Red October

I was writing something for work on Tuesday. It was a very simple thing, but I just couldn’t get it right. I couldn’t summon the right words. But all writing is re-writing; and after a few minutes of fighting with words and sentences and semi-colons, I had a draft that I could live with.

*****
Earlier that same morning, I had wondered why it was still so dark when I was getting ready for work. With the return to Eastern time and the earlier sunset, I thought to myself, we should have had an earlier sunrise and thus earlier daylight. I left the house with my son at 7:15 and it was still almost dark. What’s happening, I wondered? Is there some environmental phenomenon that’s causing extended darkness following the time change? Have the world’s latitudes shifted in some way?

By now, you’re probably looking at a calendar and seeing what it took me two days to figure out, which is that the fall time change didn’t actually happen last Sunday at all. It happens this coming Sunday.

I worry about myself sometimes. The left side of my face is a little bit droopy and I’m apparently also a little bit of an idiot. Maybe I had a stroke and and I didn’t know it.  Maybe I’ve had a series of transient ischemic attacks and the after-effects have left me unable to tell the difference between one week and the next.

*****
The rest of that day and the following day proceeded without incident. I finished my work without undue mental strain, and I didn’t confuse one day or one week for the next, and I collected myself. I got a grip. A stroke, for crying out loud. I mean, really.

*****
Still, I should have figured out the time change thing a lot faster than I did. If the morning darkness didn’t clue me in, then the ride to work should have. On the morning after the time change, my husband normally goes through the house and sets all of the analog clocks, and the digital ones reset themselves automatically. But he doesn’t reset my car clock unless he happens to ride in my car. And left to me, of course, that clock will stay on Daylight Savings Time for the next six months. Two very big clues--the morning darkness and the car clock--not to mention that not one single person or news report or social media post had said a word about re-setting clocks. I don’t know what I was thinking.

******
Yesterday, we had a training class, on a semi-technical topic. And I finished my practice exercises--correctly--before almost anyone else in the class. So maybe I’m not the sharpest proverbial knife in the proverbial drawer, but I’m not an irredeemable idiot just yet.

Wait, is irredeemable a word?

What is happening to me?

*****
OK, it’s Thursday now, a very quiet Halloween. Normally, we have lots of trick-or-treaters, but the weather’s not good, so traffic is light. The kids who show up are making bank, candy-wise. I’m throwing huge handfuls out there, scattering candy largesse like there’s no tomorrow. I’m making it rain. It’s a damn free-for-all.

The Washington Nationals won the World Series last night, and we’re watching a replay of Game 7 as we wait for the next doorbell ring. This was one of the most intense, high-drama World Series I’ve ever seen and it’s fun to watch again when we know that it ends happily. The 2019 Nationals are one of the all-time great teams. It won’t be the same next year. We might lose Anthony Rendon or Stephen Strasburg (my favorite player). Ryan Zimmerman might retire. Gerardo Parra might change his walk-up song. They’ll still be a great team, but they won’t be the very same team that won the first World Series in Washington in over 90 years. It’s been a great pleasure to watch them.

*****
Almost 9 PM, and we still have a lot of candy to give away. The next kid who shows up is going home with untold candy riches. And I’m going to bed early. I’ve been up late watching baseball; and of course, I never did get the extra hour of sleep.

A handful of total nonsense

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m watching Capitals hockey, my ever-present proof that October isn’t all bad. It’s not that good, but it’s not all bad. I was just reading my backlog of drafts. I have so many that I forgot about some of them. They’re like handbags. They’re like eggs or milk or strawberries--I get more than I need and then some end up going bad. Some of those old drafts are no longer relevant to anything in either my life or the world at large. OBE, as the Feds say--overcome by events.

Ten million (give or take) drafts in progress, but nothing to write about today. It’s OK. Even the most brilliant creative minds only have a few ideas at any one time, and I’m not a brilliant creative mind. I’m just a girl with a cluttered pile of Google Docs drafts, sitting in front of a keyboard, hoping that a post will finish writing itself.

*****
It must have been about two weeks ago when I wrote that.

Actually, it was just over two weeks. October 8, to be exact. Today is October 24. I realized, because I’m just that brilliant, that Google Docs must have some way to track versioning; and after I realized this, it was but the work of a moment to figure out how to do it. And so I did, and now I know exactly when I started writing this. My literary executors will need this information .

