Hello StoryLifers,
This has been the most harrowing week of our lifetimes. I know I promised you short stories, but the story of our era is being written in every moment of every day right now. Any other story I might tell seems small in my mind.
I’m having trouble focusing. The smallest tasks seem like mountainous effort. A pile of dishes next to my sink defeats my intentions again, as my mind is drawn to headlines and heartstrings.
These are terrifying days. I’m an ocean away from the aggression, but the ripple effect sends a tsunami of sadness around the world. The collective fear is palpable. It leaves a metallic distaste in my mouth that I can’t seem to shake.
I can feel it from here; the insanity, the brutality happening on another continent. Reoccurring dreams I’ve had since childhood comes into focus under these dark skies. Those dreams never had a clear ending. They left me suspended in the unknown, woke me up in the sweat of possibilities, pondering the deep pool of free will potentialities.
Those dreams give me strength. The ending wasn’t decided then, and it’s not decided now. The space in between is up to us, the collective hive mind. It takes extreme discipline to gently place the mind back on visions of peace and resolution when it veers off into primal fear territory with worst-case scenarios running on a loop. Hold the good vision, I tell myself.
Don’t feed the wild animal.
I want to write you a feel-good story, tell you everything will be okay, take your mind to a happy place for three minutes. But now is not the time for candy-coating. Instead, I will tell you what happened at the grocery store on Monday.
The double glass doors automatically slid open as I walked into the small food store, turning left towards the produce section. My friend Sarah, who I hadn’t seen in nearly a year, was standing next to the potato bin, mask on her face, hands resting on a grocery cart. She looked my way, and our eyes met. She recognized me, even with the N95 covering most of my face.
I could see her eyes light up and knew she was smiling under her mask.
“Sarah! How are you doing?” I genuinely said to her, fighting the urge to give her a big hug.
“I’m….okay. How are you?” She responded and turned to face me.
I told her I was doing alright, trying to keep an even keel, working on some new projects. Her pre-teen daughter wearing green jogging shorts revealing her long, growing lanky legs, walked up to the side of the grocery cart. Sarah said to her, “Hey, do you remember Michelle? It’s been a while.”
I told her daughter the last time I saw her was when we walked on Kincaid Road, and she was a foot shorter than she is now. “I can’t believe you’re so tall all of a sudden!!” I said to the tween who smiled with shy pride.
Sarah asked her daughter to find some yogurt and a few other things, which is the universal parent language for, Give us some space, please.
Sarah turned back to me and said, “I’m trying to give her hope, trying to give her a good life. It’s hard right now.” Tears swelled in her reddening eyes, pooling just enough to shine but not fall, “I don’t want to be dishonest, but I have to give her hope.”
I nodded in silent acknowledgment of her pain - a pain I will never know because I don’t have a child to worry about. My chest constricted when I told her I was sorry. I can’t imagine trying to navigate these days with a kid.
She responded, “Well, we’re doing our best.”
Without saying it, I knew she was referring to raising a child during a pandemic when our local economy is in a downward spiral and war is happening an ocean away that affects the entire globe. The worry lines on her forehead said This is too much.
I paused then said, “Sarah, this might just be my delusion or way of coping, but underneath all the fear and worry, I feel like some sort of good is going to come of all this.”
Even if I’m wrong, that belief or feeling gets me out of bed every morning. I’m not blind to reality. I’m embracing it while leaving space for miracles.
Sarah nodded in agreement, “I hope so. I hope that’s right.”
Her daughter returned with an armload of items and tossed them into the cart. Sarah’s eyes smiled at me, “I guess we better get going. It was good to see you.”
We agreed to stay in touch, to take a hike soon. I stood there imagining a protective bubble of love around them as she pushed the cart toward the bananas with her daughter leaning on the side rail. An enormous sense of calm washed through me. With people like Sarah in the world, I think we’ll be okay…eventually.
I’m leaving space for miracles.
☆