A Sunday Afternoon

It has been six weeks since Martha's Mom died, and the family has stayed busy nearly every day in the daunting task of cleaning out the house, preparing for an estate sale, and preparing to place the house on the market next month.  The work has been all-consuming, especially for Martha as Executor of the estate, and although she has scheduled "rest" days, those days have often included stopping by that big brick house on Hickory Street for one reason or another.  Today, for example, she and I drove to Town to meet someone at 11:00 a.m. who had purchased a bedside table from the guest bedroom.  I sat on the porch for awhile waiting for the purchaser to arrive, enjoying the cool of the morning, looking out over the big front lawn, and listening to songbirds. 

Yesterday, Saturday, we both completed long runs - six miles for me, eight miles for Martha - and then in the afternoon I worked for awhile spreading more mulch out along the road until the heat, the gnats, and the fatigue from having run six miles drove me inside.  So it felt good to be simply sitting in a rocking chair, resting, as one should on the Sabbath.  I remember when I was training for marathons, which often consisted of six days of progressively harder weekly training runs, how much I looked forward to that "Rest Day" penciled in on the training schedule, usually a Sunday for me.  Those runners who do not take rest days usually suffer the consequences.  

A young man with a large, brand-new king cab pickup truck with a trailer on the back backed into the driveway, right on schedule, and I helped him load the little table, a nice one made of solid cherry.  He was a Latino and his name was Israel (which I thought was appropriate for the day).  After he left, Martha busied herself in the house and encouraged me to go for a walk, which I have found over the years is a better way to rest than to simply sit in a rocker all day.  So I walked down the steep hill on Hickory Street which locals called Monkey Hill, and then around the familiar block past Townsite Apartments and the Episcopal Church.  I spotted this unusual little piece of paper on Sixth Street and wondered what it meant:

Face masks are now requited in public buildings and on commercial sidewalks, so I felt a little uneasy when I turned west on Main Street, past the Episcopal Church, which although technically not a “commercial” sidewalk seemed to be filled with many mask-wearing people.  I crossed to the other side of the street; I had left my mask back in the car on Hickory Street and did not think I would be called upon to wear it.  But it was encouraging to see so much compliance.  

At a slower pace, I had the opportunity to view the beautiful flowers in front of the Episcopal Church, Shasta daisies and Black-eyed Susans leaning through the little fence as if struggling for freedom.

And this beautiful lily!  I don't know what it is called, but it looks like an Easter Lily, only much larger, flowering in profusion atop a tall stalk. 

When I returned from my walk, we finished up with some odds and ends projects and then drove home for lunch.  I wondered what we would be doing on a Sunday afternoon like this were it not for these two all-consuming events in out lives:  settling the estate, and dealing with the new reality of Covid-19.  We knew we would be settling the estate some day, although not as soon as this.  But we had never suspected how circumscribed our lives would become since this pandemic began.  And of course, we are so much more fortunate than many:  those who have contracted the virus, or suffered a loss among family and friends, or are among the 30 million unemployed.  Christopher Potts, a young healthy man just a year or two older than our daughter, has been posting some heartbreaking descriptions of his battle with Covid-19 on Facebook.  He and thousands of others may never fully recover from its devastating effects.

I try to keep this from becoming a political blog - there's plenty of that all around us on social media - but I can't help but continue to be amazed - and angered, at times - at the incompetence of the Trump administration, and the selfishness of those "anti-maskers," who have extended and worsened this pandemic far more than it should have been.  The European Union has nearly flattened that curve, while new cases keep spiking here.  It is very disheartening, and we wonder if there will ever be a time when we can have our lives back again, able to enjoy the simple pleasures of traveling and eating in restaurants and enjoying a church service in person.

But it is easy to fall into pessimism.  All we can do is struggle forward, hoping that this nation can heal itself, not just from this pandemic but from the divisiveness and hatred and hopelessness afflicting us all.  It helps to be able to take a walk on a Sunday afternoon and realize that birds are still joyfully singing, high in the trees, and that flowers are still bursting through churchyard fences.