A strange electronic noise awoke me from a weird dream. What in the world? And then I recognized it. The Girl Cat (GC) was walking across my computer keys in the next-door study.
It is so dark. What time is it?
I turn over my cellphone on the nightstand: 6:59. After closing the laptop, I hop back into the warm covers, but she’s back on the desk, this time knocking over the pen cup and pulling out pens and pencils.
I give up.
We were away from the house most of yesterday and this Covid-spoiled cat, a great pet who spends most of every night curled up next to us, feels neglected.
Rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, down the hall GC races ahead of me, to the kitchen for fresh food. I might as well stay up and let L. sleep in.
Fresh coffee by the gas log. The sky lightens, but Stan Sollar’s promise of blue skies seems unlikely.
The news is a grey as the sky: Indiana Senators promise to vote for RBG’s replacement before the election. The unexpected rise in unemployment claims. #45 states adamantly that he may not accept the vote if he doesn’t win. The review of a documentary about unadoptable children.
Sigh.
COVID, economic distress, civil unrest, and now a fraught election. “Morning Edition” on NPR is our only electronic news these days. Not even Rachel any more.
My approach to COVID in March (We can do this!) feels almost lighthearted now, replaced with fatigue, frustration, anger. The garden is tired, too. The lazy susans are brown and crackled; the fading zinnia blooms perch defiantly atop stalks of dry leaves. Only the red geraniums bloom in steadfast, bright rebellion.
Over a second cup of coffee, I mull over my plan for the day. I hope soup-making in the morning and an early afternoon visit to the David Owsley Museum of Art (DOMA) at BSU will brighten my spirits.
At 9 am I gather the ingredients for two soups: chicken tortilla and lentil, pausing for a moment of gratitude at the full pantry and freezer. The chicken soup is for a socially distanced deck lunch with two women friends on Friday. The lentil is to freeze for cold weather. L. tolerates it if we add a sausage.
By 10:30 both soups are simmering. The radio celebrates John Rutter’s birthday with All things Bright and Beautiful. The beloved piece carries me back to our time in England nearly 30 years ago. My eyes fill with tears for a simpler time.
L’s discussion group ends at 11:30, and we each build our own green salad to pair with a cup of the chicken tortilla soup for lunch on the deck. The cute leaf-shaped, fall-colored tortilla chips we found at Trader Joe’s make us smile. After a nap we head off to DOMA for the opening day of the new exhibit: 20/20: Twenty Women Artists of the 20th Century. It is visually stunning: paintings, sculptures, ceramics and all of the art belongs to us, most of it out of sight, in storage, until this exhibit.
Home in time for DOMA Director Bob La France’s docent presentation of the 20/20 exhibit he curated to honor the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Normally we docents would be traipsing after him through the third-floor exhibition space and second-floor Brown Study Room. Instead we are a grid of zoom windows. Some of the artists are well-known to me: Lee Kratzner, Winifred Brady Adams, Judy Chicago. But I am blown away by the ceramics of Toshiko Takaezu. In Yellow Lines by Irene Pereira, one yellow line moves through time and space and texture.
After a simple supper, L .and I check out what we have taped and watch the first episode of Hacking our Minds on PBS, a fascinating description of our automatic responses. Blind people miss obstacles because their sympathetic nervous system sends unconscious responses to the brain. Our daughter in law’s brother contributed to the visuals, which creates an interesting connection.
Before bed I return to Parker Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. Palmer reports how Abraham Lincoln turned to poetry and humor when stress darkened his spirit. Time to get out Billy Collins’s poetry.