21 May 2020: Daily

Camp has been canceled, and we are all heartbroken. I know this was the likely outcome, but it is crushing nonetheless. This summer more than ever, the kids needed six weeks away from everything. Away from electricity and news, pandemics and masks, computers and our house. They needed waves lapping at the shores of a tiny, idyllic island, loons calling across the starry skies. They needed a cohort of boys and men in which they could be and further grow into those roles. They needed boats and tools and mountains to climb and homesickness to combat. They needed to work for and earn their own fun in a way that home never provides.

My heart hurts for them, and the camp, and for Tom and me, and for the extended camp family who has never missed a season since its inception in 1902.

FUCK coronavirus. Fuck the hundreds of thousands of deaths from it, fuck the ruin it has wrought—economically, mentally, emotionally, socially, academically. Fuck the broken plans and lost dreams and Zoom graduations and hookups that can’t happen. Fuck the silver linings and positivity that is crucial but sometimes tiresome.

The loss is immense. It is felt in ways big and small. It is enormously stressful, for everyone, in different and variously horrible ways. It is death and isolation and withered relationships and people dealing differently with stress and worry and no one having enough alone time but also too much alone time and privilege and rage and impotence.

It is seeing your kids trying to grow up and away while in the same room as you; you are thankful they share the jokes tinged with sexual awakening and you are sad they have to share them with you.

It is hearing your parents’ voices across a phone line or a screen, missing them terribly and wondering when you will see them next and how, safely. It is wanting to hug and help and not being able to do either. It is watching companies go out of business and proud people ask for help despite body-cringing discomfort. It is realizing that you have NO ONE in the executive branch wanting to or capable of supporting their citizens.

I stay busy when I can’t figure out what to do. I build, saw, sand, paint, plant, pet, tend, water, weed, feed. But I am so tired tonight. And I am down. I miss my friends, my husband, my independence, my life. My LIFE! I am tired of screens and Zooms (even though, I give you an A+ Zoom, because you are the bomb! You are enabling everything right now). I am tired of insomnia and Ambien and cooking 4-6 meals daily. I am tired of building, sawing, sanding, painting, petting, tending, watering, weeding, and feeding. I am overwhelmed by the thought of months of this ahead.

None of this is good for anyone. It’s good for the planet and for nature, and I am so thankful for the break Earth and its creatures are getting, but damn.

This dear one landed on my thigh yesterday while I was working on the fence. It seemed to just want a rest, so I just stayed still for a while. Then, I gently nudged it onto whatever I was holding and deposited it into a blackberry blossom. Look at those pollen-filled legs. What a gentle giant. My pollinator garden does seem to be attracting such marvelous friends.