silver linings

Like the rest of the world, we're on lockdown, living the new 'normal' while quarantined.  We're grateful to be healthy and to all those on the front line -- essential workers like medical professionals, grocery workers, delivery drivers, janitors, and everyone else keeping society healthy and fed, and keeping this disease at bay.

We've had to find ways to remain positive in a scary time, grieving the loss of our regular lives even as we create a sense of normalcy for our children, who are now 8 and 9 years old and desperately wishing they could go back to school and hug their teachers and friends. We've also stood in bread lines to get into supermarkets, where the shelves look like what we've read about in Soviet Russia. Like many people, Leo and I are grateful to still have our jobs as we juggle how to work from home while also running a homeschool, and how to keep ourselves stocked with food and household goods. We're spending time in our back yard playing soccer and tending our garden, savoring the sunshine and hoping for a good harvest of summer veggies.

But there are also silver linings and beautiful things, like weekends where we have the time to make homemade pasta from scratch, snuggle and read a book with each other, sit down and play guitar with the kids, and not hurry to do anything. All of this is a massive contrast to our previously overscheduled FOMO-driven lives. I've really enjoyed time to appreciate beauty in so many forms, especially in writing, film, and music.

I'm not sure about you, but there's even more music in my life these days. I'm thoroughly enjoying the thoughtful, gorgeous covers put out by Stories Acoustic. Thank you, artists, for helping us find and remain connected to ourselves during this most isolated time.  Scientists will save us. But artists keep our humanity alive.

Anyhow, here's a song that really hit me last night -- the phrasing is so perfect that the heartbreak cuts through the creepy.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking about those on the edge and those whose talent we've already lost: Adam Schlesinger, John Prine, Ellis Marsalis.