They say that these are not the best of times,
but they're the only times I've ever known,
and I believe there is a time for meditation,
In cathedrals of our own
"Summer, Highland Falls"
-Billy Joel
Well, it's official. After 22 straight years of spending spring break in southern Florida, almost half of my life, we are not going. That bastard known as King Corona ended that tradition. What he fails to understand is that this trip initially was about uninterrupted adult time with my mom. It was a break in my day to day adulting of kids, work and home to reconnect with the woman who raised me. In our time together down there, she helped me to understand that a lot of life's knots could be untied with a healthy dose of sun, sand, salty air and the gentle rhythm of the waves on the warm gulf coast. That is why even after she moved back to Chicago, and later after she passed, I looked forward to this time away from my otherwise busy life. Even last week the denial was deep. We couldn't fly, but we could drive.... Well, no, a mandatory 14 day quarantine was imposed, punishable by law. Then there was the notion of we could go someplace else, maybe a luxury cabin in the Smokey Mountains with an indoor pool..... No. Now there were travel advisories, and the final deal breaker, we are in medicine and now have to work. The irony of a virus squashing a vacation for this healthcare provider is not lost. So, whether I agree with the lyrics or not, I'm forced to meditate in my own proverbial cathedral.
Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity,
A reason coexists with our insanity,
Though we choose between reality and madness,
It's either sadness or euphoria
Truth be told, due to a heavy first half of the month and lower numbers the second half, I have found myself home for the last few days. Just like everyone else, watching the gut wrenching footage out of the emergency rooms just three hours south of me, coupled with phone calls of my own exposure and the actual contraction of the disease by a nurse friend of mine suddenly tied my proverbial knots of life just a little bit tighter. It seemed as though the insanity of all of this was not going away anytime soon, so I did what I do best. I got busy. In the last few days I have organized my office and dove headlong into the basement. The basement. This was kinda one of those things that was not urgent in the busyness of day to day life. It wasn't going anywhere, it didn't really interfere with day to day life at Chez Summers, yet it was down there. A full footprint of my 3500 square foot house, half of which is full of moving boxes and random Christmas clutter and God knows what else. I should probably also admit we had a small flood a while back when the power went out, and the sump pump could not operate... OK. It was a mess.
As I dug head long into the basement this weekend, I was reminded of something else. When we moved here six years ago, our packers were a day late coming. They had half the time to do the work as the truck was on the way. This caused random shit to be thrown in boxes with no sort of organization or order as it was 2:00 am by the time they were done and really did not care at that point. I had blankets from a closet with dishes from the kitchen in one box, master bedroom and front hall closet in another. Quality packers we had for sure.
When we moved in, essentially when the day to day stuff was unpacked, the rest ended up down in the basement for another day. Over the years I have looked at the mountain of said boxes and honestly wondered what on earth was in them. We were operational day to day, so clearly it was not household stuff. There were a few obvious things in them, like china, but what the hell was in the rest? So, I started emptying boxes. I found hidden treasures I had forgotten about mixed in with the random shit, like my high school year books, and sorority pics of me with gigantic hair that the kids thought was hilarious, packed with the linen closet. Of course. I found my high school softball letter jacket, and yes it fits. It's actually too big in with the children's books. There was the gold cross my mom had bought for my oldest when she got baptized, which shockingly was in a bin with her name on it. Oh wait. I packed that. I found things I thought were lost forever, and things I forgot I had, and whole ton of crap I didn't need. There were happy memories intermixed with twinges of grief as the purging progressed on.
For we are always what our situations hand us,
It's either sadness or euphoria
I am pleased to report about one third of the shit has been purged, and two van loads of garbage have been taken to the dumpster. Yes, there is still a ways to go, but I am getting there a little at a time. I suppose if King Corona had not cancelled my vacation I never would have found the important things today or gotten rid of the junk I never really needed to start with. It makes me think that sometimes having life as we know it come to a screeching halt can seem awful at first, but it also can be an opportunity to help us to take the time to stop, look in our own proverbial boxes stashed out of site. The deep things we push away when life simply gets too busy. These are the boxes that have been jammed with so much random shit, that we have lost site of our own treasures. Interestingly, I am finding this process to be just as helpful as a quiet seat at the edge of the sea. Yes, the job is a little messier, physically a little harder, and no my mom is not here. However, I did find a treasure that belonged to her, one that now holds a place of honor in my home. It is a Lladro nurse I bought for her many years ago as a teenager. She was a highly educated, high ranking nurse who wrote national infection control standards for the country. How appropriate I would find it today to watch over me as I head back to the front lines of Corona. A little reminder that regardless of the invisible tyrant King Corona, we have the choice between embracing the sadness or choosing the euphoria associated with believing the best is still yet to come.
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