I’ve published three posts since October 8, including one from my draft backlog. Of course, I also started another draft, so I’m still overstocked with drafts. Maybe I’ll have a sale.

It turns out that there’s another good thing about October; that is, when your favorite baseball team is playing in the World Series. I love the World Series no matter who is playing as long as they’re not in New York or Boston. But I love it so much more when my team is playing. And it’s too early to say anything more about that.

*****
It’s Friday night now and we’re watching game 3. That’s not a prediction or anything, just a statement. It’s OK to mention that we’re watching a game; it’s just not OK to speculate on the outcome.

If I’m being honest, which I always am, I’m not 150 percent sober right now. I’ve only had a glass and a half of wine, but my tolerance is not what it was. I just registered my son for his first year of high school swimming, completing an online form that makes the FAFSA look like an Amazon order. I’ll recover my will to live, I”m sure, but it will take days. I should have taken screenshots. I’ll need to document the entire process so that I’ll be able to repeat it in the spring when I have to register him for baseball. I’ll have to remain clear-headed and sober. I’ll have to train. Maybe a few days of fasting and meditation first. Or maybe I’ll make my husband do it next time.

*****
Now it’s Saturday morning. I have some plans today but right now, I’m the only person in the house who’s awake, so I’m reading and writing and watching old movies. Yes, you can do all three at once.

I have always disliked Woody Allen movies rather intensely. Even before poor Dylan Farrow (who I am sure is telling the truth) told the world about her childhood sexual abuse, I found his movies annoying and self-indulgent. But “Match Point” might be the exception to my no Woody Allen ever rule.

Right after “Match Point” ended, “A Handful of Dust” came on. I didn’t watch it because I love the book, and because it was time to get off the couch and do something. I mean really. But “Match Point” seemed very much like what Evelyn Waugh (who wrote the novel A Handful of Dust) would see in 21st-century life, especially among the English upper classes, and especially in the relationships between men and women. I’m pretty sure that Woody Allen wouldn't expect anyone to compare him to Evelyn Waugh, but there it is.

Waugh was smart enough that he would have known that once abortion is available as a choice, then it’s not long before the choice is no longer in the hands of the pregnant woman but instead in the hands of the unwilling father of her baby. He would also have known that a man who demands that a woman abort his own child would have no problem killing her when she fails to cooperate.

The murderer in "Match Point" gets away with it and the viewer has no reason to think that he’ll ever pay for his crimes, but I still think that Waugh would have approved. He was smart enough to know that bad people get away with things all the time. He also knew that there are always consequences; if not in this life, then in the next.

*****
So that’s what happens when you let me get mixed up with movie reviews and theology. I’m competent at neither. I just know what I know.

It’s the last Tuesday in October now, and I’m still not making any World Series predictions (though it’s do or die tonight). I’ll say only that this weekend didn’t go quite as we expected. Much like this blog post, in fact. Maybe it did write itself.

It will be night

Not long ago, I was walking and listening to NPR on the radio. Ari Shapiro was interviewing Karina Sainz Borgo, a Venezuelan journalist who just published a novel, It Would Be Night in Caracas. 

The novel is about a woman struggling to survive amid chaos in crumbling Venezuela. I haven’t read it yet. Ari asked the author about the difference between journalism and fiction-writing, and she said “Journalism provides answers and fiction provides questions.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the idea of fiction as a question or a way to figure out the truth was appealing to me. Sainz Borgo left Venezuela in 2013 and she hasn’t been back. She has to just imagine how much Venezuela has deteriorated in the last six years. She has more questions than answers.

Sainz Borgo also talked about survivors’ guilt. She still has family in Venezuela. She has friends and former neighbors and schoolmates who are struggling to survive, while she lives safely in Europe, and the guilt weighs on her.

******
I walk almost every day. I finish work pretty early, around 4, and I walk when I get home, before I start dinner. Soon it’ll be dark early, and I won’t be able to walk after work. I’ll have to go to the gym instead.

For months, I have walked almost the same route every day. I didn’t even think about it. I just put on my sneakers and my earbuds and walked. During the last few weeks, the route has seemed longer and longer every day. On the day I listened to this broadcast, I almost dreaded going and then I realized that I was probably just tired of the same walk, and I could just walk a different way. And I did. And it was lovely.

