I remember watching the first season of “Stranger Things” and simultaneously feeling fear and relief. Fear because of that invisible “thing” that kept taking over Will, and relief because, after all, things like that don't happen in real life.
As each day passes things get weirder. First we had to limit our group gatherings to fifty, then thirty, now ten. We had to be careful with hand washing, and now we can't hug. We've gone from elbow bumping to kicking each others foot with affection. Kicking is now a show of affection. If I had only known that in sixth grade dodge ball games.
In the past few weeks, each day brought new requests to have me come, with violin-family instruments in tow, to book events. The Violin Family was featured in Vermont Kids magazine: that was me smiling back at me. It felt exciting and wonderful...and fleeting. Now every day another cancellation surrounded by Covid 19 information and warnings pops up in my in-box.
Music gigs (aka how I make a living) followed. Three performances that are annual events collapsed on top of each other. The news talked about paid sick leave and the senate passed bills for company leave. There is no company leave when you’re the company.
We had delusions of safety: we thought that because we live in a such a rural spot, in order to get here Covid 19 would have to circumvent icy troughs and muddy ditches. Who would bother: we can't get Fed Ex to come out here.
Our world’s increasingly become smaller and yet more isolated. My parents, who are in their eighties, canceled coming over for dinner. They called with small and unsure voices: they just don't know the right thing to do.
As we watch our Italian neighbors struggle with decisions that don't belong to us, we sit, six feet apart, silent in our horror.
I'm a true believer in playing the cards you are dealt; “it is what it is” is one of my favorite phrases. But there seems to be an internal statute of limitations on that which I was unaware of. Saturday, after the cancellation of a music and book event on the same day, I sat and cried the hot tears of the frustrated. We all know, with absolute truth, there are so many who are dealing with so much worse, and so we cry for them as well. Once I get started, I'm crying for everyone.
Watching the news we are kicking ourselves for being unprepared. We knew that our planet had been at critical mass for a long time. Doesn't anyone watch Doomsday Preppers?
Companies close, restaurants empty, concerts cancel, art galleries vacate- how do we prepare our souls for the unpreparable? I miss my friends, my family, my musical colleagues. The other night Paul asked me if I wanted to work on some music, normally a no-brainier, but I said “no”, because I really struggled with the reason to do it. The emptiness rang around me.
Fortunately, he didn't listen to me. Ignoring my dissent, he pulled up the piano accompaniment for the Shostakovich Sonata and started it. For a bit, I sat out in the kitchen puffy-eyed, enjoying my pity party. But who could ignore such beauty? Who could help but realize that, even with our disrupted routines, changes in the things that are elemental and familiar to us, even surrounded by high piles of toilet paper and water bottles, music still speaks louder than mere words or actions.
Lying in the morning light, watching the sun come up like it does each morning, every morning, I thought about where we can go when the unthinkable becomes thinkable. And the answer is as clear as the spring morning air. We go inward. What will lift and sustain us lies tucked just underneath our hearts. It is where music and joy are created and stored. For occasions like this.
Ultimately, we sit directly in the eye of the storm. As everything swirls around us we have to be valiant in our efforts to find our center, to find our peace. Maybe now is exactly the time to learn that new music or paint that scene that has lived in the back of your brain for so long. Maybe now is the time to read to your child with intent, or video chat with your parents.
Staying on the path.
Chaos today does not dictate chaos tomorrow!
Melissa Perley.