14 November 2020
Bright day outside but cold. Freezing is still a few degrees up the thermometer from where things stand right now. Few trees retain any leaves. Few yards retain any leaves. Because of the pandemic most of my neighbors have been working from home. Every day during this week I have heard leaf blowers and raking up and down the blocks surrounding my home. I assume this is my neighbors making use of their lunch hours and break times. Deadlines motivate action. Our local government picks the leaves up and so we must all get our leaves piled out along the curb before November 16, the last day for leaf pickup up.
Me, the person who despises yard work, I have been out there too. I have two lightweight rakes with broad reaches. I have a device from Toro that both blows the leaves into a pile, but with a snap on/snap off action will suck these little photosynthesis factories up and grind them into a more compact form in a canvas sack. With a number of maples, one elm and one walnut tree I have a fair bit of labor to get the leaves to the curb on time.
As I look outside the sun has not warmed up the metal body of the car enough yet to melt the heavy frost from its roof. ‘Tis a sure sign of visible breath cold still abounding. Being retired I don’t have the time pressures my working days imposed on me. I don’t have to get my walk done at a certain time because I have to be somewhere to do something at a specific hour. Today and most days and I can wait for the warmup. At this juncture of my life I don’t have to face the coldest part of the day.
The cold weather is not my friend. Cold weather is a captor. Cold weather is a prison guard. While the news of the plague contains some hope, a vaccine within a year, it also contains some despair. The nation is incurring the highest number of infections per day it has ever had. Deaths are again rising. Cold weather which forces people inside forces a higher risk of transmission and infection onto all of us. Trips to the grocery stores during those special hours for the old and the infirm are just not as inviting. Activities in communal spaces are just not attractive.
Me, I am going to keep walking for as long as I can. Layers, I will be wearing lots of layers. However, I will be continuing my mostly monastic lifestyle. Guess I had better make peace with my active rambling mind.
Life is imperfect. We are not promised to fully understand all that surrounds us in this world, including the new plague. Yet if we are open to it, deprivations like those Covid-19 has imposed can focus us on what really matters, on what is really core to making the most of our lives. These months of isolation need not be wasted time. Looks like the frost has fled and I must now go.
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