Springtime in Seattle

Late last evening (well relatively late given the time change) I was speaking with my West Coast sister.

I have been trying to remember to call her each night to check in and chat as she is living in a community affected by the novel coronavirus. Work from home orders, virus circulating in the community, and as with seasonal flu, senior residences nearby being hit extremely hard. Seeking truth and normalcy in the midst of hyped up media stories designed to induce fear is difficult but important. And so, short of a complete blackout, skillfully navigate she must.

Nevertheless, when loved ones are living in a situation such as hers so far away from family and daily confronted with a new reality, it affords an opportunity for her family at home to reach out, make that connection and respond with love and support.

And that is what I thought I was doing until I beautifully realized that nothing in life is a one way street and that quite incidentally, my sister's offerings in return have been both welcome and needed by me.

Our recent phone conversations have been much the same as they always are between us--two sisters living a continent apart, raising similarly aged children in this strange modern era.

"How was your day? What did you do? How are the kids? What are you up to now?" All quite ordinary queries.

Her responses as of late reflect that of a household of four trying to achieve a semblance of normalcy all the while integrating the imposition of restrictions in a community attempting to mitigate the spread of a new virus.

Trying for normal and yet at some point each night the conversation turns to the virus.

Maybe the new normal is her telling of how weird it is to go to the grocery store, or how some appointments are still on while other events are being postponed or cancelled or just generally how they themselves have closed down shop on visiting with friends. Not easy for sure but they are not sick and would like to keep it that way.

Like the glimpses she grants us each year of her much envied early spring, this year she and her family are giving us a less envious peek into what life under novel coronavirus restrictions looks like for them.

Over the weekend when I called she and her partner were out doing yard work. Yes, you heard me right. Yard work. A wonderful normalizing activity. They live outside of Seattle, Wa and spring comes early there. Clearing up debris from the wrath of a winter's worth of wind storms, they were gathering fallen branches for a fire in their chiminea.

"How do you spell chiminea?" she asked me after taking a picture of their fire to send to me.

"Is it c h i m i n e a ?" to which I answered "yes, I think so".

I see the pics in a time lapse manner that our four hour time difference causes. When she sends them during our late evening phone conversation I am in bed on a portable phone, laptops and wifi turned off for the night, with me almost asleep so it is the next morning when I check emails to see what she has sent. Low tech relatively, certainly not emergent like the stuff her husband is very involved with creation of at Amazon such as the interactive (and increasingly ubiquitous with normalizing AI engagement) Alexa, virtual assistant he was on the design team for.

Admittedly I am extremely skeptical of our cultural need for such devices. But she has had hers since the trial stage and uses it for many things such as reading bedtime (mid afternoon in Seattle) stories to another sister's two little boys here on PEI. And certainly this is a sweet and charming application of a technology which is seen by some as almost an invasive species.

Last night while we were talking, my room was wonderfully hushed and suddenly I heard the unmistakable call of the Saw-whet from a small wooded area behind our house.

Several weeks back our youngest daughter called our son in to hear a strange beeping sound, like an alarm clock sounding off in the woods out back. He, an avid birder who participates in an annual owl survey along with bird counts immediately recognized the pint sized, cuter than sin, predator's call.

Phone in hand I shrieked out loud (everyone in my house was still awake) and wished desperately that my sister could hear the tiny owl's big voice. Unable to audibly share it with her, she still thought it was so neat to think of the little bird calling out in the dark night; a sure and welcome sign of spring here in our still snow bound world of cold and ice.

Excitedly she told me that just then (11:18 pm here, 7:18pm there) she could hear her own sign of spring; spring peepers singing in nearby waters. She then proceeded to leave her yard for me to hear the peepers near her house, narrating her walk as she went.

"Crossing the road, (I heard zooming traffic in the background) over the paved walking trail, down by the trees, through the parking lot of the middle school and past the dumpster" her breath audible like my own anticipatory heartbeat I was trying to still, and then she paused.

"Can you hear them? Listen!"

But I could hear nothing.

I strained, covered my other ear and held my breath as though these actions would transport me into her faraway, still evening, already springtime world.

She moved in closer to the waterway, and held her phone patiently towards the chorus of earnest springtime chirping while I grasped my phone ridiculously tighter and tried, hoping to catch a listening glimpse of her world.

And then, in a radio instant, as though someone had turned the dial knob to precisely the right point, I heard their exalted call.

Glory! Joy!

It felt like a Leonard Cohen Hallelujah moment which was already rising in my from the Saw-whet swelled in me to bursting.

"I hear them, I do, oh my God they sound stunning", I shrieked for the second time of our short conversation.

Spring peepers, those tiny amphibian lovers, singing their little hearts out because they have no choice but to, bring my family and I such happiness and consolation at their determined return each spring. Last night, in that shared moment thousands of kilometers apart, they caused such simultaneous happiness in both of my far away sister and I.

And after a globally desperate few months of late, to which Vladimir Lenin's below quote seems to aptly apply, rejoicing in spring feels like an important radical act of love and especially so when it is by proxy of rejoicing in someone else's spring.

"There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen." Lenin

And to this quote I would add:

"There are moments so large no time piece can hold them as they pulse with the life that is present."

The manner in which the transporting quality of such moments seemingly alters the time space continuum cannot be denied. It's a purely subjective thing. I call it awe.

And that moment last eve with my dear sister was nothing short of awe-some.

Awe has its own place in my heart that nothing has been able to ravage yet. I suspect that nothing can ravage it fully. And if to Emily Dickinson, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul", awe of natural world to me is a love song whose music resonates across distances and penetrates the deepest realms of existence, beyond those spaces which fear and uncertainty try to claim.

Most recently it is near constant news of the novel coronavirus spread which threatens to collectively rob us of our ability to access joy, peace, awe. We mustn't let this happen.

So thank you to my dear West Coast sister for sending me her backyard photos of gleaming pink cherry blossoms, sunny daffodils, chiminea fires, the startled moon rising between the evergreens and for the narrated walk to her little waterway filled to brimming with spring peepers and their song.

If winter is a season of the heart, than individual and communal awareness of these beauteous signs of nature awakening again this spring are more needed than ever. If we can remember to let our senses be attuned to the natural world so that when the melt begins and the greening shoots rise up we are ready to greet them, harbingers of continuity and plenty that they are, then we will have done well by awe.

And may we all keep reasonableness with an extra dose of caring close at hand.

In warmth,

Jill MacCormack

Thanks for reading!