An update on my mother

Last night, we found out that my mother has tested positive for Covid19.

She’s asymptomatic so far and no one at the nursing home has any idea how long she has been infected, so we don't know if we're at the front end of a serious infection, or the middle or tail end of a mild one. It was clear from the phone call that there are multiple residents with the disease at this point. They have established one section of the home as an isolation ward for all these patients, and Helen is in that wing with the rest of them.

On my desk, I have a picture of my mother taken in about 1953 or 54, with my father, grandfather and great grandparents. It was almost certainly in Yonkers. My mom is strikingly thin, as I was at that age (early 20s.) She has a steadfast and penetrating gaze which bespeaks both her intelligence, self-awareness, and the intensity she brings to life. That intensity was not always, as with any of us, focused on good things; but I think enough of it was.

Helen has spent the last year in limited recovery from a stroke that partially paralyzed her and, intriguingly, left her without any of the negative emotional features that were formally a significant part of the way she interacted with others. They weren't necessarily dominant; but they were persistent. As she has adjusted to her new condition, she's become uncharacteristically accepting of an extremely reduced lifestyle where she has none of the many things she most cherishes, having lost her apartment and all her possessions save the few appropriate to take to the home with her.

It's tempting, in a situation like this, to try and anticipate how one will face the inevitable, emotionally; of course, that's impossible. One can only know in any given moment how one is now.

This morning, along with the birdsong, a tree frog with a very long trill is singing along the creek.

Helen is a biologist, and will appreciate this, so this is for her:

The four species of frogs most common in the area are gray tree frogs (some years we have lots of them, often heard but rarely seen) bullfrogs—every year there are a few of these beefy masters of the low end of the register on the pond—spring peepers, whose collective, joyously disorganized song invariable lifts spring directly up to the heavens on the first barely-warm days of March; and northern leopard frogs, whose mottled, iridescent skin is always a delight to behold.

Frogs used to be common here in the northeast when I was a child, but they have not fared well as we proceed to destroy the planet. Based on my experience of aquatic life in the northeast during the 1960s—it was extensive, as we lived directly on a pond in Stamford, Connecticut— as much as 70% of the frog population has disappeared.

Already, the sound of the tree frog is new and unexpected. I have no idea what the day will bring. Yesterday, I woke up in reasonably good shape, but I sprained a muscle in my left arm and broke one of my right toes. It remains to be seen just how much yoga I can do this morning.

I’ll need to adjust my yoga routine to include tree frogs and injuries.

There is a gentle sorrow in the air. It just rained; surprising how comforting the sound of rain can be in the dim light of early morning. Doves are singing; since the epidemic began, the sound of jets and cars has abated so much that there is actual peace around me, at least for the moment.


This is what the world used to sound like before we brought our machines to it.

The thought reminds me, peripherally, of the abbey of Fontenay in France, which we visited in 2017. Today we think of abbeys as serenely peaceful places of retreat; but get this—Fontenay was one of the centers of advanced metallurgy in the 12th century!—and, at its then state-of-the-art forge, had one of the first hydraulic hammers in Europe, a frighteningly massive thing that no doubt made noise like all the hordes of hell when it was pounding iron.

I doubt much meditation took place while it was working.

From this place poured out the metals that helped build the great gothic cathedrals: a very worldly place indeed for men of God.

We are in the world. While we live, there is nowhere else to go.

I pause in my writing and take a moment to put my head out the window. A woodpecker has decided to take a few whacks at our roof; I try to see him, without any luck. Our cat Marlowe decides to check out the roof. (He quickly decides it's not that interesting.) The clouds are clearing; the air is cool but not cold, and for a moment I take it in.

 The atmosphere is suffused with an indescribable air of hope; beauty flows into life as the truth of this moment.

I remember my teacher Betty Brown presenting the question of our efforts to be as, “what is the truth of this moment?”

We can never know that, because there are so many truths in each moment. Yet, collectively, all the truths are right—each and every truth is appropriate to its circumstance as it arises. The world can be arranged in no other way.

In this sense, when my sister suddenly died in 2011, it was both appropriate and true.

My mother’s Covid infection is also both appropriate and true.

To the extent that I accept these truths, and see that each truth is right – whether I agree with it or not — I enter the beauty of God's grace, which is freely given in this moment, no matter what happens. Each and everyone of these truths is a part of The Perfection; it could not be itself without containing everything, both good and bad.

I doubt this will serve as consolation of any kind under the present circumstances; but it serves as truth, and truth serves creation without compromise.

Go, sense life deeply, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.