It is raining this morning, not hard but hard enough to provide an excuse for staying in. We walked long yesterday morning and the world was cold. There is snow at the summit of the coast range, but we aren’t driving anywhere today. We’ve had a fire in the wood stove every day for weeks. Rain means cloud cover and cloud cover means the temperature is up but there will be no gorgeous dawn or appaloosa sky.

Everyone I talk to seems to be apologizing for forgetfulness and mistakes. The entire country might be on high blood pressure meds from the tension, or something to address depression, moodiness, forgetfulness, errors, confusion, and general stress. Zoom, FaceTime, phone calls, and email are temporary fixes. Our drugs of choice are only coffee and alcohol. Last night Gary and I shared sparkling wine that sent us off to bed in good spirits. Literal and figurative, emotional and physical good spirits. It was a celebration of nothing in particular, only that we are still here, still muddling along.

Friends in Washington State are getting covid vaccine appointments for both first and second doses next month. My local county information page continues to state that appointments are not available. A careful review of Oregon State guidelines reveals when we are each eligible for a covid vaccination in late February—Gary the week before me because he is 71. The county website still has TBD. And it is likely that the county site is accurate for our county, if not for the state as a whole. Neither of us has seen a doctor in a few years, so she’s unlikely to reach out to us.

I would like to think Biden will make all this easier soon, but the guy has only been on the job for three days.

We will manage.

In the mean time, we are all now entering the second year of covid . . . everyone I know is feeling the prolonged stress. I keep trying to figure out what I am missing. I mean, seriously, day to day, what’s gone? I eat, drink, make, and read. It’s not a difficult life.

I have friends who go to work every day with patients who may infect them. Teachers must find new ways to reach students who are not even in their sightline. Many others are working from home, which sounds fine but also means they take shifts caring for children who are also home. Children cannot just go out to play.

None of that applies to us. Gary spends more time outside than I do, checking the perimeter of the property and working in the garden. My hobbies are unaffected. I can still weave and knit and draw, write, read, and piece fabrics. I am retired so going to work is not something I am deprived of doing, though I do miss teaching. I do miss going to work. I miss my students and I am grateful for former students who have reached out recently to say hello, bring me up-to-date on their doings, or even to ask for advice or recommendations. I do not miss movies in theaters—half the time I have not liked the movie I spent money to see. (Hope Gap didn’t get many good reviews on the big screen, but Gary and I both loved it. It explores a dying marriage between a man who wants a quiet and simple—nearly colorless—life and a woman who wants passion and poetry. Neither understands the other or even their error. The poetry is excellent.) I do not miss shopping at Safeway, a chain that has consistently abused its employees since I was in college a million years ago. I am baking so I do not miss the bakery. We stopped eating seafood so I do not miss the fish-and-chips place (hardly at all).

We plan carefully when to pick up mail or shop for groceries. There are businesses I have vowed never to visit again. I miss family. I miss hugs.

We would drive to Portland if we had a very good reason, but not twice a month as we did throughout 2019. We might plan a vacation and drive to Victoria if Americans were allowed across the border to British Columbia. We wouldn’t be doing that in January in any year.

All of this to say I feel hedged in or even trapped, though I am perfectly able to do most everything I would be doing in any other year. I get my walks, not a single loaf of bread has failed, I miss my sons and their families, but I am not overtly suffering or required to do a thing that puts me at much risk beyond entering stores every few weeks for ten or twenty minutes at a time.

Yet I do feel anxious. Hence the wine last night. The whining here.

I also know people going back to college, people starting new projects, and our grandchild’s heart surgery has been successful in returning the heart to normal size. The shawls I wove so industriously last year will be coming home in a week unsold, But the goal of weaving was a good distraction for most of the last year. (I could wish the gallery had put them up for sale online, but with a volunteer staff, I can’t blame them for not making that effort.)

I have fabric laid out for a quilt, one and a half socks knit, and seventeen inches woven on a new warp.

I am not missing so very much and I am not really much at risk, yet that uneasy feeling persists. I want an escape.

Last night I dreamt I had a magic red cord, a thin red string, that made a temporary hole in any surface big enough for me to climb through. Tied around something like a tree trunk, I thought it would cut right through, but that’s not how I used it in my dream. Laid on the ground or stone or the side of a building, it permitted passage to another place.

How we live and how we feel about our living are not the same thing. The connection is not entirely logical. The reality is not so very simple. Everything might seem fine and not be fine at all. Or everything might feel unsettled without anything being out of place. That film, Hope Gap, brought that into focus for us.

Perhaps my dreams are about escape and the desire to move past this current situation? Or perhaps I am watching too many Netflix fantasies.

Who we are and what makes us comfortable, what we perceive as realistic—none of that is reality. Millions of Americans have irrational beliefs about all sorts of things. I can say with assurance that the world is round, not flat, but not everyone “agrees,” as if facts were a matter of opinion. Most of us have unrealistic expectations and trivial superstitions. (I still feel a phantom guilt when I pick up a fine agate or bit of blue-green sea glass and fail to leave something behind—a cleaner beach, a stack of pebbles).

I listen to rain pattering on our roof. That is real. I hear my husband open the door of the wood stove. He believes that if he leaves the room while starting a fire—if he walks away too soon after it’s lit and fails to watch—the fire becomes lonely and promptly goes out. While if he sits with the fire while it catches hold, it will struggle along until it is strong without further assistance.

Who am I to say he’s wrong?

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