After fourteen days.

Hi. Here we are, in the middle space. Waiting in the great pause.

It feels a bit like being caught in a large tumble of debris, a windstorm, maybe, and running to find shelter, and then just… waiting.

I was very focused for a while there on the question of whether my parents would be able to get home to Canada. And then focused on getting us back from the south of Thailand to our home in Pai. Once we got here, we had some initial bits and pieces to figure out, waking up to find a padlock on our gate, the first visit with the quarantine doctor and the head of our village. Finding ways, in a mountain village in full quarantine, with no online shopping, to get groceries.

And then a great settling. Today is the first day that we are out of quarantine. I have not yet walked out of the gate, and I find I am the tiniest bit reluctant to break this reverie.

 In these fourteen days, I have run around this acre with a sprinkler, thinking that I really need a better watering system. Chinua and I have taken turns every night with cooking, and I am wondering why we didn’t do this before (actually I know, I came to this with ideas of what I was supposed to be and provide and I am still in the process of opening my fists and allowing it to surprise me). 

I am back in full fermentation swing, making kombucha, sourdough, and kimchi. It takes too much delivery to keep this family supplied with bread, so I have been making all of it.

This is what I know, how I keep myself in today, not leaning too far into the unknowns of the future. Jesus says we are allowed to stay in this day, right now. I use my hands and my nose, making things. Right now it is food. I hope that once I get some help with the watering (when the gardener is allowed back into the property) I will also be making things like art and pulling my sewing machine out. I am in a new season of motherhood, the part where my children have started to edge out into the world, and though I am sad that school and events have been canceled, there is a secret delight to having everyone under one roof. I know it is a fleeting thing, and how amazing that I get to love these people who are close to me.

We have gone through hard things as a family before, and those things have prepared us for now. When we lived in the mountains in India, we were fairly isolated, we went without water and had to walk down the mountain for groceries, and so days when water doesn’t come to our house, or we have to ration food and wait for grocery deliver—these don’t feel unfamiliar. In our long journey together, we have had times of loneliness and times of close community. We know these things ebb and flow. I feel so thankful for these lessons.

But amid all this day-to-day, I know I need to sit down and process all of the change, somewhere in my heart, as well. 

The waiting place is an okay place. It’s a gentle place. But a lot has changed for all of us.

There is no way to alter the fact that much of my family’s life is based around two things: travelers and gatherings. Not too long ago, I spent twenty days at a festival, hugging people every day, dancing, and sitting in meditation circles. Also no way to alter the fact that much of our community is stuck outside Thailand, including our dear friends and next door neighbors.

Chinua runs his mind and life by principles, so he has found it fairly easy to make the shift to “loving people means keeping your distance from them.”

I run my life and mind with practices and methodology, so this is basically making my brain explode. My heart has been set on gathering for a long time now. Get close, come have a hug, let me kiss your cheek, sit at my table, my door is open, this garden is for you, let’s get closer, let’s hold hands, let’s do more together. Now we show love by not touching each other? WTF? I get it, but my brain feels like one too many computations has fried it. I honestly don’t know what the future holds.

And then on the other hand, my particular anxiety is almost entirely social, so I have had this unexpected break from the usual hum of fear that buzzes inside me. I can’t say that I haven’t worried about money or the future in little chunks, but I have been able to calm these thoughts without too much effort. This is the paradox of me: I can barrel my way through what feels like a fraught journey through Thailand with a fair amount of glee (adventure!), but if I feel like I’ve made a mistake in a relationship, I can be curled on the ground weeping for days.

So that’s been a nice break.

And yet, I have pushed past my anxiety for years, continually edging into the places with teeth, because I know that if I indulge those tendencies I will be letting them run my life. We are made for each other. I feel like maybe I’m getting rusty now? Like maybe if I let myself have this break, I won’t want to go back out there? 

And of course, I know anxiety is always waiting there for me, it can roll me over like a tidal wave, without warning. 

We all have our particular anxiety hot buttons. Many people have not had breaks from their anxiety because this hits them exactly where their fear is strongest, or very real circumstances have flooded them. 

I know people who push off the irrational fear of dying every single day. Now any headache or feeling of malaise seems like confirmation of viral infection. Oof. And then of course real jobs have been lost, real money is missing, real people have died. 

There is so much.

So I bring myself back into today. Soon I will put today’s bread into the oven. I will drag the hose over to the veggie beds across the land, and turn the sprinkler on. I will see if there are any flowers to gather. I will continue with the great decluttering project of April. I will make reading lists for Solo and Isaac. I will search the sky for clouds. When will it rain? I know that if I can write and observe, if I can make things beautiful or witness things being beautiful, if I can joke around with my family, I can be me, even in the midst of unforeseen changes. You can too. You are still you when you can be a part of writing this story for yourself.

That is my main takeaway from these last days, I think. I spend part of every morning facedown in prayer, and then journaling. These are my thoughts. I have them, the journal says to back to my heart. And every night I write a poem. This is how I make sense of the world. 

I am thinking about you. There is no one-size-fits-all way to get through a pandemic. But how do you best make sense of the world? As much as it is possible, do these things. Mine happen to be fermenting foods, writing, and drawing. What are yours?

I love you. You have a brilliant mind, and you are allowed to be you in this world, bringing your very own thoughts to these strange days. Don’t forget it.

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