It was cold in Colville, Washington on March 15, 2020. We were invited to breakfast at the Day house up on top of the hill at the end of Hofstetter Street. Maya barked her usual boisterous greeting as we pulled into the driveway in the space reserved for us that morning, the one closest to the steps.
I can't remember what we ate for breakfast but I can remember goodbyes that came after. Rowan and Amelia asking, once again, why we had to leave. Me answering that it was time to get back to the farm but also expressing the thought that if we waited a week or two more, we may not be allowed to set off in the Subaru to drive across the country. "Because of the Coronavirus," said Amelia in that matter-of-fact delivery that reminds me of her mother.
I kept my emotions under control through the goodbye hugs and the whispered words of love and then Kate pressed a little bottle of hand sanitizer into my hand.
I still have dreams about that trip - dreams that bring to the surface real settings with the kinds of offbeat complications that often trouble dreams. Where there is a guy coughing and coughing in a Missoula restaurant, somehow seated next to me in a crowded booth. Where there is no running water in the Interstate Rest Stop someplace in Indiana. Where we can't find a gas station as the yellow light begins to flash red on the dashboard. And the time the guy handing our McDonald's order through the takeout window swiped his hand across his dripping nose first.
When we left Colville, the schools were counting on reopening at the end of April, and work from home was the order from the Forest Service. Now, one year later, the children have only recently returned to in-person school but only two days a week and their parents work from new home offices.
One year ago, we'd had a dress rehearsal for pandemic times at the end of February when the Colville schools were closed for three days because of a 'person of interest' who was awaiting test results for a suspected case of Covid-19. Washington was one of the first places where there was an outbreak and officials were acting out of 'an abundance of caution,' words we still hear almost every day.
On one of those cold days, we went to the shores of the drawn-down Lake Roosevelt where we searched for the foundations and sidewalks of the town of Marcus, abandoned when the Grand Coulee Dam flooded the Columbia River valley.
Human creatures had left a shrine of natural and man made treasures tucked under weathered roots of a tree long ago planted perhaps by another human creature, near the tumbled stones of what was once foundations of a movie theatre, pieces of its sidewalk still visible.
I felt prayerful as I took this photo, capturing the mystery of that moment to hold close for a future time. Soon, the waters of the mighty Columbia would carry these talismans away. The swirling waters of what was being named a pandemic threatened all of us human creatures with a flood of sickness and death and sorrow and grief. And today, in marking this particular trip around that brilliant ball of gas we call the sun, I stop to remember all of it.
4 comments:
I cannot even imagine that trip across the country. Such a scary time. It seems only a little better now, while we still take the same precautions and wonder when/if normal will return.
Scary crossing. Hopefully it will be a little easier with your super-powers on the way back. Chris
It was such a frightening time for those of us who love you. This is a beautifully written piece
Oh Jane, so well written it made me cry. It brought back all the anxiety and fear, and isolation of the last year. All those feelings that I keep pushing deep down so they don't drown me. And now, a year later, there seems to be some light, and hope, and a dream of music making and hugs, and joining in celebrations. Be well. Hope to gather soon.
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