BY Karen Branan
What do I feel? Not any one thing for very long. On waking, wonderment at that dream of the pink baby girl who spoke with wisdom which I do not remember. Wonderment is followed by intrigue as doors inch open to possibilities in that dream. Intrigue is immediately interrupted by affection as Spike bounds upon my bed and nestles into his customary cradle between my blanketed legs – another baby, this one hungry for hugs and tuna.
Awake now, the Out There seeps in, bringing a frisson of fear. What now? What today? What new White House idiocies? Who stricken? What learned? What closed?
The pack-rat has also awakened with her worries, her lists, her inventories. What is enough? What is too much? And the mother comes forth as well with her need to nurture. Who needs sanitizer? Apples? Tylenol? A walk? A poem?
What do I feel? Hope, yes, because the glorious work I have done for so long goes on and is, in some strange and inextricable way, enriched by this crisis, this plague, which while shutting us away from each other shuts us into ourselves and plants seeds for tomorrow, then brings us together through technology to plan and build and know that a new world is aborning at the very moment the old is being destroyed.
I have no word for this feeling, but know I have been preparing for this time since I was that tiny pink baby of whom I dreamt and know that somewhere deep inside new feelings and wisdom await that will carry me to this coming world, to this entirely new life.
What do I feel? Not any one thing for very long. On waking, wonderment at that dream of the pink baby girl who spoke with wisdom which I do not remember. Wonderment is followed by intrigue as doors inch open to possibilities in that dream. Intrigue is immediately interrupted by affection as Spike bounds upon my bed and nestles into his customary cradle between my blanketed legs – another baby, this one hungry for hugs and tuna.
Awake now, the Out There seeps in, bringing a frisson of fear. What now? What today? What new White House idiocies? Who stricken? What learned? What closed?
The pack-rat has also awakened with her worries, her lists, her inventories. What is enough? What is too much? And the mother comes forth as well with her need to nurture. Who needs sanitizer? Apples? Tylenol? A walk? A poem?
What do I feel? Hope, yes, because the glorious work I have done for so long goes on and is, in some strange and inextricable way, enriched by this crisis, this plague, which while shutting us away from each other shuts us into ourselves and plants seeds for tomorrow, then brings us together through technology to plan and build and know that a new world is aborning at the very moment the old is being destroyed.
I have no word for this feeling, but know I have been preparing for this time since I was that tiny pink baby of whom I dreamt and know that somewhere deep inside new feelings and wisdom await that will carry me to this coming world, to this entirely new life.