Grand Night for Singing (Notes from the Field)

 May 1st Jim and I headed out on the road. We drove straight through to Chicago, a thousand-mile drive. We spent four days with Jim’s nearly-ninety-two-year-old mother. Jim focused on helping her sort photos for inclusion in her life history. I made a delicious (and I do say so myself) carrot cake and took a walk around Hyde Park one day.

We’re both fully-vaccinated and today is Day Fourteen for me. I’m gradually getting used to the idea that I could be out in public without a mask and not inwardly cringe when someone invades my six-foot bubble. I still wear a mask when I see non-family members, to comply with regulations and show solidarity.

After enjoying a two-day ‘getaway’ to Antietam Battlefield and Harpers Ferry, where we walked a tiny bit of the Appalachian Trail across a railroad/pedestrian bridge, we came to southeast D.C. to spend time with our youngest son, Sam, his wife, Savannah, and dear little Eliza and Link.

I’m sitting out on their backyard deck, listening to a bird “who is bound he’ll be heard…throwing his heart at the sky!” The trees are in full leaf. The cherry blossoms are long gone and the last of the azaleas are browning while the roses open up. In the distance I hear the sounds of the highway, DC-295. Many years ago I was camping next to a rushing stream in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The water ran all night, of course, and sounded a lot like constant highway traffic. When I returned home the sound of Bedford St out my bedroom window took on a soothing character.

I’ve always been aware that Washington is at least a month ahead of Boston in spring. In the nineties, when our children were all at home, I would drive to suburban Maryland to visit my oldest brother, Steve, during April vacation. When we lived in New Hampshire, we would leave a landscape that had barely emerged from winter and as we drove south the signs of spring appeared along the roadside: yellow forsythia in Connecticut, flowering trees in New Jersey and a riot of azaleas, red, white, and pink, in Maryland. The reverse trip at the end of the week rolled the film backwards, but in New England once again, I had hope that spring was coming: I’d seen it in the south.

With vaccinations going apace, I have hope that things will be different this summer from last.

I remember my anxiety on March 12, 2020, wondering what a ‘lockdown’ would look like. Would we be required to stay inside? What about grocery shopping? As it turned out, we had it relatively easy. I could go on walks and hardly encounter anyone. My garden never looked so good: I hired a teenager and three of his younger sisters to work with me. And the lockdown was an opportunity to test our food storage. Based on counsel from our Church leaders, we’ve stored food since we were married. Our basement has a year's supply of calories: various dried beans, rice, wheat, flour, and canned goods. We lasted six weeks without a trip to the grocery store. I was pleased.

This afternoon on the deck is restorative. I don’t often make the effort to sit outside. I haven’t spent the time just sitting: I’m too restless for that. But I have looked up from my computer from time to time, soaking in the deep green foliage and the songbirds.