My neighborhood is small, and I’ve lived here for 15 years. I’ve been walking through this neighborhood for a decade and a half and so I know every street and every corner. It’s all so familiar. Every house reminds me of a neighbor or a friend or a kid’s friend or a friend’s kid.

I’d miss this place if anything happened. And anything can happen. A reviewer wrote that It Would Be Night in Venezuela is a reminder of how quickly things can change and how fast the world you know can just disappear. Some people never think about this; I never stop thinking about it. The worst-case scenario is my default option. Believe it or not, there are advantages to this all-anxiety all-the-time mindset. When it finally does all hit the fan, I won’t be surprised. I won’t necessarily be ready, but I won’t be surprised.

*****

Karina Sainz Borgo misses the Venezuela that she grew up in, but as she told Ari Shapiro, “The country I want to go back to doesn’t exist anymore.” She probably remembers her old neighborhood. She probably remembers her old walking routes and her neighbors’ houses with their children and their dogs. Maybe she hung out at a swimming pool or a park, or maybe she had a favorite coffee shop. Maybe she dreams sometimes about her old haunts, and wakes up grieving her loss.

*****
I was a baseball fan when I was young, and I still really like the game (thought not as much as hockey). My grandfather taught me how to watch a game, and how to score a game. The Philadelphia Phillies were my team. And I still like the Phillies, but we are a Washington Nationals household now; and if you have been following the news, then you know that the Nationals are playing in their first-ever World Series.

During Game 1 of the NLCS, Nats vs. St. Louis, I thought about Venezuela as I watched Anibal Sanchez take a no-hitter against the Cardinals into the eighth inning. How does Sanchez feel, I wondered. Does he think about Venezuela and wonder why he’s here enjoying great success in the United States when his country has descended into chaos, and his fellow Venezuelans are suffering and struggling to survive amid shortages of food, medicine, and other basic necessities. Does he feel fortunate, or guilty, or both? Does he dream about returning to a country that no longer exists?

*****

So Daylight Savings Time is over now, and we’re back on Standard Time. Last night, everyone got a single one-time-only extra hour of sleep in exchange for losing an hour’s worth of daylight every single day for six months. Not a good bargain at all. I’ll have to get my walk in as soon as I get home from work, until late November or so, when I’ll have to give up the afternoon walk and go to the gym to exercise. We don’t have sidewalks here, so night walking is kind of hazardous. Plus bats and foxes. I don’t socialize with wildlife.


At the end of the NPR interview, Sainz Borgo read a short excerpt from the novel. The passage ended with the words “It's always night there. The people look like ghosts.” I guess that’s what I’ll try to think about every time I feel like complaining about the early darkness, which will be every single day until April. I’ll try to think about every place in the world where people can’t depend on the basic things in life--the bare necessities like food and water; and the not-quite-necessary-for-survival-but-still-really-nice-to-have things, like bright cheerful light on a dark evening. I’ll miss the early daylight, but it will be back. I hope the lights will come back on in Venezuela soon. I hope that the lights will come on in the rest of the world, too. Let’s go Nats.

Liquids

I wasn’t very productive today. I’m working on a new project at work, and it’s early stage, the part where I don’t really even know what the project is yet, or what I’m supposed to do. I’m doing some research. This is helping me to see that there are great, gaping holes in my knowledge, but it is not helping me to fill those holes. It’s humbling.

As I filled my water bottle for the third time, I remembered a conversation from a few days ago. Actually, I remembered part of the conversation, but not the context--I couldn’t remember where I had been, or to whom I had been speaking. Anyway, the other person said that the first thing she did every day was to fill her 2-liter bottle of water. Then, no matter how productive (or not) the rest of her day might be, she’ll have accomplished something when she finishes that giant container of water.

That’s the kind of day I had today. I didn’t get much work done (because I didn’t know what to do) but I drank the water, metaphorically speaking. And I felt better about not being the only person who did nothing but drink the water. Until I remembered that the other participant in that conversation is actually one of the most highly organized and accomplished and productive people I know. There is no day on which water-drinking would be her only accomplishment.

*****
It’s the next day now. I had an opportunity to teach someone something today. It was something that seemed pretty obvious to me, but wasn’t obvious at all to the other person. She was genuinely grateful for my help, and I was genuinely grateful for the reminder that I do have something to offer other than water-drinking and blogging about nothing.

