Solitude

First published on emmaecho.com, my portfolio site. I'm streamlining emmaecho, however, the archives will still be accessible here.

((( Solitude )))

Resting on the Trail to Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, NM

Most times, solitude is a welcome experience for me, a healing time, where I just sit quietly and take in the beauty around me. I thrive in nature, and that is where I feel most at peace. The wind in my hair, the sun on my skin, dirt under my feet.

Where do you feel a deep connection to healing? Where do you want to be right now?

We took a last minute trip before school started last August, exploring places that I had frequented as a kid with my own children. While the baby slept in a backpack most of the way, my six year old made the entire 7 mile hike to Chimney Rock and back with little complaining. We rested frequently and tried to be as patient as we could with each other.

Like now.

The last day my son went to school was March 12th, and except for lots of virtual meetings, playdates, and birthdays, we've had no visitors. This all is as foreign to our kids as to us. I need to remind myself to be patient, to understand if there is no motivation to do school work today, to make sure my words are gentle.

Time passes. We're all under the same sky. The skies in our state never cease to amaze me. They can be clear, cerulean blue, or full of dark, stormy clouds, or bright, fiery sunsets - I love them all. I've been enjoying the sky from my backyard these days and while it has been wonderful to have the option to do that, trees, houses, and power lines hinder my ability to convey through pictures the feeling of powerful expanse that I so love about our skies. Late at night, if I can't sleep, I search through my sky files and find my favorites from trips past. So many different skies. One image I was particularly drawn to had these tendrils of clouds reaching out like fingers over the foothills of the Manzanos. They look like waves stretching out overhead, and I imagine I'm underwater in an ancient sea, like the one that covered what is now New Mexico millions of years ago. Some nights I climb up on the roof. I've taken a new interest in star trail photography. The passage of time over my dwelling, our neighborhoods connected by giant circling stars. It's a powerful feeling of connection in a time of isolation. Some nights, the trails left by the stars look like a river, marking the passage of time over our heads. If I'm feeling down I think of the stars flowing over my head and how the join all of us together in our journey through this time. What things are you seeing in your sky today (or tonight)? I know we'll go out later and hunt for cloud dragons... and cloud elbows, because they're my not-so-baby's favorite. He calls them "elblows" and it makes me smile every time I hear it.

Or, if you prefer different imagery, we're all in this together, crossing the same river in our own little boats. What do you think the other side is going to look like?

There have been other times in our lives when we’ve needed to slow down, to process, to grieve. To take time for ourselves, spend time alone. I realize this is important now, although perhaps different in nature, and I try to give to myself as much as is possible with a family and two small children. Last summer, my family and I, along with my siblings and our mother, took a trip to Michigan for a memorial for my aunt. From the darkest day, winter solstice, when she died, to the longest day, summer solstice, when her memorial was held, time passed around us. Searching out solace in solitude was something that just happened naturally. Our whole trip, though filled with family, and reunions with people from long ago, or meetings with people new to our lives, was one of virtual isolation. We all sought out ways to have our own time, to carve out a little cave in our misery to hide away in, just for a little while, even if that cave was just imaginary and we were surrounded by loved ones in reality. I feel much the same right now, in isolation with my family. I need time to process and to grieve – for the planet as a whole, for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been lost in this pandemic – and I undertake this along with many others, sharing the collective burden of grief as I juggle the many other requirements of my day at home.

Grief has a way of sneaking up on me. I'll be fine for days, even months, and then, like a small, unexpected package arriving in the mail one day - there it is. We all deal with sadness differently, and we grieve for different things, too. My 'big boy' grieves every time he outgrows his shoes and we have to give them away. "They're my favorites!" he says, often through tears, as he thanks them and hugs them goodbye. My little one, on the other hand, has taken to biting recently, when he feels sad and left out - I feel hurt, so I'm going to make you hurt, too! I have much less patience when I'm overwhelmed by emotions, even if they are unrelated to my current situation. We all have loss over a lifetime. Some of the things we grieve may seem small to others, or things that others are upset about may seem frivolous to us. The emotion is the same, no matter how big or small the event, though. It may cut deeper at times, but it is all along the same spectrum of sadness. In a helpful parenting book I read (How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Faber and King), one of the lessons was: All emotions can be accepted, some actions should be limited. It's okay to not be okay right now, or at any time. (Just maybe not ALL the time...) It's okay to feel OKAY, or great, too. All emotions can be accepted. We don't need to change the way others are feeling (an action to be limited). Sometimes we just need to nod and listen. Sometimes someone just needs to hear "I feel you," even if you don't fully understand, or agree with, where they are at right now.

