Dear (future) Barbara,

Today, you went on a walk.

It wasn’t far and it wasn’t anything particularly special, either. It was, however, yours. Your walk. Your time. Not with your dog Blue or alongside your partner. Not on the phone with a coaching client or discussing work or supporting a friend or even chatting with your mom. It was a walk with you and only you and only how you felt and thought and breathed and feared and moved.

And that is what made it particularly special.

Today is Saturday. The first one in April. There was a cool wind this morning while you headed down Portland Ave, but it seems to have let up by now. By noon.

This is odd, isn’t it?

The way you seem to have forgotten how to connect with just yourself.

The way we cross the street now, not out of fear of eye contact but out of the fear of  virus contract.

The way we have video calls with all the people we’ve actually never had video calls with before and now everyone is doing it so we do, too.

The way we sink into the couch watching an entire Netflix series but there is no feeling of remorse or guilt or the belief that we are self-sabotaging our time because time is just so ample.

The way nature is coming back, not just with the Springtime surge of songbirds, but how on my run the other day a turkey just sat in the middle of the street because there simply was no traffic.

What is normal, Barbara?

The way I pour a glass of white wine before noon arrives on a weekend and look around my house to decide all the things that need a new place to live and let out a sigh with them.

The way a weeping willow’s drooping majesty of branches shocks me to my core and reminds me that even something so large, so grand, can weep and droop, too.

The way my home has become a place of life and death.

Of worship and spite, solitude and gathering, health and illness, growth and reduction.

Of lightness and the dark.

Is this normal now?

We’re technically home, but–

When can we actually go home?

The willow weeps, but it stands tall and firm and upright.

Be well,

(current day) Barbara