We made it!
Now what?
Today’s the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the day that I looked forward to when I started posting here on Medium six months ago. Posting as a way of pushing through the pandemic, my way of marking time, as the sun does, gradually changing trajectory until its zenith on June 21, today!
So now what?
Winter solstice feeling like a century ago, then months into something we thought would last weeks.
“We’ll be back in June,” we said to each other when this all started. Before we stopped saying anything, because nobody knew.
It’s both a bit disconcerting and a bit Zen — not to know what’s coming, or when. A lesson in taking life as it unfolds. People who like things just so maybe having a harder time with just letting things happen.
A few weeks ago, our governor surprised us with the announcement to drop our masks, but not our guard. With no real warning or preparation, it ended. Not the pandemic, but the constraints — on where we could go, what we could do, how we might feel.
“New cases are at a point that allows us to relax the mandates,” Charlie Baker said. “But it’s not over.”
Since that day, life’s been a little nuts. Mary and I have danced disco, attended a large wedding, travelled to Arizona, enjoyed numerous indoor meals, and hugged anyone and everyone we greet. Arizona like traveling backward and forward in time all at once.
“Pandemic? What pandemic?” Ben reported from Prescott before we arrived.
I’ve been looking forward to the solstice with the anticipation of a kid waiting for the last day of school. This particular day in this particular year marking six months of a commitment to weekly essays, monthly ocean swims, and nightly guitar. Three activities to propel me forward through the dulling repetition of pandemic life. That the solstice coincides almost exactly with our return to life as we didn’t know it a surprise. Now, when I look back, I take note of the casualties, the wreckage of a year like no other. I find the scene a bit like the morning after a terrible storm. This time the picture not of the trees down but people gone, businesses closed, hearts heavy with carried weight.
Today, I come to rest to feel the sun moving across the sky.
Today, I want to stop long enough to count my blessings, even if none of us can possibly know what’s next.
Today, I want to swim to the light house and back. My chance to mark the coming of summer with trip to and from something I’ve admired from a distance my whole life.
“I made it,” I’ll think. To this place.
“We made it,” we’ll say, to this time.
We’ve made it through something none of us predicted or foresaw, unless you’re an epidemiologist. We made it, and we learned. Something, let’s hope. Each of us taking away different lessons from the reality of putting lives on pause. Changing routines. Helping others get through hardship and thret.
We are thankful we made it, because not everyone did. And because when we look around, we see that we’re actually all in this together, under one sun, doing what we can with and for each other to make it through.
