Confession. This has been some of the best two weeks in my life. I am thankful for so much but mostly for the slow down. I don’t feel rushed. I don’t feel that people are demanding their stuff be done right this second. I don’t feel pushed and I don’t feel the heaviness that often weighs me down. Mike, while worried, is not as wound up and time feels normal. I don’t have an explanation for anything except that the “Stay at home” order has forced our hands and has created an aura of days gone by long ago. For me, it feels like it did when I was a little girl and I would walk into my Gram’s house. I always loved the fact that I could hear nothing except the clock ticking, or her banging around in the kitchen, or the roar of the swamp cooler in the laundry room. I loved that her house was immune to the rushing sound of the traffic outside and the air in the house was so calm you could see it. Does that make sense? Peace.

As a kid I hated that we only got one or two channels on our TV even with foil on the rabbit ears. I used to get so mad that we had to watch that shitty StarTrek when I wanted to watch Little House on the Prairie on the other channel. Consequently, our TV wasn’t on much and Walter Cronkite was our evening news source. He had integrity and was a reporter of reporters. Oh how I long to hear him say, “And that’s the way it is.” Today, you can turn on the news on most channels and never feel like you got the right story or the whole story and God knows that they can’t have a closing line that is like his because they don’t know how it is! They don’t know what is coming next or what bad news may befall us tonight, but they will make whatever it is the worst of the worst. The death count from Covid-19 is posted like baseball scores every evening like we were at the bottom of the 9th in the World Series. There is very little to make me feel peaceful, but I do. Maybe I have just resigned myself to the idea that “that’s the way it is.”

There is no church service for this Holy Week. I can’t remember not attending Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I am saddened by the inability to converge for an hour on these days to remember the mighty walk that was taken to Calvary for me. I will still read and renew my spirit by paying homage for the gift given for me. It won’t be the same, but somehow I know that coming out of this none of us will be the same. I hope and pray that we, as a country, will come out stronger, kinder, more patient, less rushed, more grateful. Maybe this is everything I have prayed for only coming to me backwards and in a scary way. Maybe it is my cue to slow down and look around. I have lived on Lightville road for 15 years and last night I was walking out to get the mail and I was admiring the beautiful sunset. As I looked across the pasture across the road I saw a pond that I never knew existed. It was beautiful the way the evening sunset sat gently on the water. If I could paint, it would have been a beautiful picture. I felt like it took 15 years and I finally woke up! I am going to go out and look at it again this evening. I am going to watch the sunset disappear and breathe deep.

For now, I am going to embrace the quiet time. I needed it more than I knew.

Stay safe, wash your hands and do not pick your nose.

e