Seeking out isolation in many ways has been beneficial, though now more than ever, I suppose. I miss the small things, like walking with my son to school, favorite restaurants, visits with friends and family. Those things are not necessarily the small things, I suppose. They are the memories that pepper my days with time stamps that give me a better sense of how much time has passed. Most days run together now. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that staying home for so long leads to doing much of the same things over and over again. I appreciate the time I have at home. I don’t think I’ve ever spent this long of a stretch without going out to do something… The time I’ve saved from not going out to do inconsequential things has been enormous, and with my husband home more, despite working longer and longer hours each week to meet demand, I’ve had opportunity to undertake projects that have long been waiting to be done here around the homestead. Cuomo talks about ‘reimagining’ New York, not just reopening, and while I know New Mexico will never look like New York, it is important to pay attention to other places and learn what to do, or not to do, right now. I’ve also been reimagining my life one day at a time, just recently pausing to think about it. I realize it is important to give more – in whatever capacity I have right now, and some days that is a deeper well than others. I want to be more patient and understanding with my kids, especially with my older son and our homeschooling efforts. I want to be more organized, and that is something that I have been working on with my newfound project time. I’ve been enjoying cooking at home, and realized that, even though I didn’t feel like we went out to eat very often, most weeks roughly 1/3 of our meals were procured from restaurants, so I had to adjust to that much more meal prep and planning. I’ve gotten creative with what we have around the house, especially towards the end of the groceries, when it’s getting closer to time to work up the courage to venture out on a “sustenance reconnaissance mission,” as my sister has taken to calling grocery shopping. It seems like much more than that right now, and calling it something other than ‘grocery shopping’ is more exciting, anyway, and wearing a mask makes me feel like some kind of super hero, so…

My husband is still working, not from home - at least he does what little he can from home, but he is working more hours now than before, and is going to start doing deliveries on his days off to help keep up with demand. In many ways, we know we are lucky. Not adding financial struggle to our lives right now, while so many others can't work. Friends who are not working right now tell my husband he's better off because he's still at work and doesn't have to sit home all day despairing for the future. He tells them about the people who bring in all their kids and let them run around the store because they're bored and want to get out of the house. The people who let their kids cough on him while he helps them and asks them to keep their distance. The people who laugh in his face for wearing a mask (we made our own at home, days before the CDC advised to wear them, weeks before it was mandatory in New Mexico to wear one in public), and he patiently explains that the mask is more about protecting THEM than him. He talks about the people who come in and buy all sorts of non-essential things, with stimulus money, talking about how they don't have a job and probably won't be able to pay rent... The people who believe this is all a hoax. The people that are terrified, fully suited up, with medical grade masks and gloves. He worries about getting sick. He's worried about getting us sick at home, in our pseudo isolation.

I don't think it's easier for anyone. It's stressful and lonely no matter where you are, or if you're working, or if you're not working. It's a trade-off of problems and worries. I'm grateful for my husband and that we have a home to live in, food to eat, and we are healthy right now. What are you grateful for today? What is hard to think about today? How can we help each other today, even if that is just accepting that we all have problems - just because mine may not look like yours doesn't mean mine don't exist. We're all in this together.

The time I’ve spent in isolation over the past two months have given me time to slow down and think about the priorities in my life. My son and I worked out a school and house work schedule, and that has been working for the most part, though some days require changes, and all days require flexibility.
I’ve noticed that even spending just a small amount of time on any given task each day can make a huge difference over a longer period of time. While I feel far from normal, I do feel like I’ve made progress towards feeling balanced and prioritized with what small things I have some control over, namely my little kingdom – my house and yard. While there is still much improvement to be made, we have accomplished quite a bit in this relatively short time, and have learned to be appreciative of what we have done, rather than dwell on what hasn’t.

This time has given me the gift of working on projects that had been pushed aside for everyday life and chores, things that I didn’t think I had time for have magically brought themselves to my attention and I feel more productive than ever. I feel like I’m working on reimagining my life and allowing myself to give up parts that no longer fit, and focusing more on the important details. Like the sky reflected in a shattered mirror, some things in this new life still look strange and out of focus, but others are magnified in their beauty and clarity.

Using what we have has become a motto, or sort of mantra, around our house. Before, it was easy for me to start on a random project and realize I didn’t have that something, that one thing, that I just can’t make the project work without. There are still projects like that, for example, we were going to repaint the trim on the house, but don’t have paint for it, so that is a project that we can’t do right now. I can think of silly substitutes for house paint, like, say, we could use some muck from the pond to stain the trim a new color… but realistically, that is a project for another day, when restrictions on staying home have been lifted, or loosened, or… reimagined. I know that the home improvement stores are still open right now, but I can’t say that paint is a necessary purchase. If our plumbing goes out and I need to go get replacement pipes, or whatever, sure, but some things can wait. So now, if I’m working on something and run into a block and immediately start thinking, what do I need to get to finish this, I try to reframe my question into, what do I already have that would work for this? Or, do I need to have this done right now?

I spent a little of each of my days these past weeks looking through photos I’ve taken. Ones that I set aside because they stirred something within my soul. Some are sad, or funny. The ones I was looking for this time were ones that communicated isolation. Not in a bad sense, necessarily, but to show that feeling of isolation has many facets. It can be sad, or lonely, true, but it can also be beautiful, full of wonder, even hopeful. I put together this series of images to show solitude – the quiet contemplation that takes place when we give ourselves time to slow down and think, process – reimagine. These are all photos taken in what I’ve started calling ‘the before time’ and I don’t yet know what the ‘after’ is going to look like. We are now in the ‘in-between time’ and I’m trying to be okay with that.

I hope you are doing well, wherever you are.