Rising up to meet us

It’s Friday, March 13. Our forsythia are in near-full bloom. Today, I was looking out the kitchen window as I washed a few dishes, and I saw a bright red bird perched inside one of the forsythia bushes. He seemed happy in there. He sat on a branch for a few minutes, and then he hopped to a deeper-in branch, and then he moved to the end of another branch, right on the edge.

I took my phone off its charger and came back to the window. The bird had disappeared, or so I thought. I looked out the window for a few minutes, and then he emerged once again from deep inside the forsythia bush and perched happily on the end of another branch. So I stood and watched him, and I took a few pictures.

It was about 5:30 or so, and I’d just come home from work. I wasn’t thinking about my to-do list or my morning-to-night schedule of weekend activities. I wasn’t thinking about groceries or errands or housecleaning or work or volunteer tasks. I was just watching the bird. Just standing, doing nothing except watching the bird. After a few minutes, he flew away.

Hello. 

*****
That was last day before the lockdown, I suppose. It’s Saturday afternoon now. I slept until 9 o’clock this morning. I never do that. But everything is cancelled or postponed and I didn’t have to get up and go anywhere today. None of us did.

*****
It’s Monday now. The Governor of Maryland ordered bars, restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms to close, effective 5 PM today. Shit continues to get realer by the day; and the festive, snow-storm-is-coming, quasi-holiday feel of last Friday night has given way to anxiety, and maybe a little bit of fear, even among people (like me) who a week ago thought that this would all blow over in no time.

My whole office is working remotely now. We’re lucky we get to keep working. I hope that this mess of a government can figure out a way to take care of people who can’t work and don’t have paid time off. We’ll see. It looks like we’re at least going to bail out the airline industry, proving once again that Republicans are all about socialism as long as it benefits rich people.

*****

A year ago, would you even have believed someone who predicted a national near-quarantine? No, neither would I.

Tuesday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. A year ago today, at this very time (5 PM), I was walking around Dublin. It was pearl-gray overcast and chilly, but not cold. Signs of spring were appearing everywhere. We had landed at Dublin airport at 5:15 that morning, though it felt like the middle of the night. We rode in a taxi from the airport to our hotel as the sky lightened from dark blue to light blue warmed by the rising sun. Even at 8 AM, the hotel lobby was filled with happy Irish families gathering to celebrate their national holiday. We had tea and scones in the hotel restaurant and after a short rest, we set out for the parade.

St. Patrick's Day parade, Dublin, 2019

My mother and my sister and her friend took a nap after the parade. We’d been up all night--no one really slept on the plane. But I’d gotten a second wind and decided to spend the afternoon walking and making myself at home in Dublin. I wandered around until I couldn’t walk anymore and then I took a taxi back to the hotel where my sister’s friend and I had a beer and shared a cheese platter in the cozy little bar while we waited for my mother and sister to dress for dinner. We had dinner at a pub a block away, and everyone laughed as I fell asleep, literally asleep, at the table. I fell into bed at 10 PM and slept until 8 the next morning, the sleep of the dead.

I remember how we all laughed at our taxi driver. “Be careful, ladies,” he said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and everyone in Ireland is an asshole today.” I didn’t meet a single asshole that day. In fact, in that whole week in that whole beautiful country, I met only one asshole; and even he was more a curmudgeon than a true asshole. I made two friends in Ireland: Dan, our tour guide; and Orla, a beautiful crazy woman who was too drunk to remember hanging out with me at the hotel bar before another patron complained about her and the Gardai came to take her away. I hope that Dan and Orla are well. I hope that next St. Patrick’s Day, they’ll be with friends, hoisting a Guinness at their neighborhood pub.

That's Orla on the right. Isn't she pretty?
I promise you that she does not
remember anything about this evening. 

Well, maybe Orla should stick to seltzer. I think she’s an alcoholic.

Last March seems like such a long time ago, like it belongs to another era altogether. But the forsythia look more beautiful every day, and daffodils are coming up all over the place and the cherry trees are just starting to bloom. It’s golden and green and pink and blue everywhere I look. It feels a little bleak, a little worrisome; but it looks hopeful. It feels hopeful. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.