March 2020: Isolated

"I've found that there is always some

beauty left - in nature, sunshine, freedom,

in yourself; all these can help you."

Anne Frank

I have stayed active since Corona hit.  I do a daily morning Pilates or stability ball workout and then follow it with a walk, hike, or a ride:  sometimes even doing both a ride and walk.  Occasionally I add hand weights for what always has been and remains a weak upper body.  And for two days in a row, I have managed to nab a touch of sunshine on my ride though one day it meant leaving the house quite early and while it was still quite cold.

The world is screaming spring.  Daffodils pirouette in the wind, their brave yellows accentuated by the deepening green around them. Oh, how I love the greens this time of year, so fragrant and deep.  I have longed for green for months.  And the yellow, so fleeting but so yearned for. Other, small flowers thrust upwards. And so life goes on.  Isolation is wearying when one lives alone and I miss having someone to share things with, but as Ms. Frank notes, "there is always some beauty."  Oh, the magnificence of the human spirit in some people.  It shames me.  How, I wonder, did a child come to be so wise?  Circumstances? If so, surely the seed was there ahead of those circumstances.

The squirrels seem to be unusually busy and plentiful.  Important squirrel business, I suppose, as yet another crosses the road uncomfortably close to my front wheel.  Five deer cross in front of me.  Robins squabble over territory and mates.  Peepers call out in longing lonely following a long winter hiatus.  Life moves forward.  Nature seems unaware of the heavy cloud hanging over humanity at the present time.

For some reason, I think of something my daughter once told me during a time of great sorrow and great regret:  "Animals forgive us and don't hold grudges.  It is one of the things we are supposed to learn from them."  I hope it is true for we have not been kind to them or to their world. While at times the cats I live with are a nuisance, isolation, like loss, has made me aware of how much I treasure them.  It is nice to have something to hold on to, something to be responsible for besides myself.

Who knew the world could change so drastically so quickly?  I have canceled one trip in May where I was to meet with friends and ride bicycles and will likely be canceling my much anticipated Alaska trip.  But while I grieve the loss, I realize how lucky I am that thus far my family has not contracted the virus.  I am lucky I have a home and food and think about the poor people in Tennessee who recently lost so much in a tornado.  And I still have my bicycle and still can ride outside, something I have read has been restricted in other countries in an attempt to contain or slow a virus that is determined not to be contained.  The words of my mother whisper through my thoughts as I reach home:  "This, too, shall pass."