ACT THREE

It's the first day of Spring and I welcome the promise of change in the air.  Our New Hampshire landscape is fresh, running with the water of melting snow and ice.  I walked our road in an early morning chill with mist still covering the beaver pond and the patches of lingering snow at the end of the field. 

What a long and complicated journey since my last blog entry in 2019.  I am not the same woman I was back then.  In fact, there are times when I don't recognize myself now -- older, grey-haired, solemn, curt.  I have no patience with cruelty, deliberate ignorance and division simply out of spite.

This, after three years of man-made horrors and the constant attacks on freedom, compassion and respect for diversity across the world -- and then, the scars of Covid-19, a pandemic turned to political theater, panic and grief.  And now, we face Russia's attack on Ukraine. 

Change and transition. Fear and despair.  The seasons shift and here we are in Spring, a time of hope and wonder, yet we hold our collective breath.  World War III?

Change and transitions and loss.  As I said, it's a long and complicated road we travel moving through light and dark and back to the light, shadows to our right, flames to our left.

Here's a poem I wrote in early 2020.  My mother had just moved to a nursing-rehabilitation facility, her "new home".  But Covid-19 was on the move, too.  March 12, 2020, the center closed to in-person visits.  My mother died a year later. 

 

In March, I last kissed your soft cheek

squeezed your hand,

tucked the quilt about your frail body.

 

Yet all the while, the chill winds blew

fever and fear under the doors

and into the cracks of our lives.

 

Thick glass walls rose up between us.

I watched your eyes meet mine,

steady with grit and shared courage.

 

I smiled and waved,

then looked back --

one last time. 

 

_________