's no where to drop off.  I thought I would face-time more often, but do I need to get together with friends more than we did before social distancing?  I'm attending only one Zoom class (yoga) and contributing to two fun chain-mail invitations. I'm reading what I please and keeping Alexa busy with my music choices.  My outdoors never looked so good.  My meals are delicious.  We each need to pick what's right for us. The last thing we need is to import guilt into these days at home that we've been given.

I know I'm not the only one giving this advice.  To let go of expectations.  Do what we need to do with our kids and our work.  Then what we want to do.  For our families, ourselves, others . . . .  The tempo is different now and that's OK.  
                                                    Nina Naomi

Lulu enjoying the family stay-at-home Order

 






     

FEEDING THE GOOD WOLF

You know the story of the two wolves?  A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson.  He said, 

"I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart.  One wolf is vengeful, angry, lying, arrogant, greedy and mean.  The other wolf is loving, serene, truthful, compassionate, generous and kind." 

His grandson asked him, 

"Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?"  

The grandfather answered, 

"The one I feed." 

Given the way things are, I feel like I'm hearing this story for the first time.  A story that reminds us of the power we have over our experiences and emotions. 

It's easy to feel like a victim in challenging times.  I was talking with my cousin.  She reminded me of the generations that lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  Before that World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, an influenza that lasted 3 years and infected a quarter of the world's population.  Since then the Vietnam and Civil Rights generation.  We could add the Black Lives Matter the #MeToo generation and now COVID-19.  It's our turn.  That doesn't make us victims, it makes us human.  

My mother, the Nina Naomi to whom I dedicate this blog, was named after two beloved family members who both died in the 1918 pandemic, a mother and baby together.  Generations later my cousin was named after all three of them.  One year she and I put down the top on her convertible and visited all the family graves in St. Louis that we could find, including that mother and child. We had the best time!  We were feeding the good wolf.  When I reminded her of this the other day she said, "Wouldn't all those people have loved it that we were visiting them?" 

For the most part I think we are all feeding the good wolf.  We recognize that when we self-isolate we are saving more lives than our own.  We act out of self-interest, yes, but we know that our interest serves the greater good.  We are taking personal and communal responsibility.  

I'm reminded of the battle so many face against cancer.  I overheard a patient say, "I've got a year of fighting in my path.  I have to look at little things as big things and big things as little things."  We understand that.  We are doing that now everyday as we learn how the coronavirus takes no prisoners.  My husband washed the windows today; this became a big thing; I am so grateful.  We will be able to see the sun streaming into the bedroom in the morning without the haze of pollen.  The small becomes large.  

By choosing to spend our time and thoughts in ways that keep us healthy we feed our good wolf. The patient in cancer treatment mulled it over, "Yes, I've got a tough year ahead, but I plan to smile everyday because a positive attitude is sometimes the only thing I have."  How brave.  The good wolf is winning; I would like mine to win too.  
                                                                      Nina Naomi

 

TODAY IS DIFFERENT

In a conversation once I said complaining, "My life isn't what I expected it to be."  A fair statement given the deaths in our family that summer.  "Whose is?" was the reply.  

I think a lot of us are feeling that way.  At least right now our lives are not what we expected them to be.  I don't need to list all the ways.   

I know of no new sickness among our circle of family or friends. And the friend who was in intensive care is home.  We give thanks.  But this morning I stood in line behind a young man wearing a protective mask. I had seen him before the pharmacy opened, stretched out on an out-of-the-way bench for customers. He lay there alone, eyes closed keeping his distance.   Tall, thin and with a shaved head, now he was kneeling at the pharmacy counter.  Too weak to stand for long, he waited on his knees as his prescriptions were filled.  My first thought was, "Here is someone to pray for."  Then he rose and slowly left the store.  

Each of us in line--three women all standing 6 feet apart--looked at him and at each other with visible compassion.  It was hard seeing this man, this stranger with whom it was so easy to feel kinship.  I don't believe I'll ever forget the sight he made.  Him tall enough to easily reach the counter while on his knees and me immediately thinking of prayer.  In a safer world I could have knelt beside him, though he would have surely found that strange.  After all, we were in a pharmacy not church.  After he left the three of us spoke about him briefly from our distances.   