I write every single day, seven days a week. It might be too much. I read Daphne Gray-Grant’s writing blog every Tuesday, and although I don’t follow all of her advice (mind-mapping doesn’t work for me), I do follow some of it (don’t edit as you write! brilliant!) Like most writing experts, Daphne says that writers should write every day. But she defines every day as five days a week. I”m not sure that I’m ready to give up the seven-day schedule yet. But it’s a possibility. I might be trying to do too much. I might need to make some room in my brain for something other than words.

*****
And now it’s the next day again, and if I’m going to a five-day a week schedule, then I guess I’ll start that tomorrow. Or next week.

I read something yesterday, and I admired the writer’s raw honesty, but I couldn’t decide if the piece was good or not. I still can’t decide.

I was plowing through my (figurative) pile of drafts, and I found something that was much more personal than what I usually write. I thought for a moment that I should try to do more of that, try to reveal more, be more honest. But I probably won’t. The particular draft that I’m referring to will for sure never see the light of day. There’s nothing scandalous in it, it’s just too personal. And I also really can’t decide if it’s good or not.

Yes, it’s definitely time to think about something other than words. Maybe I’ll take this weekend off and then see where I am. I’ll drink two liters of water, or maybe two glasses of wine. I’ll regroup.

Everything is copy

Last week, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room, monitoring my husband’s status on a screen that provides alerts to waiting family members so they’ll know when to expect their loved one to emerge. Each patient is assigned a number, and you can watch as the person’s number progresses through color-coded phases: Pink for Pre-Op, Orange for OR, Blue for Post-Op, Green for Recovery. After a short time in Recovery, assuming all goes well, a smiling volunteer taps you on the shoulder and asks you to follow her to the recovery room, where your post-operative spouse or parent or friend is sitting comfortably in a chair, still wearing a hospital gown and fuzzy socks, sipping Coke over ice and eating graham crackers.

I was reading The Woman in White as I waited, because Nora Ephron told me to read that book, and where books are concerned, I generally do whatever Nora tells me to do. As I read, I overheard a conversation between two fellow waiting room occupants. “How old was he?” the woman asked.

“Eighty-two,” said the man. “But you’d never have known it to look at him. He looked more like 62.”

“Oh, that’s terrible,” said the woman. Terrible that the man died, I suppose, not that he apparently looked decades younger than he was.

“Yeah, it was so unexpected,” said the man. “He was out for a run, and he had a sudden heart attack. He was gone by the time the paramedics arrived.”

“Terrible,” said the woman. “I guess we never know.”

******
Nora Eprhon writes about death in “Considering the Alternative,” the last essay in I Feel Bad About My Neck (which was much better than I described it, by the way--take all of my literary criticism with great crusty grains of salt). To paraphrase, she writes about our tendency to think of death as a remote contingency, a possibility that we should maybe, possibly be prepared for; rather than what it is--an absolute certainty; a when, not an if; the end that waits for every single one of us. Eventually, sooner or later, we’re all going to die.

Nora would have been amused, I think, about the apparent shock with which the 82-year-old jogger’s friend reacted to his sudden death. A sudden death is of course always a shock, but that an 82-year-old man dying of a heart attack during a run should provoke such disbelief speaks to a universal human tendency to pretend that death is something that only happens to other people, other people who should have taken better care of themselves.

*****
You know what else was going on on the very same day? It was apparently National Handbag Day. This should be the most important of national holidays from my perspective but I wouldn’t even have known about it if I hadn’t been in a hospital. Because a hospital is the only place where I’d ever watch the Today show; much less the third or fourth hour of the Today show, and that’s where I learned that it was National Handbag Day. Thank God, I can imagine the Today show producers saying to each other. It’s National Handbag Day, so we can do show and tell with the contents of Craig Melvin’s backpack and Dylan Dreyer’s tote bag (which was a mess, by the way--throw away your used tissues, girl). For all I know, the producers of the Today show made the whole thing up, just so they could fill a few minutes of the hours and hours of air time that the Today show occupies. It must be exhausting to work for the Today show.  Relentless.

Anyway, there it was, National Handbag Day, when I had just read Nora’s essay “I Hate My Purse.” We had a doctor with what had to have been a surgically altered neck, a TV personality whose purse was an even bigger mess than Nora’s (really--don’t put chewed-up gum in your handbag, even if it’s wrapped in paper--just throw it away) and a real-life proof of Nora’s theorem about people’s reluctance to accept the inevitability of death. It was a little eerie.

