Outside The Rain
“It feels more serious this week,” my Dad said.
“It feels more serious this week,” my Dad said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know…It seems like people are taking it more seriously now,” he replied. “Everything is going to change after this.”
We were standing underneath the small overhang outside of the house, looking at the rain, the tall tall live oak, talking about how beautiful the Japanese maple is, leafed out, hanging low under the weight of the rain, creating a curtain in front of our gate. Drinking beer. Mostly quiet though. What else? What can you do but stay in place, knowing that everything is going to be completely different after this is all over? He’s right. But we don’t know how.
That rain was a cold rain, the kind of rain that makes you prefer the colder snow.
Things are going to change. Things are more serious this week. We have all been told to wear masks, not all of us are, but many more than a couple days ago. People are actually giving distance when you walk past. Many more are no longer waving. We are becoming submerged in our hovels. Hermits, untrusting of the air we breathe, of the hope that a stimulus package could help us. We are afraid. Simply put that is the truth, in California, in the Bay Area, we are growing truly afraid. Not just for our lives, for the economy, but for almost everything else.
It will all be different after this. Perhaps social norms will change. Maybe the kitchen handshake will just become the handshake. Perhaps soup kitchens will increase their production and hours. Perhaps there will be greater protests for social benefits and reforms. Perhaps the media will publicize more protests for social reform. Perhaps this will give a leg-up to climate activists. But it’s hard to tell just now. We never truly know the future. Which is why people hope. It could be anything. All of this could happen, or none of it. We can look at likely probabilities, look to informed statisticians like those at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, but we don’t know what will become of the world. Because of this uncertainty, I hold out hope. Isn’t that what hope is for? Those moments when every bit of night seems to overtake the world and we say no! so we can make things just a little bit brighter?
But people are outside less. The reality, for those both in financial comfort and torment, has come ture, that we’re not on vacation. But we’re trying to make do. Feel better, hold onto that hope. Hold it, and not let go.
Yes, I’m just writing in order to not fall into despair, to mark each day with some anecdote, but I also believe in hope. It’s an ineffable thing, but optimism and cynicism get us nowhere (Rebecca Solnit taught me that). Hope is the only thing that can drive change.
This morning, as I got up, my dad was already blasting music. He was bumping “Video” by India.Arie, and started to dance around his desk. And I laughed. I love that song but didn’t expect him to blast it through the house. As I write this he’s playing some sort of pop house music, most likely Kraftwerk. And I love it. I love his hope, as an artist and person, that things can get better even as the death rates increase, that things will get better. But only if we bump it, fighting despair.