elizabethlevett

There’s a waxing gibbous moon tonight.

And it strikes me sitting in the garden that, as far as the moon is concerned, this is just another day. Without the news on it might be. I make the bed, feed the cat, pet him and tell him how handsome he is, check correspondence, have something to eat, go for a long walk, being careful to cross the street if anyone is jogging toward me and the sidewalk starts to narrow.

What if today was just a day? What if I didn’t listen to the news?

But it seems like the right thing to do. It’s better to know. It’s better to know.

But then I start to wonder, how bad will this get? Will New York really run out of ventilators? How are they supposed to choose who gets one? And will there be, as they say, a second wave of infection in the fall? And will we learn anything? When this is finally a dim memory like small pox or typhoid or polio, will we remember the courtesy of getting out of each other’s way? Will we retain some of our capacity for attending a meeting online instead of having to fly somewhere for it? Will we remember this clarity in the atmosphere in a spring when we didn’t have to travel? Will we remember that, as far as the moon is concerned, this is just another day? The sun will go down. The cat will be fed and told how handsome he is. The moon will come out, almost full of herself, waxing gibbous on a quiet spring evening.