Nora Ephron so disliked handbags that she didn’t even carry one when she had enough pockets to carry her essentials. Nora was right about a lot of things. In fact, she knew enough that she could write about my day 13 years before it happened. But she was dead wrong about handbags. I love pockets, but there’s nothing like a handbag. Thanks to my new favorite handbag (Longchamp Le Pliage in my favorite wine color) I was able to carry my wallet, phone, little cosmetic case, rosary, lip balm, keys, Kindle, and pen and notebook; and I still had plenty of room for all of the stuff that my husband had to hand over before they rolled him away. There was room for a water bottle. There was room for the prescriptions that we picked up at the pharmacy before we went home. I clipped my keys to the straps with a carabiner, but I could have also stuffed them inside if I needed to.

Nora hated her purse because she had the wrong purse. There’s no other reason that I can think of to hate something that’s so obviously an undisputed good. A good handbag is pretty, it carries everything you need, and it gives you something to do with your hands. An undisputed good.

*****

Not long ago, I tried to re-create a favorite childhood dish. It didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, but it was OK. I wrote a whole thing about it,  actually, and then forgot about it. I have a pretty big backlog of drafts. I wrote about that, too. Everything is copy. That’s what Nora said. Unsurprisingly, Nora also wrote about food nostalgia, in “The Lost Strudel,” because every time I think I’m writing about something new, I find that Nora has beaten me to it.

Apparently, there is a thing called cabbage strudel. Nora described it and it sounds delicious. It was sold at Hungarian bakeries all over New York City until one day, tastes abruptly shifted and cabbage strudel was no longer a fashionable food. Nora was heartbroken. She hunted in vain for her beloved strudel but it was gone until a few years later, when a friend told her that a new Hungarian bakery had opened. The new bakery sold cabbage strudel and it was just as good as Nora remembered. A happy ending.

Maybe my next attempt to re-create a favorite childhood food will be successful, but not today. Today we’re having leftovers. I don’t think that Nora Ephron had anything to say about leftovers, but I’m about to read I Remember Nothing, so I’ll find out for sure. If she didn’t write about leftovers, then I will. Everything is copy.

Post-operative

It’s Wednesday. I worked from home today, unusual (though not unheard-of) for a Wednesday. I have far too much work to do right now, and the panic helped me to focus and direct my energies. I got quite a lot accomplished today, enough that I have some breathing room. Enough, in fact, that I can stop working now and write about having too much to do, instead of just doing it.

Yes, I know.

I finished Not that Kind of Girl, and now I’m reading Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck. I like Nora Ephron, God rest her soul, though I sometimes find her intimidating. She was a very successful journalist and writer and cultural observer and influencer, who probably accomplished more in a day than I do in a month. I don’t think I could have kept up with her in real life.

I Feel Bad About My Neck is good, though not nearly as good as Wallflower at the Orgy. It reads as a little lazy and scattershot, a little fast and loose. It was published in 2006, when she was NORA EPHRON, Nora Fucking Ephron, and so people were willing to read anything she wrote. I’m still willing to read anything she wrote, but I know the difference between really good Nora Ephron and phoning-it-in Nora Ephron.

I don’t feel bad about my neck just yet. But I don’t feel good about it either. I’m aware of it. I suppose that’s the first step, the beginning of the slippery slope. Once you start to notice your neck, a completely utilitarian body part that you used to be able to ignore, you’re on the downward spiral from middle-aged to old. And I hate turtlenecks.

*****
What is middle age anyway? What does it mean to be middle aged? I have heard comedians and others suggest that it's absurdly optimistic to call 50 middle aged because it assumes that a person should expect to live to be 100. Not an unreasonable argument, I suppose. But if you remove childhood from the equation and count only the phases of adulthood, then 50 or so is right in the middle of middle age.

Let's establish the ranges right now:

• Young adulthood, 21 - 39
• Middle age, 40 - 64
• Old age, 65 and beyond 

That's my final word. If you're 40 or 65, don't @ me to argue about your placement. It is what it is.

