Winter is coming

     It is raining. The house smells like cookies and granola, oat bread and yeast bread, as I work my way through food prep for the week. Solas plays on in the living room, drowning out the sounds of the rain. Outside, the cat is sleeping in the greenhouse—a golden ball of fur on the plant shelf, beside the geranium I moved in a few days ago. The rabbit is in his hutch with an apple; the chickens in the coop resting on a garden bed. Leaves cover the ground. Mark hung the storm windows last night while I made dinner and we sat by the first fire inside of the season. We are moving, a little reluctantly, into winter this year.

 

While I worked, I tried to focus on the task at hand—measuring oatmeal and baking powder, doubling a recipe in my head. But the news fills my mind….and it is not good. I read, last week, a section of Alexi Navalny’s diary from prison that was in the New Yorker. He came back to his country, knowing he would be arrested and probably die and he said, “I have my country and my convictions. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.” (p 45, 10/21/24) And that idea melded with the end of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.  He did not step up to protect a friend from a bully and regretted the action for ever. Later, he observed:

For me, though, it did matter. It still does. I should've stepped in; fourth grade is no excuse. Besides, it doesn't get easier with time, and twelve years later, when Vietnam presented much harder choices, some practice at being brave might've helped a little. (P. 150)

We will be facing some difficult times ahead no matter who wins this election.  Climate change is with us. Challenges to our rule of law, our democracy will continue.  Are we practicing standing up for our convictions, now, when things are little less fraught? How we will behave in the coming years, if we are not?

The Catcher nd Being Caught

 

                I have been thinking, this week, about the way we, in community, catch people and are caught ourselves.

                A few years ago, a friend was climbing into a tree house, stepped on a rotten board and fell a long way. She was in the hospital for weeks and then home, immobile, for several months. When she was up and around again, she said that she felt like she fell out of a tree and right into the arms of her community, as everyone gathered around to help her heal. That image of arms reaching out to catch her—to catch all of us—has stuck with me.

                I have felt the same arms (literally, in some cases) reaching out to catch me in the past year. As soon as the Fiasco hit the news, people reached out. First, the city councilor whom I replaced—a deep voice on the line “What the hell’s going on? Do not give in and leave” followed by a flood of emails, phone calls, conversations…Where ever I went, someone was showing support, reaching out, asking questions, saying thank you. And it continues today. I have felt firm, supportive hand in the middle of my back for a year. I was caught.

                And so, I was talking with another friend about this—that, when we really need help, our community catches us. It was her first time, at 73, experiencing being caught; she has always been the one doing the catching. Showing up, moving chairs, asking how she can help and move things forward. Raising children. Taking care of a spouse. Saving the planet. Always catching, not being caught.  It was a little weird and uncomfortable to be on the other side, to be the one needing help. Maybe, we thought, we need to trade roles more often, to allow ourselves to be caught and supported in smaller crises as we move through life, so that we know, when a big one comes along, that we are not alone.