I had a tall thin sick boy of my own a few years back, that summer that I mentioned.  I've written of him before ("The Sundial," 7/23/19).  I came home and lit a fire to ward off the inner chill and saw this:

Life is messy and complicated and we are afraid.

But we show up anyway.

All the changes of this season are not this difficult.  But for this post, I'll leave it with the picture of the young man kneeling and how he woke compassion in the women in line behind him. 

ONE WORLD ONE DAY AT A TIME

"It is a serious thing

 Just to be alive

 On this fresh morning

 In this broken world.
. . .
It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant when he wrote:
You must change your life."

Mary Oliver

If ever there was a time to live one day at a time this is it.  China, Italy, the US, France, the whole world. Every one of us is affected, some worse than others.  I have a friend in intensive care, test not back yet. Yet here I am blogging; here you are reading.  Life goes on.

I'm taking Mary Oliver's words out of context I know.  She was writing a poem about the natural world not a pandemic.  She was admonishing us to interrupt our "busy and very important" day to listen to the song of a riotous goldfinch.  There are other things now that interrupt our fresh mornings.  I can't help but see these words applying to us in a different way.  It is a serious thing just to be alive with all our world is going through.  

All of us people with a common interest.  And most of us today likely at home.  Unless you're a health care or other essential worker.  Or unless you are hospitalized like my friend. Or without a home in a shelter. Otherwise, like me, you're probably practicing social distancing by staying put.  In some areas we're ordered to stay put.  It's a serious thing.  We are changing our lives.  

Some days ago I started a post about all the free time we now magically have, now that our calendars are wiped clean.  Looking for the positive side of social distancing, a term we never even used before. The post was triggered by the cancellation of sports events and concerts.  Then the schools closed. Now movie houses, bars, restaurants, shops, malls . . . .  It's become hard to think of something that isn't closed, cancelled or should be.   

How to respond?  I think we're all doing it right.  We're following best practices and staying apart.  We're not hoarding. (The on-line seller who stripped three states of necessary sanitizing supplies has donated them.)  We're supporting each other.  I love that I've been getting phone calls rather than texts.  We have time to chat.  I love that we have time.  The excuse, "I'm too busy," is gone. 

So my To-Do and Could-Do lists are all different.  Yesterday my husband and I had time for a walk together around the Duke East Campus track.  It drizzled but so what?  Last night I watched Puccini's La Boheme; the NY Metropolitan Opera has launched a free "Nightly Met Opera" stream of encore live HD performances on their website. How I love that score!  The music soars, giving Mary Oliver's goldfinch a run for its money for sure.  What a creative gift to the world during this stressful time.    

Today I'll start on the de-cluttering I sort-of-enjoy-but-can-put-off-indefinitely.  It stares at me from every shelf and closet and I can't say I don't have time to tackle it. Not for the foreseeable future.  So . . . old clothes, frayed linens, mystery photos; closets and cabinets; all are in my sights. Cans of dried paint, used florescent lights, rusty chicken wire, leaves and dirt; the garage will be next.  

Like all of us, I'm also cooking more.  At our house that's a plus and a minus.  Saves money, which is good. But my heritage is English and German cooking.  Diner food.  How I envy those raised by French and Italian mamas and grandmas  There are times we want to eat something I just can't cook. Still, a chance to learn.  I just looked up recipes for a Classic Aioli: I've got an egg, olive oil, garlic, lemon, salt and pepper. Simple.  Good on chicken, fish, veggies.
 

A trip to the UK has been cancelled so that's a savings too.  Though I had it all planned, staying where we lived when our daughter was born.  Hard to forego.  It's our favorite place. But haven't I been learning how to better cope with disappointment?  These downsides are a chance to put mindfulness to the test.  And prayer.  Both calm anxiety and fear. That's been shown.  

Keeping the kids on task, working from home, or coping with furlough and less income.  It is one day at a time, isn't it?  It is "we're all in this together."  It is a time to do all those things at home that in normal times we save for our day off. And to be creative, in every way.  To love each other.  

I have a feeling this is Part I of a series.  Take care please everyone,  Nina Naomi