During the long days of burnout I was working from home. A lot of us were working from home. In our little cubicles, or offices, or kitchen tables. I knew a lady who, when someone asked to remove filters in a Zoom call, she was in her pantry. She had cans and cereal behind her.
We were figuring it out under jaw-dropping circumstances, with no life raft, and we had blow up mattresses for floatation devices, because, whatever, and a tupperware full of spaghetti.
The in-between of work and home was also gone. The drive, the distance, the familiar views along the way, the sky. I had to keep my curtains drawn or the Eastern morning sun was too bright on everything and made my face glow white on screen.
I escaped the dark of my office when I could - to the river. That was the huge, beautiful, wild thing I thought I needed. There are rivers everywhere and I drive beside one every day to get into town, but there aren’t places to get out and look at it, get lost in it, stare and weep, and know that she knows.
An annual park pass, a thirty-minute drive, and paths, and butterflies, and the pull of the river, the sound, the strength of it, the sound, the pull,
Oh, my word, my whole heart would swell, my feet rushing faster than I could be steady - to get there, to the waters edge, to let all that power mesmerize me and rush, and caress in equal measure, the tired soul of me. I was focused on getting to the river. I missed all the sky on the way there.
Today I realized what low-key investment is needed for looking up and noticing the clouds, the blue expanse, the grey even.
From anywhere. From my own back yard. I love the long views, the vistas, the turn around a corner, and - Blam - mountain, optical illusion big. Right there! Another turn and it regains proper perspective, looks like a regular, stunning mountain in a regular, stunning landscape, not green hill goes straight up to the sky, cows grazing, mountain right on top. Unreal. Truly unreal. It is not real. The next turn in the road proves it. Like a Harvest Moon that takes up the entire street, the whole evening.
And with a flutter, all a fluster, I realized why she holds me so much these days. She totally gets me. She always has. Dancing clouds on this side of the sky, storm on the other. Whimsy and wisps, and cartoon shapes, grandeur, glory, drama - oh, the drama - full orchestras warming up, Grover from Sesame Street as the mixed up waiter - that was a cloud my kids and I saw together - on the other.
It’s always been the sky. In my unraveling I desperately wanted the river, and I found a way to get there. Now, every time I walk outside, the sky is putting on a show. Every day a new escapade. Little itty bitty clouds just on the horizon. Can barely call them clouds. They still have a story. They’re playing their role. And I get to witness it.
I see myself in the dressed up to the nines in drama aspect, I really do - scarves, hats, bags, all the bright colors - not a wallflower.
The sky is no wallflower either. She gets big. She says what she means. But then she turns around and does a twirl that ribbons across the entire half hemisphere in view.