By these final and incontrovertible rules, my husband (almost 50) and I (over 50) are both middle-aged. Because we have been middle-aged for a while, it's long past time for at least one of us to accept that there are certain things that middle aged people shouldn't do. Like playing softball.

By now, you're thinking "this is going somewhere, isn't it?" And it is. We're at Montgomery Medstar Medical Center right now, waiting for an anesthesiologist to put my husband under so that a surgeon can fix his mangled hand. Softball. Ridiculous.

We're in the pre-surgery waiting area, in a semi private little curtained-off cubicle, with just a tiny hospital bed, a visitor's chair, and a hand-painted ceiling tile that I suppose is there to relax the patient. It's a nice, thoughtful touch.

Don't worry about the guy with the scalpel.
Just look at the ceiling. 

My husband is uncharacteristically nervous. He's wearing a hospital gown and hospital-issued fuzzy socks and he has an IV for fluids. He can't eat or drink anything and he can't sleep because of the IV. The surgeon, a very energetic, wiry Asian man with close-cropped gray hair and an unnaturally unwrinkled face, just stopped by to check on my husband. He seems like a nice man and he comes very highly recommended, but I'm not sure I trust a man who has what appears to be quite a bit of Botox. And his neck is very very tight. Nora Ephron would be envious.

I don't know about your neck, Doctor.
You're suspect. 

*****
This is the second time this year that I've been here at this hospital, waiting for someone else to endure the attentions of medical professionals. Last time I was only in the waiting room, feeling sorry for the obviously sick people who had to sit in a public place, visible to all, when they were at their most vulnerable. Today I'm in the pre-surgery waiting area and even here, the patients are exposed to the prying eyes of every passer-by. I feel intrusive and unfairly advantaged, with my street clothes and my shoes and my car keys that allow me to walk out of here and drive away if I want to.

*****
My husband’s surgery went well. He spent Thursday afternoon in bed, napping and watching sports and recovering. He returned to work on Friday, at least three days before he should have, but there’s no stopping him. I hope that everyone else who had surgery last week is doing as well.

40 hours

It's Sunday afternoon, 1 PM, and I'm sitting on a school bus in the parking lot at St. Patrick's, on my way to do what the priest at Mass this morning called a "crazy Catholic thing." Rosaries and scapulars and the Blessed Sacrament. Me and 100 old ladies and a bunch of Knights of Columbus.

Yesterday was the first truly fall-like day this year. It was sunny and very breezy and cool enough for an outdoor fire. We had friends and family over, and we sat around the fire pit all day long. I had awakened that morning feeling so depressed that I didn't want to get out of bed. But I had to. We had plans and I had to do what felt impossible, which was to stand upright and put one foot in front of the other, and smile and greet and welcome people. It turned out better than I expected.

So now I'm standing in a field on Norbeck Road with a rosary wrapped around my wrist and my phone in my hand, writing about the traffic whizzing by and the overcast, almost-leaden sky and the almost-damp, almost-chilly breeze that made me decide to put on a jacket before I left the house. In a few minutes, the priests will arrive, and the old ladies and the handful of young people and the Knights of Columbus and I will walk a mile or so back up Norbeck to St Patrick's, praying and singing and making something of a spectacle of ourselves. Catholics. We are a mysterious crew.

*****
My jacket and my sneakers and my handbag are all a similar color. Burgundy is probably the best word to describe it, or maybe maroon. That's what my mother always calls this color. I think that wine is the best word. Wine, like the wine-dark sea. My son is a freshman in college, and I remember two phrases from my freshman year in college: Wine-dark sea, and bare, ruined choirs. My literature professor tried his hardest to make us see the beauty in those words. And I do see it now, more than 30 years later, so his time wasn't wasted.

*****
It’s Monday now, I had to stop writing when the procession got underway. We shuffled rather than walked up Norbeck Road, singing and praying, Repetitive prayer is soothing and meditative. I don’t often forget myself, but I did forget myself for a few minutes as a drop of rain or two fell and the procession inched up the road, led by a lights-flashing silent police car. The trees have just begun to turn; and I pondered bare, ruined choirs as I listened to the chanting. The choir was the huddled and barely moving crowd of humanity making its way to the waiting church, and it didn’t feel bare or ruined at all. A wine-dark sea of maroon jackets and wine-colored jackets and burgundy sweaters and dark red raincoats made its way into the church for an hour of quiet prayer for the world. And then we went home.