Sitting on my dad’s porch the other day, the three of us (dad, Dennis, me) were interrupted by a particularly feisty bird that was blue. (I don’t know from birds and even my trusty google search isn’t really helping here.) This winged creature had attitude, as you can see from the cock of the head in the picture above. Imagine Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy with a dose of Beyoncé in “Hold Up” and you’ve got the picture. As we sat there having an early-evening cheese-cracker-libation chat, this little dude strutted around knocking his beak on the railing and trying to steal if not the cheese, then at least all the attention. Twas entertaining, but also slightly unnerving. The thought crossed my mind that there might be some random conversations going on among those animal kingdom dwellers who are repopulating road-, air-, and water-ways, that, ya know, we aren’t really all that formidable currently.

It’s true, a great mass humbling is upon us. It’s not like we haven’t been brought to our knees before (see pandemics), but as worldwide, twenty-first-century moments go, this is a doozy. And in the time that I stared at that bird and that bird stared back at me, it became clear that to understand the phrase “you really never know … (when you’ll step into an eatery again, how a virus works the way it does, why a bird can win a staring contest)” is to give up all preconceived notions of solid footing. I’ve given lip service to the idea of realizing that everything changes, but right now I’m living in a sustained version of everything changes, yet when I wake up in the morning, everything seems to stay the same. Groundhog’s Day on steroids and acid.

My friend Elizabeth sent this great article on grief from the NYTimes. It’s so damned good. Yes, of course, grief. If hope is the thing with feathers, then maybe grief is the thing made of stone. Rather than fly, it sinks. Sometimes so deeply that we can’t even find it. The pebble in our shoe or the ship at the bottom of the ocean. But it needs witness, I think. And understanding, gentleness, gravity. And expression. In whatever form that might be. People on balconies, on roofs, in yards, songs for cities. There are folks recreating famous works of art. And there are all sorts of amazing essays. But there is also just the silence of acknowledgment.

And there are the little things. When the local Redlands librarian from the A.K. Smiley branch called to tell me a book I’d put on hold pre-Covid was ready for pick up and that they were making appointments for curbside pickup, I felt confused with emotion. I was touched, overjoyed, sad, grateful. I actually gushed “that’s so amazing” at her and could tell from her laugh that she’d gotten this reaction in one form or another on every call. Librarian turned therapist, which in essence they’ve always been, but probably not to this degree of intensity. If I ever meet her, I’ll want to hug her. And I wonder, when will that be allowed again?

A line that really stood out in the New York Times piece was, “Grief can’t be fixed, but it can be acknowledged … [a suggestion to] take time to check in with ourselves, to slow down to name our pain. Not to fix it, since it likely can’t be fixed, but to notice it.” She ends the piece, “I’ll start at the beginning: This is hard. I hurt. If you’re hurting, too, you’re not alone.”

I’ll end mine there too, along with one flurry of feathers to go with the stone: I miss riding my bike to a thrift store.”

What do you miss?