Indira Ganesan, Sky over Land, 2020

If we are not struggling to put food on the table, if our health is relatively good, we will have become better cooks. We might be healthier because junk food isn’t so readily available (or is it?) It took me three weeks to decide that buying ice cream was not extravagant. We might be better gardeners, better at fixing things that are broken, like leaks.  We might be on the whole more hygienic. Our hands will be cleaner, if drier.  We might look younger because we have relied less on, say, make-up, and chemical beauty fixatives.  We might have gained several pounds.  We might be better read.  We might have taken more classes online, or at least thought about it.  We will have all benefitted by commuting less if we are lucky. Will the ozone be better for our lack of traffic? I hope so.

Yet, every night in my town, packs of cars honk their horns to honor front-line workers in noisy cacophony.  Me, I think, why not light a candle or simply clap hands instead of produce fuel pollution and noise pollution?  What a world of difference between a lovely sprint of music from a clarinet or saxaphone than a car horn.

But I am probably in the minority on this.  Meanwhile, the rain has been streaming all day, and on my balcony, a mourning dove has decided to nest.  In two weeks or less, two little mourning doves might emerge into this world.  She and her partner have built the nest on the metal grid floor, with no cover or protection.  All last night she sat, undeterred.  Today, I think her mate might be taking a turn; he faces the other way.

A siren sounds in the distance.  In this bucolic place I call home, the sound is rare during our not-quite-lockdown.  Is is an accident being responded to, or someone newly sick with Cover-19?  Silence again, except for the rain.

Today I found myself making jam out of strawberries going bad, part of the domestic turn our sheltering in has brought on in the world.  I don’t know what to watch at night, having finished the entire series of Kavanaugh, Q.C., a show I highly recommend.  We want solutions in this world, even if it is a small made-for-tv trial in which the innocent retain their freedom.  I find I cannot comment on the national scandal.