Over a year ago, along with much of the entire world, the Monticello Trail closed its doors. It was quarantined like the rest of us.
As I watch the redbuds now flowering along its path, I realize it has been two years since I witnessed their unfolding. It feels like a warm embrace just to behold them.
I told a loving friend the other day I had not hugged anyone in over a year. I could hardly believe my words. “Oh, I would not have made it without any hugs!” she replied. At which point I got to thinking. How has anyone really made it to this point without them?
If you live with someone, hugs may have actually increased. But even then, their breadth and scope narrowed. Hugs have been okay within families, or “pods,” but random acts of hugging outside the “compound” were nixed.
What has taken their place? Nothing, really. Nothing, completely.
Sure, there have been (and still are!) the online groups, books, letters, emails, texts, walks, talks with friends on the phone, and Zoom. (Yes, us Boomers have become Zoomers!) And all those ways of connecting have filled a bit of the void. But it sure has taken some getting used to. At least for me.
I was Zoom-phobic for about nine months into quarantine until someone asked me what new routines I had developed. I answered, “None.” Hmm, I thought, that’s a problem. No routine except, maybe, pacing!? “I guess we’ve got to give ‘ole Zoom another try!” I said reluctantly.
Yes, it has been difficult to settle down the kid inside me that wanted to run to the playground and yell and scream with the other kids, rather than sit her butt on a cushion. She wanted to be unleashed, unmasked, and uninhibited, and she is ready to be free.
She has always wanted to live in a perpetual Spring.
Even in the midst of restriction-constriction, there were flickers of hope and peace blossoming within. It took me awhile to get to the place where an internal embrace softened this shell of a body that was hardening. I actually announced the other day I was grateful to have had this time, a time we might not ever have again, to go inward, and mine the goodness of solitude.
Who said this! Me? On a good day.
On bad days, my anxiety and demons felt abandoned and decided to make a scene just to be on the “safe” side. On one of those days, I happened to watch a video where the spokesperson was so cheery, I could barely handle it. “You’ve got to tone it down!” I wanted to holler at the computer screen.
Imagine that.
But in the end, (though I know we don’t quite know where the “end” is), I decided to follow her lead of positivity, and nurse my own little seedlings that sprouted in captivity. They were planted unbeknownst to me within the walls of my endurance. Though I am not sure yet what they will grow into.
So I am going to focus on the day (which is here!) when I can sink my toes down into the brown and green earth sprinkled with pink petals, and feel that outer embrace I have longed for. At least until I can hug you, I am sure hoping that is soon.
In the meantime, hugging you from afar and wishing you a happier Spring.
~ KB
P.S. I kept changing tenses from “past” to “present” and back again as if this is all over! Then I realized that some of this is over, and some of it is not. We are in the midst. Aren’t we always? I told a friend we won’t really know where the middle is till we reach the end. To the light at the end of the tunnel, as they say! Always to the light. xo
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